As a year-old woman, I've been on most dating apps and have been on more dates than I can remember. During the pandemic, I even went on a "first date " with someone where we ordered food for each other and FaceTimed.
He cut out paper hearts and taped them to the wall behind him. In , I did another crazy thing: I moved to Spain to teach English. I don't know if moving to another continent during the height of the pandemic was my most ludicrous or my most genius ever, but it certainly gave me a lot of new perspectives on life — especially on dating. I went on dates with men and women over the course of three years — and found major cultural differences.
When it came to dating men in Europe, I was shocked to find out that I was expected to pay my half of the bill. Not that I ascribe to the idea that men should pick up the bill, but it was a definite shift going from an American culture where it's sometimes expected for men to pay to a Spanish culture where that is never the assumption.
More surprisingly, one of the few dates who offered to cover the whole bill was a woman. The one time a Spanish man did pay, he used it as a " peacocking " opportunity to show off how much money he had.
From the people I dated, I got the feeling that Spaniards see sex like they see wine — as a part of everyday life and easily accessible. Just as the Spanish norm of having a few glasses of wine at lunch might raise some eyebrows in the US, the casual approach to sex is also a bit more liberal. While it wasn't impossible, I didn't encounter many people who wanted to wait a few dates before getting intimate. In the US, it's common to go on a certain number of dates before having the "define the relationship" conversation — or at least trying to know where the other person stands when it comes to commitment.
