Dating methods outside the US; big difference!

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Some time ago, I was talking to a friend, who immigrated from Belarus when he was 13 or 14. He did some dating in the old country before coming to the US, and this what he told me. He said that in teenage dating---believe it or not---the "friends first" approach was the norm. It worked something like this. First, you make friends with her. Then you start "caring for her"--it's the best translation he could give, since this Russian phrase has no direct English equivalents. It's like courting or wooing a girl in the Victorian times, minus the chaperones. You do things like buy her little gifts, take her to ice cream shops (on your dime, of course), write her romantic poems, etc. Some "American" actions, quaint as they may be here, were the norm in Belarus: putting your jacket on her, carrying her books, etc. After a few weeks to a few months of all this, she starts liking you, and a relationship is established.

Before anyone buys plane tickets to Minsk , let me make something clear: many a time, both nice guys and Nice Guys(TM) get fooled by this "system". The girl would continue enjoying the attention and the gifts, while keeping a romantic relationship nothing more than a hazy promise in the future. Basically, your dreaded friend zone.

Of course, all that was back in 1996. My friend's gone back to Belarus in 2013, and told me that contemporary dating there is much Americanized, and romantic/sexual interest now is established right off the bat. "Caring for a girl" is now only done after having sex, or at least when its possibility is clear beyond clear.

Anyone else heard about dating experiences in other cultures, and how they were different from the US?

What you described in your first paragraph is what used to be called "Courting" here in the States. It was more common when there were no phones or Internet, and has been slowly on the decline since these technologies became common.

Now, if a man does not make a good first impression, he is not only friend-zoned by the one woman, but is likely to be friend-zoned by every other woman who reads her blogs, tweets, and Facebook page.

Chivalry and Courtship are dead, my friend. A fair maiden (do they exist any more?) is won by signs of maturity, social status, and material wealth.

Good luck.

I'm American, and I got "fooled" by this system in 2001 when I was a senior in high school. The girl did exactly that...and boy did I spend a lot of money too.

Why the assumption that the girl is out to deceive? Maybe she really is unsure whether she wants a relationship and that's the whole point of the courting/dating process, sometimes the outcome will be "not interested". It's not that the man is being used, it's that showing an interest in a girl doesn't give him a God-given right to have sex with her whether she wants to or not. They should be grateful they were given a chance. This "friend zone" rubbish is really quite offensive to women.

I don't think there is a standard dating procedure in the UK. I'm sure lots of people will think there is one, but it will turn out to only be relevant to their social group. In mine, "friends first" is the norm with few ridiculous accusations of friendzoning or being used when someone turns out not to be interested/compatible, but I'm aware that people using that accusation is a significant problem elsewhere. If there is mutual interest, sex tends to happen very early on (well before any traditional courting, if that happens at all), often within hours.

I live in Germany and I'm not sure if there's a general standard method...
As I have experienced it, it works like this:
You meet someone somewhere, most often because you have mutual friends. Maybe on a party or because you share a hobby. Then you start spending more time together, but still with others around. So, you first get to know each other as a friend. After a while (weeks or even months) you start meeting with the other person alone, just the two of you. You watch movies, share your hobby, go to some café and talk a lot, or just hang around. By the way, it's not like in Belarus or Poland or some other countries, that the male part (if there is one ) has to be the one to pay everything and make gifts. Normally, there are no gifts given and both persons buy their drinks for themselves or sometimes one is paying, sometimes the other.
Well, when you get closer and closer, you two probably will eventually kiss and have sex and see yourselves as a couple from that moment on.

It hasn't always been like this, though. Some decades ago it was still normal that the man invited the woman, and maybe there are still people thinking that way. I'm very happy this has changed. Because, when I was 19 or 20, I had a few really bad experiences, like, when I thought a guy only wanted to be nice, and I agreed that he bought me a drink, but then it turned out he expected me to have sex with him and I almost got raped.. Am I worth a coke or what?!? So, I'm glad this culture has changed and there aren't many *ssh*l*s like that around anymore.
I also like that this process of getting into a relationship is relatively easy and uncomplicated. Ok, it takes a long time and some patience, but it's good in the way that you find out some more about the other person before revealing your intentions. You can take your time to decide what you want and it's not such a rough situation where both judge each other on only one or two evenings, while they actually know nothing about the other person.

It's also possible that the girl didn't know you well to begin with, enjoyed spending time with you but ultimately decided she didn't want to date you. That her intentions were pure - and that you're simply unhappy she didn't want to date you. As if buying stuff = relationship.

There's also no rule that you had to spend LOTS of money to get to know her -- go for a walk, get coffee, hit a (free) outdoor concert or festival -- were presumably date options at your disposal, even way back in 2001.

