I was just in Roma last year for two months. I assure you, I had several women hit on me while out and about once I became a common patron of the local bar. I’m 6’, American and only slightly chubby. But that’s all I have going for me in looks, just average. And they could care less that I was American (except one girl). I was still happily (more like blindly) married at the time, so not much happened (divorce was the ex’s ask 3 days after we returned) and was using the bar for good views and language immersion.
You want to know my thoughts on why women there play hard to get: according to a few chats the men are often underemployed or have near zero prospects to be better than above poverty. and according to one woman, a guy she dated just wanted her to cook, clean, and have babies; yep, he just wanted a new mamma with privileges.
So while I was married and my situation unique, I expect woo’ing an Italian woman to be not as hard as you say. I volunteer to go back and test this theory.
Oh, and a slam to my ex. I dedicated 10 years of our much longer marriage to do her family research so she could get her Italian by blood citizenship. That trip was our celebration of obtaining it and to review areas for buying a house. I will now and forever just consider her a Parmesan snorting fake. It was Facebook bragging rights and shit more.
Seems to be the vibe with most women in these countries with supposed fertility crises,
If married family life didn’t look like such a shit prospect financially, socially, mentally, really in any dimension, far less women would be holding out for obviously more wealthy potential matches like tourists who were able to afford a long distance ticket from another continent and ocean away.
Economist friend of mine has given me multiple rants about how the single biggest indicator of near future fertility trends is housing affordability, baby boom happened when subsidized home financing was backed the most by the government for example.
A tad unrelated, but I just want to say sorry about your ex. Hope you’re doing better now.
Hey, I feel you, man. To a crazy degree, in fact: with little difference except swapping out Italy for N. Ireland. 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah, hit hard for sure. Now I’m stuck in a future where my EU goals force me to consider not dating till I’m there, or worse, be far more selective when dating local as now need to tell potential partners that I’m not staying in the USA. People think this sounds amazing, but it’s a whole life move.
I hope you’re healing.
I mean…this is a uniquely American thing, right? Nowhere else is it so common to behave this way, right? Glorifying far flung ancestors for some, really, more adopted identity than anything else.
Until recently immigrant communities would tend to stay insular within the US, so folks that still identify by those communities are probably carrying on from a communal identity from when their family lived in a neighborhood that basically was just a very far removed exclave of the country of origin.
Most Americans who identify that way though are more or less just speaking superficially and would think it’s weird of someone who doesn’t even do the feast of seven fishes to claim they’re as italian as someone from Rome.
Only reason I feel right calling myself Palestinian American beyond mere statement of heritage for example is because I actually am putting work in learning shami and some of the culture, even made sure to get my first Kufiya from a legit family owned shop in Palestine.
