That cruel game called dating- Part II


Veni, vidi, vici


Tonight, husband is watching “Belly of the Beast”. You just know it has to be good. Honestly, how many movies does Steven Seagal make in a year?


So this friend lived in Hungary for a while. We were talking about him dating Hungarian girls.

I have never been to Hungary and never knew that they might have such a fascinating way of picking up girls. My friend was telling me about meeting this gorgeous Hungarian girlfriend, and mentioned that he ‘grabbed her‘ as she walked past him in a bar.

Grabbed her?

If anyone tried to grab me in a bar, a date with that man would be the least likely outcome. The very thought of a stranger grabbing me in a public place out of the blue, without at least some sort of verbal foreplay, makes me quite uncomfortable.

So of course, I wanted to know more. How is that possible? Did they really end up going out after such an introduction?

My friend explained that he would not have had a chance had he tried any of his more subtle, western approaches. In the US, he explained, it would be the norm not to call the girl for a couple of days after you’d met; not to appear like a desperate stalker. In Hungary, unless you grabbed the bull by the horns, you lost your chance. You have to act quickly, without any hesitation. No games are played. No prelude. You come, you see, you conquer. He saw this girl in a bar, they made an eye contact (Oh, that’s OK then.) and so, as she walked past him, he just grabbed her.

I thought of back home, and my dating days. Oh, those sweet and sour days...So many years passed since then!

Nobody ever grabbed me as I was walking past. To be honest, I never really liked meeting men in bars. Must be a cultural thing. Azeri girls spend all their lives fighting off strangers. Because we are so used to harassment at every step we take.

You chat to a taxi driver and he will assume you want him right there and then. You smile to a waiter and he will ask for your phone number. You walk past a construction site...Well, you just don’t walk past construction sites.

So if you are a cool chick back in Baku, you are probably very good at brushing men off. It is an automatic reaction.

Once, a long time ago, in my single days, I was visiting Druggie in London.

She and I were in a pub, having a few drinks, when this bloke just appeared out of nowhere. He must have been sitting nearby for a while, but I had not even noticed. He walked up to us and, looking straight at me, asked if I would have a dinner with him the next night. The conversation lasted a few seconds. He barely had time to finish the sentence. I glanced at him quickly, said ‘no, thanks ‘, and continued with my conversation. Druggie was shocked. She thought I was incredibly cruel and rude.

“Poor bloke must have been sitting there for ages, gathering up the courage to walk over here!”- she said.

But I just shrugged my shoulders. Back home, guys expect you to say ‘no’. At least once.

From my experience, unless you meet someone via someone, who knows someone, who worked with someone, it is just not worth it.

But that is back home.

A secretary at my very first job in London was telling me how she met her boyfriend. She came out of the gym one night. He pulled up in a car and asked if she wanted a lift. She glanced at him and thought she might have seen him in the gym. The car looked good too. So she got in.

I listened and smiled. I was so incredibly happy for her. Happy that she was not raped, cut into a thousand tiny pieces, placed in a suitcase and thrown down the Thames.

So yes, I have heard a lot of interesting dating stories in my life. But this Hungarian one beats them all. It goes against everything I thought I knew about men and relationship, against my instincts. I always thought that certain basic principles work everywhere. But this? A man grabs you in a bar, and you smile, land on his lap, snog him, have sex with him straight away...and he respects you and does not think you are a bit of a blyad?

Wow. I really want to be open-minded here. But either I have no idea about these things, or my friend was hanging out in a kind of a bar where you meet that kind of girls. There are plenty of bars like that all over the world.

Comments

  1. Oh Hungary! Everything that culture-shocked me there had to do with sex, like the openly advertised escort services and gorgeous street prostitutes dressed like Vivian and her colleagues in Pretty Woman. And Hungary provides more porn actresses than the rest of the Europe combined. In light of all this, I don't think you can explain the word "blyad" with that specific connotation to a Hungarian.

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  2. I want to be open minded too... but this story from Hungary seems a little too much for me. I've heard about this kind of encounters, but I guess a guy won't have any respect for a girl who says "yes" to a stranger right away. At least, that's what I think. I may be wrong.
    ¡Saludos SA!

