sex for Italians is more of a quest<\/a>; a reward at the end of an erotic, hot, flirtatious innuendo. Instead, in Australia if you don\u2019t give them sex within three dates, they might even stop texting you. They are lucky that they are tall and muscular, unlike Italian expats here. This is one thing Italian men should learn: get to the gym!<\/p>\nBut actually, I do have a LOOONG term Italian partner. We emigrated together. But we are libertines, and we like to have fun with others occasionally. That’s why I have a comparison. I guess when searching a \u201csex friend\u201d I can overlook the poor pick-up style. But I think if I was still searching for a life partner, I could not settle for an Aussie\u2014I would definitely have to go back to find an Italian man (who goes to the gym, that is).<\/p>\n
I hope that in the ten years that I have been away from Italy, the male attitude towards the gym has changed. When I was there, it was typical to hear unfit middle-aged men commenting about guys who made the effort to keep a toned body with, \u201cOh, that looks so gay!\u201d (I guess that many women must be attracted to \u201cgay men\u201d then… LOL)<\/p>\n
Enjoy life in The Penisola! I am loving life here in Perth; the ocean, the blue skies, the vast horizons. And since I arrived, the food culture has really improved. An Italian can really get by now\u201410 years ago I used to struggle to find crusty bread and a decent coffee. I miss my family, but I don’t think I will ever go back to Italy.<\/p>\n
The (American) Male Response<\/h2>\n Great stuff, right?!? I know that I learned a thing or two!<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s my rebuttal. First of all, I get it. She\u2019s right; men from the U.S., U.K., Australia, etc. are really<\/em> bad at the \u201cgame\u201d that she craves. But she assumes that it\u2019s because we\u2019re lazy, which is incorrect. It\u2019s actually because we find those types of games a bit silly, not to mention dishonest on some level.<\/p>\nOh sure, we play those games, too, when we are in liceo<\/em> (high school). But by the time we consider ourselves adults, most of us have outgrown them. It just seems like there are better things to do with our time and energy\u2014like building a career or contributing to a functioning society. Most Italian men don\u2019t seem as burdened by those concerns, for some reason.<\/p>\nI won\u2019t get into the whole \u201cmammoni<\/em>\u201d discussion, but it must be a lot easier to prolong your adolescent attitude and behavior if your society is enabling (encouraging!) you to do so. In the U.S., we\u2019re taught to be self-reliant as soon as possible, often moving out of our parents\u2019 house at age 18, never to return. Then there are bills to be paid and fortunes to be made, so who has time to play cat and mouse with every pretty girl?<\/p>\nNow we\u2019re back to the cultural differences. What an American or Australian might call \u201cchildish\u201d (a negative connotation), an Italian might call \u201cchild-like\u201d (a positive connotation, implying something filled with wonder and closer to the essential human condition).<\/p>\n
Yes, we Yanks and Aussies are more pragmatic, for better or worse. “You\u2019re interested? Great, let\u2019s get to it. You\u2019re not? That\u2019s fine, too\u2014then move along, sugar-britches. I’ve got to get to work (and after that, I’m off to the gym, by the way.)”<\/p>\nRed pants?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhich reminds me, her “gym = gay” comment is insightful, too, because I’ve heard American women make similar remarks about Italian men, except in that case it’s usually something like, “Giovanni spends SO much time grooming and waxing and choosing his outfit…I think he might be gay! He spends more time in front of the mirror than I do!”<\/p>\n
Which would be considered “normal” for an Italian man, so it’s no surprise that she’s shocked when her Australian date shows up in shorts and flip-flops. I guess for an American or Australian, “normal” for man is rough and careless and…masculine. Excessive attention to clothes and grooming and accessories are considered feminine qualities in our countries. Well, I’m generalizing, but I have heard more than one American woman say, “How can I possibly date Franco? He carries a more expensive handbag than me!”<\/p>\n
Logically, I guess I can see both sides of this argument. In fact, there are times when I wish I could be more “Italian” in my attitudes and behavior. But what we truly feel–what we truly are<\/em>–is heavily influenced by our cultural indoctrination and life experiences. What an Italian might call \u201ca fun game,\u201d an Australian or American might simply find boring and annoying. So it’s not that we can’t<\/em> learn to play the game…it’s just that it’s not very interesting to us. It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose.However, Female G made one comment which I absolutely cannot let pass without calling out \u201cBullshit!\u201d She\u2019s obviously been away from Italy for way too long if she thinks that an Italian can \u201cget by\u201d on the food offered outside of The Peninsula.<\/p>\n
In fact, this statement alone might discredit her entire argument about dating and sex. One appetite is not so different from the other, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cHow to date an Italian,\u201d for some reason, is the most common search that drive Googlers to my site. Actually, many of the keywords that people enter into the search box are not appropriate for me to repeat. I consider my blog to be rated \u201cR,\u201d but apparently many of you (and you know who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[49,457,156,52,346,48,363,352],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12192,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5905\/revisions\/12192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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She didn\u2019t mention her real name, and I wouldn\u2019t reveal it anyway. The important thing is that she\u2019s an Italian girl in her 30\u2019s who has been living in Australia for 10 years, and she\u2019s STILL trying to work out the rather large cultural gaps when it comes to dating, courtship, and social protocols in general. I feel her pain.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/IMG_0861.jpg\")
![\"red](\"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/redpants2.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n