I believe I should't have left to Sweden in late 2006. That event has deeply changed my way of thinking and consequently my life. Nowadays I'm in the bad condition of wishing to move out from Italy and live abroad, possibly in some civil country where people live normally their lives. It's not that obvious as it sounds because it is anyway a kind of condemnation: starting living abroad is taugh, there's a lot of issues and problems to solve. You'll never be feeling home, for you're not home. People from that country are not going to accept you as a person of that country, nevertheless I know that I'd be feeling worse if I remain in my homecountry.
This is due to a lot of things. One might say that in Sweden everything works fine, social services have high standards, there's nearly no poor people and the working life is more relaxed and puts less pressure on life. But even though all these reasons are true and are part of the better things, the main question is about how people behave and live their lives in Italy, what counts in an individual in this country, how people perceive social rules, how people respect the community but mostly how relations between genders take place, how judgment conditionate people and should bother them but in fact does just partly.
First of all there's something to say about what people consider to be absolute truths. For instance, that the whole world is a village regarding human behaviors and rules. But it is not, definitely. Every country has boundaries beyond which people change, contitionated by the local media and beliefs, thus it happens that living in a country just next to yours is totally different in many things.
What's different in Italy than nordic countries as well as Germany, England, Ireland and so on? Many topics, but the one that matters the most to me but it should to almost everybody, is the way male and female people relationate. This is in my opinion a very important topic, it's into all the rest of a person's life. Italians may not perceive it as long as they never travel to some different place, because if you know just one, every place for you is just like it. And a brief holiday is not enough, living in a place for a longer time is relevant. Examples can explain things better. While female students studying abroad in Italy rarely complain about a scarcity of Italian men, their male counterparts lament the seeming absence of Italian women on the prowl. “Where are they hiding?” they may ask. They often go to pubs mainly packed of foreign students, nevetheless even if they did zone in on the “right” places, the Italian nightspots, they would only be able to admire these beautiful women from a distance. And not because they come from a different country, but because Italian women generally don’t go to bars to meet guys. They’re just out for a drink with good friends, often in a mixed boy-girl group that has been tight for ages, known in Italian as a “compagnia” or other expressions, and so they are impossible to approach. Not that they wouldn’t chat to a colleague or someone they’d been introduced to at a party the previous week, but meeting strangers for potential hook-ups, dates, and relationships is not on the agenda. It just doesn't happen, very few exceptions may be counted.
In Italy, there’s a “way” to do most things, a “come si fa” and a “come non si fa”, and meeting boys at bars falls neatly into the latter category. In Sweden, Germany, States, England and other developed coutries, a single girl dresses up, goes out with one or two girlfriends on a similar mission, scans the bar/club/lounge for someone she finds attractive, and then proceeds to smile at and make seductive eye-contact with said guy until he moseys on over and buys her a drink. The possibilities are then endless. In Italy, on the other hand, to meet each other, an Italian girl and an Italian guy need to be properly introduced by a mutual friend or acquaintance, they need to be “presentati”, presented to one another. Apparently, even a potential mate need be “raccomandato”, recommended. Once the proper introductions have been made, the possibilities should be endless for them as well. This difference in customs may not seem significant, but while foreigners complain about how hard it is to meet people in their respective countries, Italians have it that much harder. They have to wait to be introduced. They have to wait to be met.
It really drives me crazy when I say this to someone and I get as a reply that they knew that in Italy people are so opened, so amazing, so loving and very likely to meet people. This is partly true, but that word “partly” is in this case huge. In Italy girls are really taugh to cope with generally. They give loads of problems, they are never satisfied, more spoiled and got less personality than the most part of the girls in any other developed country. Rare exceptions excluded. They are just insecure, lack of self confidence and never dare to go for a guy. They are passive, men must take the first step, talk to them pretending not to be interested while if a guy starts talking to a girl out of a sudden he's obviously attracted. Therefore men have to come up with something impressive because otherwise they are going to sound as the average unisteresting guy. Women don't give men the opportunity to show how they are, because they deny attention from the start. A girl tend not to trust a stranger, so if you don't get introduced by a friend of hers, you'll probably not have a chance. Only those guys that hit on hundrends of girls sometimes succeed, according to the probability calculus.
In order to date a girl and possibly start a relationship, a guy must prove his reliability. There's steps to take. This happens basically, as said, because people in Italy don't trust other people. In Sweden, your presence and your potential attractiveness are enough to make a girl come and talk to you. A girl is attracted, she comes to you, or she does something to let you do something first. In many other countries it works more or less this way as well. More posts further on.
No comments:
Post a Comment