Dating in Argentina vs Dating in US/UK....

[Ries]

I think we need a special forum- something like "aging horndog expats". so you guys can go off and discuss this kind of sexist stuff somewhere else...

 

[MatameBA]

I think we need a special forum- something like "aging horndog expats". so you guys can go off and discuss this kind of sexist stuff somewhere else...

Are you one of these "woke" people I keep reading about on the internet?

 

[Alby]

Hi Alby,

One definition with two sub definitions:

#1) Two people who set time aside to spend with each other doing something they both enjoy in a leisurely manner or setting.

A) As friends ... PLATONIC ... no intent of sexual interaction.

B) Sexual interaction is very much on the table as a possibility or goal of one or both of the participants.

I ask because to me it's always seemed to be a rather strange concept. I look around me here and I don't know anyone who is dating, as in specifically viewing dating an activity in life that one consciously pursues and discusses and compares across borders (like, say fishing, or mountain biking, or visiting museums). I look around and see three kinds of people: (i) married, with or without children, (ii) in a solid partnership (with or without children), or (iii) single. Dating, its seems to me, only concerns the third group, but of the people I know in the third group of any gender or sexual orientation, I can think of almost none who, as a matter of conscious practice, pursues "dating", as defined, either platonically or sexually. That is not to say that I don't know any single people who from time to time meet somebody, almost by accident, and begin a friendship that lasts for a while and either stays platonic or progresses to sexual interaction, before either ending or finishing up as something long term. Of course that happens. But, at any time over the past thirty years (here and elsewhere), it has never been my experience that single people pursue "dating" almost as a pastime or hobby. I used to watch sitcoms from the US (like Seinfeld and Friends, and others) where the term was used, and the activity was pursued, and think that either life in the US for singles was very different to elsewhere, or that the sitcoms painted a very unrealistic picture about what actually happens in the world amongst single people.

I always think it's important to challenge concept that we bandy around as if there were given. I don't think "dating" is as clear, obvious and universal as this thread assumes. I also suspect when we raise the issue, as males, about what "dating" in BA is like, we are really asking: how easy is it for me to get laid in BA?

 

[Alby]

What I have seen (and been part of) is a scene in which groups of single people join up, say on weekends to do group activities, which can include going to bars and restaurants, perhaps with some of the group's members (secretly) hoping to meet someone new whilst out, but rarely doing so.

I realize that the internet has now opened up all sorts of other possibilities for people to connect in a more targeted and efficient and perhaps more successful way than the hunting in packs approach in the past.

But it seems to me when we discuss "dating" we are discussing a state in which two people are now spending time together at the end of a conscious search process. It surprises me to think that people get to that end point after a conscious and planned search process (the dating process)--a process which we can try and compare across countries. I think when two people get to that point, most of the time, it is by accident and not by design.

 

[EL_TIGRE_de_Tigre]

What I have seen (and been part of) is a scene in which groups of single people join up, say on weekends to do group activities, which can include going to bars and restaurants, perhaps with some of the group's members (secretly) hoping to meet someone new whilst out, but rarely doing so.

I realize that the internet has now opened up all sorts of other possibilities for people to connect in a more targeted and efficient and perhaps more successful way than the hunting in packs approach in the past.

But it seems to me when we discuss "dating" we are discussing a state in which two people are now spending time together at the end of a conscious search process. It surprises me to think that people get to that end point after a conscious and planned search process (the dating process)--a process which we can try and compare across countries. I think when two people get to that point, most of the time, it is by accident and not by design.

Specifically responding to this post and your post prior to this post:

Too deep / technical for me!

In my mind, dating is what I defined it as. I don't want to take something that I view as simple and complicate it to kingdom come)

To me, it is sharing time together, doing something two people enjoy in a setting of relaxation ... with or without sexual intent. That's what a date is to me. It can be done by any two people, in any defined relationship status with or without their primary partner. (I view it as wrong to cheat, but we will leave that out of it.)

 

[Greg S]

I think we need a special forum- something like "aging horndog expats". so you guys can go off and discuss this kind of sexist stuff somewhere else...

Forget about a forum. An entire site! AgingHorndogs.com is available!

 

[EL_TIGRE_de_Tigre]

I bow out of this thread ... it is going in the wrong direction.

Discussion of social interaction yes, beyond that, no.

 

[Alby]

To me, it is sharing time together, doing something two people enjoy in a setting of relaxation ... with or without sexual intent. That's what a date is to me. It can be done by any two people, in any defined relationship status with or without their primary partner. (I view it as wrong to cheat, but we will leave that out of it.)

I agree with your definition of dating. Once two people reach a level of comfort with each other and form a habit of spending time together regularly, usually on their own, to do things of mutual interest, whether intimate or not. That sounds like a good definition (or what, in other countries, we might call "going out"). But it's an end point. A state. But once you are there, surely it is the same the world over, people being people. So I question the point of the thread, if that is what the thread means when it talks about dating.

I think the thread may be talking about is something else: dating not as the end point, but as a conscious planned, tactical and executed process, everything prior to the end point you describe (and some of the answers posed so far on the thread seem to conceive it that way). That definition of dating, I struggle with. Because I have rarely if ever seen around me do it, nor done it myself; and I think most people reach the end point by accident, usually having met in the workplace.

But perhaps, in the US, dating as a process is and has always been common (as the sitcoms have long presented it). If so, that (whether in some countries--taking Buenos Aires right out of it--people meet more by accident or by design) seems to me to be a more interesting topic to discuss.

 

[Fiscal]

It's all about market value. If you are a while male from the US or Europe, you'll do much better with Argentinian women than someone from elsewhere from Latin America, who have lower market value. That is, they aren't typically going to downgrade socially by dating a Colombian or a Mexican. They exception being when your income is high enough that other considerations become irrelevant. It's another form of Argentine exceptionalism perhaps.

I personally have found dating much more easy going in Bogotá and Santiago, and I didn't feel like I had to provide my CV and income level, or pass a political litmus test before a coffee date, unlike here.

Why would it be a downgrade to date a Mexican or Mexican?

 

[Ries]

Doesnt it tell you something that not a single woman has said anything?
And, I would assume only a couple of you (given global percentages) are gay, which means your "dating" would involve women.
and yet, they seem particularly disinterested in the way this discussion is framed.

I would just say, there is a reason why so few new, young, or female people comment much on this forum in general.

And, yes, I "woke" in 1955, and have been pretty much awake ever since.