My strategy for dating in Italy was a sound one. It employed three basic parts, that I’ll cover here:
1.) Where to date.
After I had my epiphany that it was possibly American dating culture, and not dating all together, that I despised, I had to decide where in the world I was going to go date.
I ended up in Italy, as you know, but Italian culture is what spoke to me. It may not be what speaks to you. So, here’s what I did to find my place.
After doing a bit of google searching, I landed on this book:
(If you use my links to buy this book, I get an affiliate commission)
This book is specifically compares French culture in dating, sex and marriage to American culture, but it is an excellent read and really got my wheels turning. I highly recommend, even if you are sure France is NOT where you want to go, that you read this book anyway. It’s going to open your eyes in ways you can not imagine.
After I read the book, I did a survey of people, cultures, food, etc that I felt most drawn towards.
Pick what you are most drawn toward because people, places and cultures have an energy to them and the ones we are most drawn to are the ones that more closely match our own energy.
For me, it was Italy.
I picked Rome because I had been before and because it was a larger, tourist city, which meant people were more likely to speak English.
For you, it might be someplace else. Go with your gut.
2.) Clarify your purpose.
This is really, really key and, if I could go back and do anything differently, I would have emphasized this a bit more myself.
When I went to Rome the first time, I had a very specific purpose in mind: I wanted to find the pleasure in dating again.
That was it. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, I wasn’t looking to get married and I wasn’t even specifically looking for sex. I was looking for dating to be fun again. Something it hadn't been for me in many, many years.
You have to clarify your purpose or you will end up in messy situations accompanied by regret.
By clarifying my purpose, even when it went badly, I still got out of it what I came to get.
3.) Get on the dating apps well in advance of arriving.
As much as we hate dating apps, they are a necessary evil, especially if you want to date out of your country. The key here is to get an app that allows you to change your location without having to physically be in that location.
I used Tinder, however, if your purpose is a real relationship, you may want to avoid Tinder and use something else. I think Hinge allows you to change locations now.
Then you are going to start swiping well before you plan on arriving.
The idea here is to weed out the ones who are looking for an effortless conquest and leave the ones who have the attention span to continue to talk to you for a few months before you arrive.
This is exactly what I did with “Roman”.
But didn’t he end up being awful anyway??
Yup! He did. But, because my purpose was clarified, I got exactly what I wanted out of it: to enjoy dating.
“Roman” and I messaged back and forth for two months before I arrived.
He helped me plan, he gave me tips for where to stay and he helped immerse me in Italian and Roman culture before I ever arrived.
He was flirty, respectful fun even before I got to Italy and that in and of itself was therapeutic for me.
He did have red flags that I overlooked.
Notably, he offered to buy me something but when I suggested going out to buy it together, he side-stepped and avoided that. I should have known then. Deep down I did.
When I arrived, I fell ill and he patiently waited several days for me to be feeling up to going out.When he took me out, he went all out. He picked me up in his Porsche, gave me a gift he had been waiting to give me for a month and took me all around Rome to the various romantic sight-seeing locations.
When he found out I hadn’t seen the Coliseum yet, he took me there. He brought a bottle of wine, opened my door, held my hand, gave me his scarf to keep warm. He kissed me but was attentive and alert to how comfortable I was and never pushed it too far.
He came over, spent the night with his arms wrapped around me all night long.
It was the perfect experience. (Minus the wife and the fact that he turned out to be a big, fat, lying cheater.)
Nevertheless, the sting of what misdeeds someone else did was lessened by the fact that my purpose was clear.
Would I have liked it if he had been the gentleman of integrity he had pretended to be?
Of course.
But he was what I needed, when I needed it.
He was the romance on a chilly winter, Italian night that this long-neglected American girl so desperately needed.
He was a guidepost on the journey to finding myself again.
A cheating, lying, narcissistic guidepost. But a guidepost, nonetheless.