SARNA: Dating in different cultures

It was wine night and seven girls sat in my apartment discussing their love lives — or lack thereof. The conversation was spiked not just by the Pinot Grigio but also by the vast diversity in the living room. “Aren’t you guys supposed to wait for marriage or something?” asked my subtly racist friend from New York. While the room burst into giggles, I pondered over how people have preconceived notions about other cultures and the fact that nothing has been done to substantially change these beliefs.

One of the most common words used by our generation is dating. It is also an easily worn out word. The concept has remained the same over several decades: dating has been established as the process of interaction between a girl and a boy (or two girls, or two boys) on an intimate level, be it sexual or platonic and be it short-term or long-term. While the skeleton of this definition may be applicable world-over, the connotations of the action are actually rather different from culture to culture.

Different cultures look at almost everything with unique eyes, with a little overlap here and there. For example, both Indian and Italian cultures have a strong focus on family, despite being geographically distinct. People have their own sets of customs and traditions and, to no one’s surprise, their own dating trends are endemic to the society they live in. After the conversation with my friends, I decided to do a bit of my own research on dating trends, beginning with Arabic culture. My factual findings were very similar to what my Arab friend had to say as well — Arab girls are expected to lead conservative lives and are strictly required to obey the rules and regulations they have grown up following, despite the possibility of living in a different country away from home and family.

To ensure this discrepancy wasn’t just in my head, I made use of my global social network and asked some of my friends around the world to say the first thing that comes to mind when they think of dating. To ensure uniformity of thought process, I asked only girls ages 18-24, and the results were amusing, to say the least.

My friend from New Delhi took all of three seconds to describe dating as “having a boyfriend who takes me out on dates and spoils me,” while my friend from Chennai, India, simply put it as being in a relationship with a boy. The Londoner specified dating as “being in an exclusive relationship where we can be seen together in public as a couple.” My friend from Melbourne, Australia, was spunky in answering that dating meant “going out with someone because I like him or her.” Next comes the girl from New York, who shrugged at the question and said it meant seeing people they met on dating apps or at clubs. My friend from Athens, Greece, straightforwardly called it being steady with a boy. Lastly, my friend from Saudi Arabia said that dating to her meant having a boyfriend “here” in the United States.

It’s said that the first thoughts that come to mind are usually the brain’s natural response to something — in other words, you won’t necessarily think about being socially or politically correct. Notice how the Indian, the Saudi Arabian and the Greek girls specified “boy” in their comments. Needless to say, these girls have been brought up in comparatively more conservative societies, as opposed to the New Yorker or the Londoner.

From personal experience as an Indian girl, I can say that taking transgender or homosexual individuals into consideration when asked about relationships is not the first thing to sprout in our minds. Despite the long and hard battle for equality that we all openly support, these ideas are slowly changing the face of the way the world looks at relationships. It’s one thing to show support for these groups, but a completely different ball game to subconsciously associate with them when asked off the top of your head to describe dating culture. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying we’re hypocrites, but rather that our societies are a tad slower in accepting new norms, and those do not necessarily impact our subconscious mentalities, whether we’re proud of that fact or not.

While I was prepared for the cross continent differences in my results, the difference in mindset between the people of the same country but in different regions really intrigued me. The Indians I questioned hail from opposite poles of the country — one is from the north and the other from the south. While the North Indian girl thinks of dating as synonymous with fancy outings and posh meals, the South Indian girl has a simple answer, which solely focuses on companionship with the other half. It might be pushing the lid, but I do believe this sheds a lot of light on the overall thinking of the communities in which they live.

The Saudi Arabian girl’s shy answer is not one that would usually be looked into twice — but when she added “here” at the end of her sentence, it put things into perspective. She explained that her parents would not tolerate her “seeing” someone under any circumstances, so she would have to keep her “affair” hidden from them, which is only possible with her living in America. But then again, that can’t be said for all Saudi girls. Connotations matter, but context matters too.

Much in the same way, the girls from Paris, London and New York share a sense of modernism in the way they openly discuss dating culture that none of the others do. The main reason for this is that their society has never shunned the concept or considered it anything but what it is — a recreational activity that comes naturally to most people. When society attaches a bias towards something, the way the people living in the society view that something changes altogether.

Thus, while a layman might still think of dating in more or less the same way, the deeper roots spread widely as we move along the geographic barriers of the world.