I remember the courtship process described in the first paragraph being that way as recently as 1999, and I was just a young teen at the time. However, the most intimidating aspect of dating for young teens then was the fact that everyone where I lived seemed to expect making out and oral sex within the confines of dating. Some would expect to go all the way. Failure to give in would likely result in being dumped. I remember being terrified at the thought of losing my virginity at that age.

Dating and courtship now does require good and clear communication between two interested parties. Poor communication can result in guessing games and "blurred lines" so to speak. I find that guessing and poor communication to be a waste of time and an indicator of one's lack of interest in me. Of course, I also heard others tell me I was wrong for "giving up" too easily and that I should have pressed harder because the girl was clearly interested in me somehow. Other times i would hear that I screwed up, and the reason I screwed up was because I had a knack for calling out BS when I saw it. Apparently it was wrong to call out someone on their BS since people always have their feelings hurt (more correct to say ego bruised) by it. Other men have told me that I can never ever call out any woman on their lies, presumably because it looks like I didn't value sex as much as they did I guess.

As for dating and being out in a social environment with a date during a courtship phase (or at any phase of the relationship), you simply can't be intimidated by other men talking to your girl or attempting to lure her away. Any sign of this behaviour from the guy usually tells others that you are unfit to be with your girl. This intimidation may also tell the girl that this other guy is more confident and attractive then you are, but it doesn't mean she will date the guy though.

See? This is the real female perspective. Not "I tricked this guy into buying a drink and then refused to have sex with him lol what a muppet he was, I think I'll friendzone him". Propogating the idea that being nice to a girl makes you entitled to have sex with her (by claiming you were "fooled" out of your entitlement) is what makes people think it's OK to try and rape people like KAOS, so please STOP IT.

I was a dumb 17 year-old (not much smarter now either...)...I didn't know what to do to get a girl to like me.

And actually I know for a fact that she was just using me...no not every girl has sinister motives, but this one did, I'm sorry to say.

Since we're talking about buying a drink, let's leave Belarus and its friends-first method behind, and return to the good old USA; for this post, at least. Consider this: What was the line to use when approaching a woman in a US bar from 1970's to as recently as early 2000's. That's right: "Can I buy you a drink?" A whole protocol grew up around buying women drinks, advanced enough to give IPv6 a run for its money. It had a set of unwritten but clear rules that both sides followed. To name a few: (1) if you approached a woman in a bar, you had to buy her a drink; (2) if you were too shy to approach, you could send her a drink, and wave her over when she accepts; and (3) if you didn't like a man, it was considered disrespectful to accept a drink from him. It was cliche; it was prostitution-esque. But it worked well enough to sustain itself.

Like with everything else, there are always people who abuse the system and cause it to collapse under its own weight. That's what happened with Usenet (newsgroups) and chat rooms. They got filled with spam bots that completely crowded out humans, effectively causing their creators to shoot themselves in the foot, because there are now no people who'd look at their ads.

Same with drink-buying: opportunistic women came on the scene, and bragged to each other about spending the entire night out without paying for a single drink. As expected, men caught wind of it. Online PUA literature, sold as obscenely overpriced PDF files, caused rumors about drink-hustlers to spread like wildfire. Increasingly tough DUI laws made women hesitant to consume too many drinks in the first place. And so, within just 5 short years, buying women drinks in bars as an approach mechanism virtually disappeared. The once heralded "can I buy you a drink?" now survives only as a quaint, corny joke.

Aspie1, I have lots of friends from Belarus in the ag of 20-40 and what they are telling about dating and relations with girls at least since the end of 1980's seems completely opposite your friend's experience - it was and is like "take bottle of vine (in 1980's) or vodka (in 2000's), go to girl and have sex" and this is common practice everywhere from cities like Minsk, Mogilev or Grodno to small villages. Of course now it is being americanized and thus becoming more cultural but unfortunately this process is too slow.
There are rather good Russian-language novels by Belarus author Vladimir Kozlov about what was Belarus youth from Mogilev city like in the 1980's - "School" (Школа) and "Gopniks" ("Hooligans", Гопники) - don't know if they are translated to English though. All my friends from that region say it's mostly true what is described there, all this degradation.
And if we take Russia - here it is and it was almost like in modern USA all the last decades except Far East regions - there it's like in Belarus I mentioned above, and even worser - everybody drinks since 10-12 years, have own children in 16 and die in the age of 30-40 of cirrhosis, cancer or other diseases.

I didnt have sex with my boyfriend until he courted me sufficiently. I am Dutch and know plenty of women that operate the same way.

I think it also depends what groups of people you look at and maybe also their level of intelligence, which may differ with location. Some people are into casual sex and fooling around, others look for LTR.