Dating A French Man: What We Wish Knew Before Dating/marrying Men!!

Tutorial Transcript

Salut YouTube it's me Rosie but as you can see it's not just me this week I've got my friend Kate with me hello everyone so as you guys know it's Christmas coming up we've got the Christmas tree in the background so our Christmas present to you is to do a video with a double the fun we're gonna do a video together on dating French boys something we both know a lot about we do. Kate actually took it to the next level and she's actually gone and married a Frenchman I did so I've been in France for eight years now and I finally took the deep dive and Rob and I got married at this last summer and for me with my Frenchie we've been together about five years no ring on it empty hand as you can see - hint hint hint hint hint and yes so we wanted to do a video on the things that we wish we had known before we entered into these long-term relationships with French men it probably could have saved us a lot of a lot of a lot of tears maybe yeah a lot of tears a lot of stubbornness on certain points a lot of fights that were never going to end in our favor miscommunication exactly so without further ado we might jump into the first five things that we wish we had known before we started dating Frenchmen So the first thing that we wanted to talk to you guys about is the way that French men celebrate holidays so besides something like Christmas which is definitely celebrated everywhere I'm talking from my American background I don't know if it's the same in New Zealand but we celebrate everything from something as big as Christmas to something as small as the first 100 days of school so celebrations all the time for example I have been living in France now for eight years but I remember the first time that I was dating a French guy so it wasn't Robin but we were together and I had worked really hard to finish college one year early so I could move to France and we could finally be together full-time and my graduation day came and everything I'd worked for for us happened and was here and not only did he not call me to talk to me about graduation to wish me a happy graduation he did not send a card he did not send a gift he didn't even acknowledge the fact that I was graduating so at the time I was just so surprised and shocked and hurt And after moving to France and living for a little while and also dating other guys because obviously we didn't work out I've come to realize that not only is graduation not a big thing in France but then on top of it they don't really celebrate things the same way that we do in the States so even if it had been a big deal I wouldn't have received a card or a gift because it wasn't my birthday or Xmas Exactly I have exactly the same experience I mean I used to be the kind of profile who was like okay it's 10 days until our one year anniversary - countdown 10 little presents before the anniversary itself to kind of tease and then you get sent on a big treasure hunt for the actual event and I was really this kind of person that was super into big celebrations and gifts and very romantic so for Valentine's Day for birthdays and that kind of thing and I remember just being so devastated I just had a moment where I thought oh he's quite frugal and it's really not like that at all, but for him, it wasn't a big deal Yeah Valentine's Day is not a big it's not really celebrated So for example on Valentine's Day our compromise is that we go to Pizza Hut so Robin hates Pizza Hut and so his big compromise on Valentine's Day is that we can go there and I can eat my favorite pizza these it's not really anything that he likes but that's about as far as I get for Valentine's Day is a dinner out at Pizza Hut and that's a big improvement and you imagine these Frenchmen to be like these brooding emotional complex and mysterious guys to write you big long love letters and things but honestly it took me years and years and years to even get a written birthday card I was on the same page where I like to write a lot of cards and I really like to express like for birthdays I'll write you know really long birthday cards for Robin and he would never do anything like that for me and I was always kind of like oh but I'd really like that and so for example when he proposed one of the things that he did do for that was write a card that I could keep so it's you know I mean they pay attention and you know you can kind of talk a lot more and more about holidays but they do learn so the second point that we wanted to talk about and this is I mean this is true for French men but it's true for the French people in general is that they don't really hold anything back when it comes to giving you feedback so they will give you quite direct feedback it could be on your cooking or what you're wearing or but I found that quite surprising that Niels was so direct just the other day I went through the effort of what I thought was making him a lovely quiche for dinner with a nice salad and everything and we sit down at the table and we're eating away and I asked Niels you know what do you think of the quiche and his response was you know you do have the tendency to make quite watery quiches thank you and that's quite typical like he's not gonna beat around the bush like he'll get to the point no not at all Robin is the same way like very direct and says exactly what he's thinking and the worst time is for things that you don't take very personally it's not like that big of a deal but I remember just a couple weeks ago I had like cleaned the entire apartment so that was like a big deal I'd done everything while he was out it was kind of like a surprise and he came back and I was like do you notice something and he was like oh you know you cleaned the apartment and then he looked down at the table and he's like you always have a hard time like washing the windows and the tables with that solution I can still see the marks I'm just like I definitely think that this type of like direct feedback behavior is not necessarily just a French male thing I think it's also just a French cultural thing and one of my favorite examples is Robin's mom who is absolutely I have a fabulous mother-in-law but she's really direct about weight gain which I would find to be like a super sensitive subject I don't think my mother would ever be like oh honey it looks like you put on a few pounds I don't think she would whereas in France they don't really see weight gain and the same way we do in the states where it's something about a physical appearance it's really directly related to health so Robin you know whatever holiday season put on like couple of pounds and we went to go have lunch at his mom's house and the first thing she said to him was oh honey it looks like you put on a couple of kilos like you you know Kate you should really make some soup you guys should be eating soup next week