fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2618 ]

[ SECRET POST #2618 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2618 ⌋

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We don't ask anyone out on dates would probably be a better way to put it, and usually if you go on a date you have already slept with that person and/or it is pretty clear that you are a couple. We don't date more than one person at the time. I've been in 3 long term relationships and I have been on like 1 official date in my life.

Here is an article type thingy explaining it: http://thyra10.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/so-you-want-to-date-a-scandinavian/

~~keep in mind that this is in general, and so is the article thingy~~

Wow, that's interesting. I can't figure out if it's unusual to me or if it's actually similar to how I prefer to do things. I don't understand American dating because I'm either super attracted to someone or not at all (usually not at all) and I'm definitely not interested in seeing more than one person at once. I'm not sure if that matches up better there or if it just doesn't align with either.

I thought dating like in the movies just was a movie thing, like do you guys actually ask someone you don't really know to go out on a date?

I dunno, there are of course differences on an individual basis, what I do know is that the guy I am halfway flirting in class with might end up drunkenly kissing me at a party, but I am 99% sure he will not ask me out on a date.

Basically I think "dates" are becoming less official and more ambiguous. People will meet and absolutely ask if the other person wants to get coffee sometime or meet up for a drink, but not the whole dinner/movie/one person is expected to pay for everything shtick, at least in my experience. Sometimes it's not clear whether it's just to hang out and get to know each other as friends or if there's romantic interest. From an American perspective, how else do you get to know someone but by spending time with them?

Two people who are not friends don't really do the going for coffee thing either. We spend time with people we know and they might know someone who knows someone.

Before going out to the town we spend time at a friends flat/house and random people you might not know are invited there so mix alcohol and you get to know a new person, or so quite often you might have had sex with someone without knowing much about them then getting to know them better afterwards.

So we get to know each other with alcohol or just soberly at school/work.

~~the link is a lot better at explaining this part than I am tbh~~

We do the whole friends and parties thing to meet new people as well, but not exclusively. If two people get to know each other at a party they'll probably make plans to see each other one on one.

Personally I can't imagine having sex with someone I barely know. People do it here but definitely not as a rule. Just makes me shudder.

It isn't to meet people, it is just a tradition you drink alcohol at a friends house before going out because alcohol is seriously expensive and double that in a bar. So you might meet or already know someone there and get to the "I am attracted to you" place then spend quite a few hours with them at that house, then going out then going back to an afterparty, then you might have sex with them. Mostly if you already know them, if you don't making out is also an alternative.

Having sex with virtual strangers don't happen more often in Norway than anywhere else I would think, but you might have sex with someone and by having sex you are a couple. Because that is what the last weeks/months have been leading up to through various parties and so on.

I'm not explaining myself well I think.

Oh I meant the same thing about meeting at a friend's house before going out, we do that often here for the same reason, but that's also a place you might meet people they know but you don't yet. It sounds like all the lead-up to a relationship over there is just done in group settings rather than one on one. And the difference of sex defining the start of a relationship.

Kinda, but kinda not. It is done in a group setting in the way that other people you know are around somewhere, but they will know the signs to keep away and leave two people alone if they seem to be hitting it of... Which I guess involves pretty much the same things that a date would in The US. You sit/stand talking to someone where flirting is involved and you get to know them better, or in the case where you already know them you might be getting closer to kissing/making out/sex and so on, doing this with the same person for most of the night would probably count as much as a date would.

Then sex might or might not happen at the end, if it does* and you spend the night you might ask him/her to do something later that day or another day if you don't know them well if you want it to continue and if you do know them well you are either a couple of you have to have an awkward "I just don't think we should be together, but the sex was fun" conversation.

*Or no sex but you still spend the night together.

Two people who are not friends don't really do the going for coffee thing either. We spend time with people we know and they might know someone who knows someone.

What do you do if you move to a new city where you don't know anyone? Never mind dating, how do you make friends if it's inappropriate to ask people if they want to hang out or go do something outside of work or wherever you know they from? (I have a hard enough time making friends as it is and now I'm starting to make a mental note never to move to a Scandinavian country because I'd probably wind up some kind of lonely hermit because I wouldn't already be part of a group of friends.)

If you move somewhere new you would go to work or school and get to know people through that then you might do something with them. There is also various social groups you can join, like volunteer work, sports or just random things like knitting clubs. Failing that just go to a pub and you will always meet someone there, and get to know them. Alcohol is the thing we need to be friendly, other countries have their things, we have this.

I didn't say it was inappropriate to ask someone to do something with you, I said we don't in general date. I go to a movie and dinner with friends all the time, even people I don't know that well, but meet through school or at work. But the object of that would be to get to know someone not to get romantically involved with that person.

I also realise that I forgot to add a part to that sentence when I halfway rewrote it, that part belongs with the going to someones house before going out to a pub thing.

The movie thing - by which I assume we are talking about asking a stranger we just met out on a date - happens more in the movies than American real life. It's not that it never happens (and the "dating scene" for certain people in certain cities may consist mostly of this) but I think that, overall, most people meet their partners through mutual friends or at work or school. The difference might be that people go out and do "date stuff" before they definitely consider themselves a couple, even if they already know each other a bit.

