Standing up to the opposite sex

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Despite having quite the adventure the past few days, they have been fairly unpleasant and awkward thanks to one woman.

The story goes like this, I met a friend of hers (S) at a bar sunday night and S asked me for my phone and called up her friend (Y). They chatted in Hebrew for a bit (I'm going to be studying in this country for a year, but I just got here 3 weeks ago and am just beginning to learn the language so I don't know what was said) and S handed my phone back to me and told me to call Y the next day because she thinks she would love me. So I did, I went up to meet her and three of her friends and the night went pretty well. Y tells me to call her on Thursday because she wants to go out again.

So I did, and this is where problems started happening. She tells me to meet her and her friends in Florentine at 11 at night, after the buses stop running and I must rely on expensive cabs. She asks me to bring some friends so I did, and it helped split the cost of the cab. Once we get there, she calls to say she doesn't want to go to Florentine anymore and instead wants to go to Hertzliya (very far away and in the opposite direction). I tell her that I'm not going to go all the way out there and she apologizes and tells me she will meet me the next afternoon instead. That night in Florentine, me and my friend decided to make the best of it and he ends up catching the affection of a quite aggressive and seriously attractive woman, so I ended up playing 3rd wheel all night (which I have no problem with, I would expect a friend to do the same for me).

The next day, Y calls well after we were supposed to meet and says she can't make it while apologizing profusely... so I spent the day at the beach as 5th wheel to two couples and ended up just heading home for the night. She asks me when we can hang out again, and I told her just to give me a call when shes ready and left it at that.

The thing I'm worried about is that if/when she calls up again I'm just going to answer and act like nothing happened and it didn't bother me that I got stood up in front of my friends (who I just met/arrived here with 3 weeks ago ... making it that much more embarrassing) and played the lone man out two days in a row because of her. I'm going to do this for two reasons ... she genuinely is fun to hang out with (when she shows up) and I really want to believe her excuses despite the fact they are highly unlikely. I really need to start standing up to women, being treated like this over and over again is extremely agitating, especially considering I'm quite assertive in all other aspects of life. I have a feeling if this continues with other women, some day I might snap on some poor girl who really does have a legit excuse for flaking out on a date.

This isn't an opposite sex problem, this is a cultural problem. Israeli culture is more casual than most western cultures and in Israel you are expected to stand up for yourself. Being a "frier" is frowned upon. You don't need to be rude but you should tell her "Look I'd really like to hang out with you but don't make plans with me if you're going to stand me up." If you don't speak up for yourself there, you will get trampled. On the upside, it's a culture in which you can be relatively direct.

Thanks for the input. However I'm a bit confused ... the way I spoke to her on the phone I believe I came off pretty casual (as in I'm already here with my friends, so no biggie if you can't make it), wouldn't coming off as confrontational be considered taking it too seriously?

As you can tell by my presence on this forum, I am an aspie so such complexities escape me unless I have already experienced and learned from them. Luckily, after years of social experience (I'm in my mid-20s), I can come off as NT to most but that doesn't change the fact some concepts such as seeming casual while not becoming a 'frier' is completely mind boggling to me.

You can still keep it casual but keep it direct and to the point with her by telling her not aggressively, but matter-of-factly, that she's wasting your time and to contact you when she can definitely make it in future.

They are casual in that they may not use the formalities that Americans or the British use as far as titles and promptness.

But when something is not ok with you you are expected to say so. Direct but polite. You might find yourself engaging in a lot of "negotiations" where someone is politely trying to get you to do something or buy something and you are politely but directly standing your ground by tell them "No thankyou," and you will find that frequently they will concede the negotiation to you with a one liner with undertones of hurt, which might be perceived as a guilt trip but really is just a way for them to save face.

For example, at a shop I once worked at where we were only permitted to give one sample of candy per customer, I was mobbed by an Israeli woman and her five children and they took more than their share of samples. When I finally managed to pull the basket up and away and say "I'm sorry but I'm only allowed to give one per customer," she pointed to one of the smaller children...a cute little wide eyed girl, and said "But my daughter didn't get one." Her daughter didn't get one because in the mad grab she and the other kids weren't paying attention to her daughter. Mind you the lady still had samples in her hand and could have surely given one to her daughter. I replied that I was sorry but I couldn't give her more because my boss would yell at me, and pointed her to a shelf where we had the product on sale. She shrugged her hands like Woody Allen and replied "What should they (the company) care? It's only candy." and walked away.

I was actually quite upset by the incident at first because I thought they had been rather rude but then I realized they were not intending to be rude, they were just not well versed in American culture.

In fact, that is pretty rude of anyone, actually. "What should the company care?" - erm... profits? If they gave that amount of candy away to everyone eventually they'd be bankrupt.

Sounds like just a greedy, grasping little cow. You get those the world over.

If an Israeli tells me it's rude then I will believe it's universally rude.

What if some Israelis disagree with each other? A lot of people pass off their culture as an excuse for basic rudeness. When in Rome, do as the Romans and all that.

Bear in mind that we all have different opinions and I can't think why Israeli culture would be massively different from other Western countries in the Mediterranean.

Bear in mind that some British people will tell you that doing that is not rude because they do the same things themselves. It's universally a crappy thing to do to someone.

Israelis tend to disagree with each other quite often, and tend to let each other know it in a very Israeli way.

My own theory on Israeli culture is it contains many elements of self preservation that are not seen in other cultures because many Israeli citizens are holocaust survivors (who were previously complacent when they should not have been) or descendants of them, and were raised in an environment of conflict where they have had to assert what they feel is their right to exist where they are.

Here is a very interesting blog on Israeli culture, or rather the issue of Israeli "rudeness".

http://howtobeisraeli.blogspot.com/2009 ... -rude.html

Wow, thanks for that Chronos. I got way more than I bargained for in this thread and this info will really help me out here, I knew that it was different here from my dealings with the locals but not THAT different!

Really looking forward to this year!