In Search of Romance? Try Moving Abroad.
In Search of Romance? Try Moving Abroad.
I love deconstructing ‘lifestyle’ articles like these, they are such a gold mine of biases and narrative formation by the chattering classes. Here we have a wonderful premise:
Now, Ms. Margo is living a dream of many American women who are seeking relationships abroad, some of whom cite the toxic dating scene in the United States
Well, no objection from me that the US has toxic dating norms. But, hm, idk, 'many women’ - is this a true trend amoung the American Female? Lets see who this article features:
Ms. Margo fell in love with the city (and its men). She found a gig teaching English in Paris and moved there after she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in May 2019.
Okay, not *that* crazy but I do think I know what kind of Sarah Lawrence grad gap years in Paris before her law degree;
For Cindy Sheahan…At the end of 2017, she quit her job and traveled throughout Southeast Asia for leisure, and she started using Tinder.
That isn’t…most people can’t list as their full time job “Dating in Thailand”;
For Frantzces Lys…she started a podcast called “Chronicles Abroad” with her co-host, who had met Ms. Williams, 40, in Malaysia. In 2018, Ms. Lys interviewed Ms. Williams, the founder of a consultancy, and the two kept in touch. They started dating years later.
Oh yeah the extremely relatable situation of a podcast host and boutique consultancy founder travelling to Mayalsia!!
“When you decide to just live your life for yourself, you actually end up stumbling upon people that match your energy and the same ideals and values,” said Ms. Lys, a 42-year-old founder of a wellness company.
Oh a wellness company, who hasn’t founded one of those!!! And a link to their company, wow thanks NYT, that was definitely gonna be my follow-up for Ms. Lys:
Cepee Tabibian, who moved to Madrid at 35 from Austin, Texas, felt similarly.
Okay that could be normal, what do she d-
In 2020, she met her partner, who is Spanish. Now, she is the founder of She Hit Refresh, a community that helps women over the age of 30 move to a different country.
Jesus fucking Christ none of these people are real. They are full-hog in the industry of packaging and selling their Life of Insight & Discovery for $500 an hour over zoom sessions to non profits hosting leadership seminars, their dating isn’t dating its brand management. I doubt don’t they authentically love their life but this, shockingly, is not a trend, is not a sample, is not ethnographic data, this is an ad buy by a sliver of globe-trotting wealthy woman masquerading as journalism.
Absolutely the only relatable person is:
Alexis Brown, for example, noticed a lack of “effort and intention” from the men she was dating in Atlanta, where she attended Spelman College.
When she traveled across Europe for vacation from October 2022 to January 2023, however, the people she dated made it clear that they wanted to spend time with her.
Who takes way more words than is necessary to tell me she had a polycule stretching from Paris to Prague during her study abroad, which, good for her, that is what study abroad is for. Shockingly, this is not a new development in the collegiate experience!
Buried amoung the branded bullshit is Alexis’s real gem and the only true 'thesis’ of the article:
“The dating culture in the U.S. is that it’s cool and normalized to be indifferent to someone and not really express how you genuinely feel,” Ms. Brown, 23, said.
Which is essentially that in Europe people will “express emotion” unlike the cold, busy America. I don’t doubt this, but I would hope a writer at the NYT’s could have slightly more social awareness; the 'reason’ Americans do not “express emotion” is that if they did you would dump them right on their ass on the first date.
Someone telling you, to quote Ms Margo:
“This one guy was like, ‘I ran through traffic just to look into your eyes once, and if you don’t want to go on a date with me, I can die happy knowing that I just met you,’” said Ms. Margo, a 28-year-old English teacher from Los Angeles.
As an opening line is cringe and uncomfortable, because they do not know you. They are lying and you know they are lying, it is a horrible foundation for a long term relationship. American dating norms have been hammering this lesson home on every participant (but if we are being honest, its primarily women hammering this home on men) and it is probably right to do. Anyone who does this lacks credibility.
But when you are in ~*Paris*~, you don’t care about their credibility, because you lack it yourself. You are on vacation, you have no future, just a sequential present. If the guy who tells you your eyes are his world turns out to be a clingly failson who requires at least a blowjob a day to keep his mood stable, you can just *get up and leave the country*, you cannot be trapped because nothing is keeping you there. By placing an ocean between yourself and your social standing you can radically changes your standards.
And you know what, there is something to that! Maybe the 18-point-checklist you mentally process every Tinder swipe through as you plan out your dream wedding on Cape Cod to a status-swollen ghost in a Tom Ford speckle-gray blazer while on lunch break from your quant analysis job at a digital marketing start-up in Chelsea isn’t the best baggage to bring into a first date! Through radically shifting your social context it might be possible to jar your brain out of what is holding it back. Its not what you found in Paris, but what you left behind in America, that could actually make a difference… and that reality could give this article some heft.
But then say that instead of trying to sell me on the idea that:
For Ms. Margo, a Black woman who attended predominantly white institutions throughout her school years, she felt ignored in the United States, as if she “was not an option,” she said. In Paris she felt seen.
France is less racist than the campus of Sarah Fucking Lawrence against black people. No wonder the humanities are dying if they are teaching this level of self awareness.
Back in the late 2000s wasn’t there a PUA type in the Roissy orbit who wrote “Bang” travel guides of Eastern and Central European countries (Baltics too) from a pulling-tail perspective, in the context of lamenting that American women were ruined?