Ozzie Boxes

They say the French have the most romantic culture. Even though I was raised mostly in Asia, I was brought up in French culture and only going to French schools. As such I always fiercely doubted that belief. In my eyes French boys had no idea on how to operate, usually leaving the girls to do everything and they would just go along with it. Not my idea of romance. I wanted men who had guts, who would woo me before I even laid eyes on them. You know, a classic Disney romance. When I came to Australia, I found pretty much that. My first encounter was with a boy I met on my last road trip day that ended in Sydney in March 2013. He saw me walking into a bar. Spent the next 45min pondering on how to talk to me, when he finally did he didn’t leave my side till 7am the next day and I had to take my plane back to Singapore. He then stalked me on Facebook and pretty much spent the next 3 months waiting for my return to Sydney. Now that is romance.

Until I landed.

I was soon faced with the facts that in this country, engaging intimacy with someone doesn’t necessarily mean you are WITH that person. Even if we shared our deepest secrets, even if he picked me up from the airport and didn’t let me leave his place for two days, even if he introduced me to all his friends and talked to his mother about me, we still weren’t an item. Now that baffled me.

Because for most French people, if you’re kissing someone for no apparent reason, seeing that person more than you see your best friend and sharing the same bed two nights in a row or more, that person would be called a girlfriend/boyfriend to you. Without any need of talking about it, within days of the first kiss, sometimes minutes, you would be in a relationship.

That was my understanding of romance.

I’ve talked about this with a couple of Aussie boys I met when I first arrived here. And for them it was clear that there needed to be a discussion before being officially a couple.

After about a month of my arrival in the land down under, I was having lunch at a café with that particular boy. A distant friend of his’ ran into us and asked: “who’s the girl?” to which he answered: “oh this is Stella. She’s French”. Instinctively I thought I was going to hear the word ‘girlfriend’ somewhere in there. But that never came. Two days later I was sleeping with someone else. Hell if I wasn’t a girlfriend, then I wasn’t cheating was I?

A couple of days after that I ‘dumped’ the boy. Well I can’t say dumped because we weren’t together now were we. So let’s say I decided to stop seeing him. Also I didn’t want to engage in that awkward conversation. I didn’t want to be the cliché of the girl who goes: “we need to talk” and the boy runs away in the opposite direction. I didn’t want to feel like I was tying balls and chains to his feet. I felt like I would want to grow and move smoothly into something deeper and that there wouldn’t be the need to engage into such a pragmatic discussion about feelings or put a relationship into boxes.

Box 1: dating. Seeing each other, possibly having sex. Able to see other people.

Box 2: couple. Having a logical talk about the role the other has in your life.

Box 3: … well I wouldn’t know what box 3 is, I haven’t gotten to that stage yet 😛

A couple of weeks after that, I met someone else. And even though every detail of that new story is pretty romantic and more importantly feels easy and natural (unlike the previous one), I am still at the stage of not being a girlfriend. That awkward in between moment that I have no idea on how to deal with, and worse, living in fear of having to deal with “THE TALK”.

So I want to say this: congratulations to Australian men, you have guts and know how to make every first steps to get a girl, unlike the French, but when it comes to the rest of the story, who’s more romantic?