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  3. LOL...LOL...LOL...brilliant humour

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  4. Well no wonder this guy is so confused. I can only imagine what living in a place like Hungary does to an average American male’s psyche. Oy mama. That child needs help, fast.

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  5. @Tatevik: Sounds like a dream destination for a lot of males out there!

    @Gabriela: Be careful, or that Anonymous person will call you narrow-minded too! :))

    @Nata: Maybe he just had it all too easy, too good? :)

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  6. Yeah. Here in US guys have to work hard, or at least pretend to work hard and for what? Average looking, demanding, bossy women who don’t own a pair of high heels or a lipstick. As a young, single American male in Eastern Europe they could have all the easy hot girls they want with zero effort. How do you recover from that? Life is never the same. What they don’t know is that as soon as those easy hot girls become wives, things change fast and not for the better. :)
    In a spirit of full disclosure, I really dig bossy American women. The bossier, the better. I can’t stand weak b*tches.

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  7. I feel a bit ambivalent about this. Objectively, just grabbing a passing woman is an appalling idea, showing lack of respect and exhibiting the all too familiar 'droit de seigneur' attitudes of so many males. On the other hand, still hot memories of agonising over whether to approach a woman, fearing rejection and all the embarrassments that go with it do give this Neanderthal technique a certain guilty appeal.

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  8. Thanks for opening this dialogue!
    Having travelled a bit, I've been approached by men in a number of interesting ways. In Egypt, a taxi driver proposed marriage to me after we'd chatted for five minutes. He became quite irate when I told him no: "I have a boyfriend." He wanted to know why I was talking to him if I was already committed. Another man approached me on the street and offered 20 camels, an apartment, and some gold jewelry if I would marry him. (Hey, at least they both wanted to make it legal, and no grabbing was involved...)
    Not to say that the Hungarian's approach hasn't been foisted upon me. But the "grabbers" I've run into are usually interested in just that--grabbing what they can get; giving something back never occurs to them.
    In the U.S., generally, men have to be a bit more creative with their come-ons. Even a verbal grab, with no physical contact ("Hey, baby, you'd look great as Miss September") or ("It's hot? Well why don't you just take your shirt off?)--both actual comments from my single days--might just earn a guy unwelcome physical retaliation.
    Being a married mama, agressive flirtation doesn't often come my way these days (thank God). However, a year ago, as I was standing, befuddled by too many bad novels in the romance section at the bookstore, I sensed a presence sidle up to me. An accented voice said, "Looking for romance? Perhaps I can help." I was flabberghasted for a second until the hilarity of the situation hit me. Was this guy for real? "Uh, no thanks," I replied, barely able to keep from LOL, "My husband's over in science fiction, and I don't think he'd appreciate it." The guy shrugged, as if to say, "You can't blame a man for trying," then walked away.
    It would be interesting to do a cross-cultural comparatvie study of come-on techniques....and which ones actually work!

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  9. @ Bill...
    Yes, I can see what you mean. But I always thought guys had it easier. More to chose from, and also you are expected to approach girls. Whereas we are just supposed to sit there, send some very vague signals and wait for someone to be brave enough. I never believed in trying to approach guys myself...Again, that is my conservative background, I guess.

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  10. Hey Carol and welcome to the blog!

    You made me laugh with your taxi driver story. I can easily believe that. As for those tacky chat-up lines you said you heard in the states, I can not imagine anyone would use them in real life???! I only ever heard them as a joke, not a serious approach, surely? :)

    As to what works, I suspect there are a few main rules: Be cute. Be attractive. Be fit. Oh, and be charming. If you all at least two of the above, you might get away with a lot of silly approaches. :)

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  11. :) :)
    privet! fun stuff here! thanks for stopping by my blog

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  12. @ Olga: Thank you. I think your art is beautiful. Nice to meet you.

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  13. Oh my... this was too funny! You allowed a lot of childhood/teenhood (is that even a word?!) memories to surface about men and their constant approach to picking girls up.