like you need to be careful and Robin's like okay and I was like OMG if I got that kind of direct feedback from my Mum I would be thinking about that the whole day I would be crying for a week I would be on like full-on lemon detox super juice cleanse yeah so I think it's definitely learned behavior as well as they get direct feedback from their family and so that's just kind of a cultural thing they pass on but there's no barriers between men and women so be ready for some direct feedback - definitely So the third thing that we wanted to talk about around dating a Frenchman is that they don't necessarily appreciate the efforts that we would have made unlike guys that we would be dating back home for example our eyebrows are done, our eyes are done, our hair is GHD curled like things are done up let's say we don't have that effortless approach that the French woman do I used to go out to dates look you know quite dressed up what I thought was attractive to men that I was used to so that means I have my goodies out in addition to nice hair nice make up and stuff and a few weeks into dating Niels was kind enough to give me the feedback that he thought I looked a little bit tarty And one night he was like Rosie and I was like what?! And he's like Rosie, you're wearing too much make-up To be very frank Robin is a boob guy so any time somebody's chest is out, whether it's mine or it's yours so I don't know that he would have done the same thing as Niels. In the States the same way that it is I think in New Zealand is you definitely you want to curl your hair eyebrows you want to put on a lot of makeup and you want to put on heels and it's a night out on the town now when I look back at other people in New Zealand going out and stuff I have a little bit the same reaction if somebody's on the hunt - yeah exactly - somebody's on the prowl tonight Which is why I can completely understand now where Niel's was coming from when he gave me this constructive feedback so I've gotten used to dressing down and being more natural but there is that side of me that still kind of pops out every now and then Exactly - unleash - unless your inner hoe ladies So the next thing we want to talk about is kind of how much interest that Frenchmen take in your fashion choices because as you're just saying that you know they like somebody to dress down and may be more natural etc they also have quite an opinion about clothes so Robin for example if I just take my own personal experience he doesn't enjoy going shopping with me and he's never going to buy clothes for me at all but he will when I'm getting dressed make comments like for example yesterday is that what you're wearing to work clearly that's what I have on and I'm about to walk out of the door so at the same time he's super direct about what he thinks so he's not going to go like buy clothes or come with me to pick them out but I can come back from shopping and he'll be like well show me what you got and I put it on and then they'll be like I don't like that and I don't like that but yeah that one you can keep oh thank you for your input yeah this was quite surprising for me like it'll be my birthday and as my gift Niels would have gone out shopping and he'll find me knee-high leather boots so he'll have actually made a decision and bought purchased dresses for me which I find quite brave but yeah he also has an opinion on what I wear and it's just part of the package stay strong because you can still wear whatever you want You can wear whatever you want if you take if you decide to take their opinion or not that's a whole other story So the final thing that we wanted to talk to you guys about is my favorite subject it is exes in France yay oh so one of the things I've learned I have had three relationships with Frenchman since I moved here and one of the things I've learned is that exes are never out of the picture which means that you do need to learn to be comfortable hanging out with a girl who has had a relationship with your boyfriend or in my specific case your husband In my specific case with Robin he actually grew up right outside of Paris and so we live in Paris right now so all of his friends are still here and I think at least in the US and from my experiences you know that high school college phase where everybody kind of shares boyfriends and you've got a big group of say 25 friends and you're kind of you know passing people around and breaking up and getting together with everybody that at some point now most of them are married now and have serious relationship but they've all at some point kind of hooked up with each other and they're all really great friends now and they don't mind so they kind of expect that the new people that they bring into the group don't mind either kind of have to get used to it here I think because it's it's super normal to hook up and then stay friends and I know that's probably more help in that's the way it may be yeah should be but it is kind of awkward when you know you're meeting someone and you're like oh so you know what my boyfriend looks like naked, nice to meet you! They really believe that you can be lovers and then be friends but yeah that's very hard to get our heads around we think if you've had that romantic side and that fantasy and everything how can you ever just go back to you know like nothing ever happened I find that really hard to get my head around but it seems so normal yeah and it's really a two-way street I think that's important to say it's not as if they can be friends with their girlfriends and then you can't be friends with your ex-boyfriend Robin it has no problem with me going to like both of my ex-boyfriends still live in Paris he has no problem with me grabbing coffee with them going and seeing them for a drink so it does go both ways So I hope that you liked that, that was the five things that we wished we had known about French men before we started dating them or marrying them but of course there's a lot more where that came from it is not finished here so we'll be coming back at you with part two to this video so if you want to see that give this video a thumbs up give us a comment down below are you dating a French man ? Are you a French man? What do you think? Let us know down below in the comments we'll definitely be checking those out and until the next video, à bientôt! Something super exciting is that Kate has actually just launched her blog about her life, her experiences in Paris and all over the world actually so do you want to let them know we can find your blog yeah so you guys can find me at UnintentionallyFrenchified.com and I am going to be writing about my experiences in France but also about all the different places that I've been traveling to and my favorite topic The BEST Pizza restaurants in Paris! Cool awesome I'll link it down below of course in the description box so you guys can go and check it out!