In the Netherlands, if you go out for a walk in the evening, you’ll often see couples riding bicycles hand in hand, heading towards their destination. It’s the same on the Dutch side of Belgium. Poland, however, is slightly different, where instead of holding hands, families often cycle in a line, with the children in the middle. These people love their bicycles and love their partners even more. The population of the Netherlands is around 17.5 million, while the number of bicycles there exceeds 20 million. The more bicycles, the greater the chance of theft. This is true for other European countries as well. The price of a regular bicycle here can buy you a Mehran car in Pakistan. Yet, they prefer bicycles over cars, which is one reason obesity is much lower in European countries.
Speaking of holding hands while cycling, people here don’t usually marry. They often have two or three kids with their girlfriend and travel to 10 or 12 countries before realizing they still need to get married, and then they do. However, their relationship dynamics are very different. If you ask someone in Pakistan what they think of a “white girl,” they’d likely say they have no morals, and at a smile, she would undress and cling to you. But this is far from the truth. The number of girls here who are desperate to undress and cling to someone is probably the same as in any other country, including Pakistan. Otherwise, these people take loyalty very seriously. If a girl gets into a relationship, she will often spend weeks or months judging the guy, and only if he seems serious will she introduce him to her parents and then enter into any physical relationship. It depends on her upbringing, but it’s quite common for a girl not to give access to her body for free.
Once in a relationship—though they don’t marry like us—they start doing all the things that married couples do, and they strictly commit to being loyal to one another. While a large number of young people today shy away from committed relationships, once commitment is made, neither the guy nor the girl will think about someone else, let alone mention them. If they do, the relationship is over, and this is one reason why the divorce rate is so high—cheating isn’t tolerated, even in jest. Unlike us, they don’t have a system of two marriages, so they don’t accept jokes about new partners; in fact, that’s a red flag here. They may not marry, but their loyalty surpasses marriage. I’ve personally seen several couples who have been together for over five years, are my age, and are still loyal to one another.
Once they give someone access to their body, no one else is allowed to touch them while they are together. However, when they are single, they will approach someone themselves, and their girls even propose to guys to make them boyfriends. On a different note, going to dance clubs isn’t considered a normal habit here. Everyone attends concerts and dances there, but only those looking for temporary relationships go to clubs, and most people don’t think highly of girls who frequent clubs. For them, it’s not respectable behavior. One thing that even mature couples here sometimes find annoying is that they don’t hesitate to kiss each other in public. A light kiss is considered normal, but if it’s too intense, others tend to look away with disapproval.
Still, this habit of theirs can be frustrating for single people like me. I often joke that it’s not the kissing or cuddling on benches that bothers me, but the fact that they do it in front of a single guy like me, stirring up emotions that really shouldn’t be. So, if you ever come here and go for an evening walk, you’ll see plenty of couples out and about, chatting happily. Some will be cycling, others running, but everyone is enjoying themselves, and seeing all this, especially the hand-in-hand cycling, feels very sweet.