France: the country of love. Or so they say.
Maybe you, yourself, have fallen prey to those midday fantasies of getting swept off your feet by a handsome Frenchman (or woman) with his (or her) sultry accent. Well, let me usurp those fantasies with a little reality check.
Canadians and the French seem to have differing views on relationships. For the French, there doesn’t seem to be concept of “dating.” There’s no such thing as a period of going out with someone sans commitment. There’s no difference between a relationship and your “dater” simply buying you dinner or an ice cream cone.
One is either your boyfriend or girlfriend, or they’re simply your friend. The only grey area occurs if friends decide to add “benefits” to the mix, but there’s no need to get into that.
My British friend unknowingly fell into this confusing trap. After going to a hockey game (yes, they do play hockey in France) and watching a movie with a male friend she considered a “dater,” she received a text message from him teasingly saying, “That’s not a very nice thing for my girlfriend to be saying.”
A little freaked out, but knowing misunderstandings can occur due to language barriers, she asked him to clarify what exactly he meant by the word “girlfriend.”
This was not a vocabulary error. He was indeed labeling her as his girlfriend after two weeks of knowing each other and a mere two dates.
The next day, they had a little talk in which she explained her point of view on relationships. She did indeed like him, but thought it was much too soon to put a label on the relationship.
Later that week, she broke her leg. Unable to take the metro, she called him asking for a ride to the hospital.
“But I thought you didn’t want to be my girlfriend? You know, it is really unheard of in France for a man to do such a thing for a woman he is not in a relationship with,” he replied.
Now don’t get me wrong, French men can be very generous and pull out all the stops. But this sort of wining and dining only occurs during the relationship. These “relationships” can vary quite drastically in seriousness. Your boyfriend could range from that guy who took you out to McDonald’s who you would never call again, to the man you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.
But it’s important to note that the French are very direct and sometimes brutally honest. Although one may get into a relationship easily, one must always depart a relationship with a French person with a talk, unlike that unspoken fading away that often occurs during dating period.
All in all, a dear friend got it right when she said, “No matter how much or how little you mean to them, once you become their ‘copine,’ they will always act as if they are passionately in love with you.”
