Given the size of Europe and the many different countries that exist within its borders, the dating customs from country to country vary.

While in some countries the typical American idea of dating, whereby two people exclusively see each other and others know about it, does exist, it is not prevalent in all societies.

Frenchmen actively pursue women and women don't display interest, not even eye contact, unless interested.

Dating in Germany is still more traditional than in the United States.

Relations between male youths and older men were regarded as fairly routine, particularly in humanist circles, in which ancient Greece provided a respected model.

In aristocratic families, marriages were a currency of dynastic and diplomatic exchange (as in the case of Bianca Maria Sforza)—and they were not much different among the merchant families of republican cities.

In Florence, for example, Lorenzo de' Medici, 1478/1521Painted terra-cotta, 65.8 x 59.1 x 32.7 cm (25 7/8 x 23 1/4 x 12 7/8 in.)National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Samuel H.

Things are warming up (she asked me on the plane back where we would go for our honeymoon!

) but I need help understaning our cultural differences.