    From what I remember, I think I used to just ignore them most of the time... because just like you said, if you so much as make eye-contact or God-forbid, smile... that's it! You won't be able to fight them off you...

    That whole notion (along with 1,000.000.00 many other reasons) is why I never felt like I belonged back home, and wanted to move to a more open-minded society =)

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  14. No "dating" in the Caucasus. Let young boys and girl, who really like each other and want to establish a family, not just spend some time and have fun, meet in the presence of their friends and/or relatives, let them learn each other. It's good. But for god's sake no intimacies before marriage! No kissing, touching, let alone sex! Let it be as chaste as possible. Let us watch our honor. I personally would NEVER accept my sister become someone's GIRLFRIEND. So disgusting, humiliating... I very much know what guys think about when they want to "date" a girl. So if someone really likes my sister, I'd first learn everything about him and then (possibly) enable my sister to meet him - in my or my relative's presence, in our apartment. They may meet as many times as they wish. But no intimacy! Only talking. And you know, after I've spent 20years in Europe, I think this is simply fantastic to have a bride whom you treat as a princess! For me personally, it'd be a humiliation to marry a girl who was someone's "girlfriend". Only friend, only talking, nothing more would be acceptable to me. And for any honorable male. Let's perfectly stick to our tradition. That's it.

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  15. Oh, wow. These are some very traditional views.

    It is interesting to see how different Azeries (I assume you are Azeri, right?) are from each other. Some girls live in the modern world and have open relationship, some are stuck in medieval times.

    20 years in Europe...I assume, you never "dated" in those 20 years? If you did, that girl probably never realized you thought she was "disgusting" for allowing you to go out with her...

    Anyway, thanks for sharing. Everyone is free to do what they think is right. I would never buy a car without taking it for a ride first:) Neither would I want my daughter having sex at 13, like some British girls do. So I personally believe in healthy balance. But as I said....it is your choice. Clearly, not your sisters though.

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  16. Oh my... this was too funny! You allowed a lot of childhood/teenhood (is that even a word?!) memories to surface about men and their constant approach to picking girls up.

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  17. I for one wouldn't be able to respect a girl knowing she's been passed around town. If a guy is serious about a relationship and really loves her, he would be able to wait a while. Unless of course his only motive is sex, which would mean he wasn't serious husband material to begin with.

    It's a good filtering system, worked for thousands of years. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it ;)

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  18. people think prude is the way the world is going to be. It was this way in American in the 1950s as if parents got wind a young man was sleeping with their daughter then it would be an instant arragned shotgun wedding where you are forced into marriage for sleeping with a women before marriage. Its strange but this is how rural people did it. Today its different but I think 'its just sex' isnt alwasy right but if you know someone and trust them and have been with them for some time then there is nothing wrong with sex. I just disagree with sleeping with everyone is a good thing. Some girls and men I know think its okay and thats fine for them but I wont behave like that.

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  19. It was this way in American in the 1950s as if parents got wind a young man was sleeping with their daughter then it would be an instant arragned shotgun wedding where you are forced into marriage for sleeping with a women before marriage. Its strange but this is how rural people did it. how to get a guy to talk to you

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  20. It’s really very informative that I wanted ever, thanks for this. dating games

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  21. Hi blogger, it's very nice to meet you here.
    Just wanna ask you something about my privacy, I'm Chinese and divorced, an Azerbaijani has affair with me. It's so complicated as I love him a lot(but I never told him I love him). Should I leave him? I don't even know where we are, feel everything is at mess.
    Looking for your comments, many thanks.

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  22. Hi blogger, it's very nice to meet you here!
    Could u pls kindly give your advise on my privacy?
    I am Chinese and divorced, an Azerbaijani has affair with me. He is a pilot and fly to my country regularly. I don't know if I should leave or keep current situation with him as I love him a lot(tho I never told him I love him). It's clear there is less chances to be with him, but I cannot stop. Your comment will be appreciated no matter it's positive or negative.

    Many thanks.

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    Replies
    1. I can't really advise, I am afraid. I think you know the answer, but it will take some time for you to accept it. I would say do what you want, as life is too short. However if you love him it will hurt. So maybe leave now, if you can.

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