Tag Archives: Germany

It Matters Where You Are

Posted on by
Reply

Carla was a professional in her early forties. She lived and worked outside of her country of origin, putting ambition into her job at an upmarket corporation in a sunny and wealthy city. Things were allright but not exciting exactly. Her career was flowing along, sideways rather than up, despite long hours of work and commute. And her industry was afloat with women and not so many men, letting her wish and wait for more interesting dates. In short, while the city was a gleaming place to be, her professional and personal lives inspired feelings of autumnal fog.

A crisis at work brought the change. Carla was working with a bully who started ‘supervising’ her without ever having received that mandate. Her once loved job descended into drudgery. When I met her one day on the bus, she broke down. She vented, was comforted and gathered enough strength to file a complaint. She also switched perspectives and decided to give notice and move back to her home country. Which happened to be a cool place with mountains in perpetual fog.

Nothing else was foggy though. She started over in all areas: bought a flat, power-organized her things, and began an exciting and influential job that offered good work-life balance. She found enough time for a vigorous exercise regime and meeting friends. She dated online and offline, and in a city that had a natural gender balance. Before long, she started seeing George, an intellectual entrepreneur who shared her passion for travel and the outdoors and who is her partner to this day. Her professional and personal lives are gleaming from all angles. Only the actual weather is permanently autumnal, but that doesn’t keep Carla and George from climbing yet more mountains.

What happened here? It matters where you are. Not because of the weather, but because of who is there, of how people work, and how much control you can take over your life.

Who is there: if your own gender is over-represented, good luck. Unless you are willing to switch sexual orientation, which is rare after all, you will compete and have to line up for the acceptable candidates. Empirically, if you are a woman competing for men, that does not exactly improve men’s behavior. On average, when faced with too much freedom to choose, men tend to be somewhat sloppier in their work and career efforts, less committed and possibly polyamorous. – In other words: find yourself a place, a location, where your own gender is outnumbered. Especially if you are a woman.

How people work: you need spare time to date and have a good relationship. Sometimes a few miles of distance can mean a world of difference. There is comparative sociological evidence comparing the love lives of Eastern and Western Germans in the year of reunification, and as a Wessi I am sad to report that Easterners had more fun. Much more, and better fun. – If you interview women who personally experienced the before and after of communism, they point to shorter work hours, job security and free universal childcare. As a related article in the NYT resumes: “It was state socialism’s answer to work-life balance.”

To be fair, there are other differences in Western and Eastern love lives, and they are still measurable in the 2009 Parship study. One could say that East German relationships are, on average, more companionate and emancipated. Men tend to seek a confident woman that shares their interests, and women care less about their man’s salary than in the West. Eastern couples also talk with much more ease about intimacy. (Not only out of regional patriotism, I would like to point out that these statistics reflect percentages only, and that convergence is already happening. Before long, the twain shall meet.)

It is not just the time factor, it is about taking control of your work and life. That is compatible with working long hours out of choice, and on topics of choice. You may have heard of the Whitehall Studies, which have variously shown that in the same activity (in this case, British public administration), higher ranking officials were healthier than lower ranking officials. The difference was maintained when controlling for observable data that may correlate with rank, such as education and nutrition choices. Especially, stress measured as cortisol, and coronary heart disease showed a rank gradient. While the reasons have not yet been fully explained (and the Whitehall studies continue for a further generation), control over tasks and priorities, as well as predictability of work seem to play a role.

Now, what if you are stuck where you are? Stuck with a gender ratio and labor market that are less than lucky?  The internet is your friend. Online dating can bridge some of the divide to a better location. The gender ratio, for sure, is then no longer limited to the one of your physical dwelling place. Also, you can connect quickly, during your leisure or even your lunch break. It is no silver bullet, but it can un-stick a few constraints to start with.

Carla, of course, is well connected online. Which is while I can keep up with her latest. All I see these days are broad smiling faces, a super tidy creatively furbished flat, high mountains, adventurous trails, shining oceans and fog only in the background.

Germany: Flirt like Champions

Posted on by
Reply

3 Teutonic Techniques To Consider

The soccer championships were a joy to behold. Well, mostly. And most media outlets agreed that the right team won in the end, pointing out new and old reasons that might have made the German Mannschaft strong. The media’s love affair with Germany is not yet over; suddenly the country is supposed to be good at about anything. So what about dating?

A solid tradition of romanticism not withstanding, Germans aren’t exactly famous as lovers. One reason may be that they don’t really flirt. It may feel too light weight in a country where every puddle has depth. So this is what Germans do when approaching a relationship. (Caution, the claims of this entry are based on a selected sample of barely 30, including interviewed friends and personal anecdotes. My own passport confirms the qualification to comment, by the way.)

  1. Be an open book. As the Spiegel once eloquently analyzed, Germans signal interest by opening up about themselves, their experiences and views – the more personal the better. This can happen pretty fast, also in completely sober persons, and strike the uninitiated as emotionally incontinent. But Your Economist approves. It cleans up the information asymmetry early on and lets you know what you are in for.
  2. Expect mutuality, and forget double standards. If you want to date a German, you need to e.g. let go a little of the ‘man pursues, woman responds’ notion. German men will expect women to call or write about as regularly as they do, or otherwise assume there is no interest. Your Economist approves. Mutuality makes for a well negotiated pareto optimum.
  3. Prefer action over words. When the time is right to initiate the relationship, most cultures use some form of declaration, i.e. one side or both put their feelings into words. This is true for most Latin cultures, both of the Americas and even Scandinavia if you believe Knausgaard. But not Germany. Most Germans reveal their feelings as (subtle) actions first.  – From the Economist’s perspective, this is a double-edged sword. It is efficient, for sure. But actions can carry many meanings and thus be misunderstood, probably to a higher extent than language. The more transparent contract may be the one with words.

Bottom line, these three principles will help you score a few goals. But improvement is always possible.

Do you know why you trust whom you trust?

Posted on by
Reply

Why do we trust whom we trust? Why do we refuse to trust sometimes? Experience (with the persons in questions) is a big part of it, but not always. And what does this mean for our relationships?

One source of trust is us belonging to a group (or tribe, or nation). Some inter-disciplinary researchers have established that we tend to be altruistic within these groups, and less so between the groups. This is called ‘parochial’. On average, we tend to make choices of benefit to our group (even when conflicting with the choice that benefits all groups), out of a sense of duty. People perceive that they got something from their nation or group, so have a duty to give back.

There are some benefits of organizing our trust in this way. It is more ‘efficient’ in the short term; agreements are easier to enforce in a group with limited membership.

But when you are looking for your significant other, parochialism isn’t the smartest thing. It segments the world. Selecting your best possible mate just within your segment won’t likely find you the best possible mate in the world.