I mean the whole concept of dinner and a movie really... I do that with my friends, I might do it with a SO, but I would never do it with someone I didn't know well and/or wanted to have a relationship with.

What about a friend you wanted to have a relationship with?

Then you already know them and dating wouldn't be a thing you need. It isn't a part of our social interactions. We don't use the word much, and when we do it is the English one...

If you wanted to have a relationship with a friend, then you don't have to date them to do that, you would probably just end up sleeping together then call it a relationship from there.

Also: alcohol is your best bet and even if you are not drunk or anything close to it, that is involved at some point.

I'm beginning to think that over here we just don't have much of a line between getting to know someone to be friends and getting to know someone to be in a relationship.

Two more questions (I'm actually starting to annoy myself with how much I feel like I need to get to the bottom of this, so I'm sorry):
1. Do you go out and do things with a friend one on one?
2. What if you don't want to sleep with someone yet, for whatever reason? Does that ever happen, and do people establish relationships anyway, or do they just wait?

The line is there, but it isn't as defined I think. For the most time I know which people I am interacting with because I want to have a relationship with them and which ones I am because I want to be their friend.

1. Yes, quite often. Also with your SO.
2. Then you don't sleep with them... It isn't like sex is the one and only start of a relationship (even if it is a common one). We have done this from a really young age and you don't have sex when you are 10, so the social rules and signals are ingrained in us so sex does not need to happen for you to be in a relationship. I know of plenty relationships that didn't start with sex, including mine.

Okay. It's really funny to me that this is so hard for me to wrap my head around. Here is my understanding:

1. You spend time together individually with friends and/or an established partner, but not someone you're interested in being with (see, here I would have said dating, half the time we use it to describe an established relationship).
2. You get to know a potential partner within a group setting, off to the side at a friend's house or at a bar.
3. You repeat spending time with this person in those settings until you act on your attraction to whatever extent, but something physical.
4. Then this person becomes your partner by default unless you have a conversation to say otherwise, and then you spend time together individually.

Regarding 3: Is there a lot of kissing going on at people's houses, then? And does a relationship generally always begin by spending a whole night together, sex or not? That's the impression I'm getting.

And one more: What if you're at a bar with your friends and you meet someone you're interested in?

So basically...you just don't spend time with people you're interested in without friends around you. Is that accurate?

Sorry apparently I never replied to this, I didn't mean to forget it.

And you are pretty much right, and I just realized a pretty critical point to this whole discussiont that I didn't think about before... We don't date in the sense that we are either together or we aren't, as in we don't really go on dates and spend time together thinking about if we want to be with that person or not.

Not that the we don't think about it or anything, or don't spend time with someone before being their SO, but we don't say to our friends "I've been dating this guy/girl for a month and I think we might become bf/gf", it is more "I kinda like this guy/girl we've flirted for a while and/or spent a lot of time together and now I want to be their gf/bf".

That is probably something that should have been cleared up a lot earlier, but I'm not used to thinking about it.

1. Pretty much, except: We do spend time with people we are interested in alone, but it doesn't have a name or anything like that, I might go out for coffee with someone I am interested in, but then it wouldn't be called dating, it would just be going out with coffee with a guy I like, with American influences I might tell my friend that I vent on a date like thing if that happened. For me personaly that means I hang out with guys that I go to class with before/after lectures and we might end up in a cafë together, but there isn't a social rule or anything like that regarding it, it is just a part of getting to know a person, without thinking of relationships.

2. Mostly yes, see 1.

3. Again see 1. But also, a relationship does usually start with at least kissing, that is where we define the start of a relationship, but individuality does play a part and it depends on the people involved, but typically you aren't in a couple before kissing happens.

4. That is also a question of definitions, it might happen or it might not. I have friends who have more one night stands than me and for the most part the men they sleep with know it is a one night stand, some of them they talk to later, or develop a closer relationship with. Other times they just have to explain that it was just sex and that they don't really want to do anything more with them.

And 3 again: In peoples houses yes. If you are the partying sort pretty much, but not necessarily, because I have spent plenty of nights in other peoples beds with them without ending up being in a relationship with them. We just sleep wherever there are place, because it isn't always easy getting home at night and then you sleep over, and beds are more comfy than floors.

If you meet someone at a bar that you are interested in then you talk to them, you might invite them over to your group of friends or to the after party you are going to, alternatively the other way around. If you are interested we just give them our phone number/facebook info and they might message you (or you them) and ask if you are going out next weekend or something along those lines. Also in that you might talk to them/text them and so on to get to know more about them, and that is also one of those situations where we get closest to actually going on a date, if it is a person that you don't know nor your friends we have to improvise, so we might even get out of or shells and eat with a person we don't particularly now to get to know them better.

So did that make more sense?

It does, haha, thank you. I know I got really nit-picky about the details. It reminds me a good bit of how dating tends to work on college campuses here. Except people in college are still really bad at knowing when something becomes a relationship. The bigger contrast comes in comparison to that traditional American cinematic dating model, but I think that model is loosening among my generation. It's funny how part of it just seems to come down to semantics - the fact that we have and use the word "dating." This has been very interesting to learn, so thank you for all your time :)

Huh. While I'm American, I do have some Scandinavian blood, and pretty much share the same mindset here. I thought I was just being weird about dating, but maybe this explains a few things.

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[ SECRET POST #2618 ]

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