The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille Read Free Book Online Page A

innocence. There comes a point in every adolescent’s life when he realizes his ideals aren’t as gilded as they once seemed. This realization usually leads to new maturity and the acquisition of new coping tools. It also often comes, though, with a sense of disillusionment. When participants wrote of their most recent memory of love, they repeatedly told the story of lost ideals.

I know what boys want. They say they love you, but I know what they want.
    —a thirty-five-year-old woman

I have three children from three different fathers who died in drive-by shootings. Before I die, I want once again to have a baby, to feed him, to love him, and to be loved unconditionally.
    —a fifteen-year-old woman

I purchased a diamond for my girlfriend. I recall her taking it off in the car while we were arguing and I became infuriated. I took the ring and threw it out the window. I told her since it meant so little to her, I threw it away.
    —a thirty-one-year-old man

    These three sets of stories—the first imprint, the most powerful memory, and the most recent memory—revealed a distinctly American pattern. Participants spoke repeatedly of the desire for love, the need for love, the belief in something called true love, but they also spoke consistently of being disappointed in this quest. A very large percentage of the “most recent memory” stories spoke of loss, bitterness, and sadness. Americans—regardless of their age—view love the way an adolescent views the world: as an exciting dream that rarely reaches fulfillment.
    The American Culture Code for love is FALSE EXPECTATION .
    Without question, losing at love is an international experience. Even in cultures where marriages are arranged and courtship is rare, there are tales of forbidden love and of the sad consequences when that love dies. In older cultures, though—ones that passed through adolescence centuries ago—the unconscious message about the expectations for love are very different.
    In France, the concepts of love and pleasure are intertwined. The French consider the notions of true love and Mr. Right irrelevant. The refinement of pleasure is paramount, and romance is a highly sophisticated process. Love means helping your partner achieve as much pleasure as possible, even if this requires finding someone else to provide some of this pleasure. French couples can, of course, be devoted to each other, but their definition of devotion differs greatly from the American definition (fidelity, for instance, is not nearly as important to them), and their expectations are set accordingly.
    The Italians believe that life is a comedy rather than a tragedy and that one should laugh whenever possible. They expect love to contain strong dimensions of pleasure, beauty, and, above all, fun. If love becomes too dramatic or too hard, it is unsatisfying. The Italian culture centers very strongly on family, and Italians put their mothers up on pedestals. To them, true love is maternal love. Therefore, their expectations for romantic love are lower. Men romance women, but seek true love from their mothers. Women believe that the best way to express and experience love is by becoming mothers. A man is Mr. Right as long as he provides a child.
    The Japanese offer perhaps the best illustration of the differences in attitudes toward love between an adolescent culture and an older culture. Japanese men and women often ask me to describe how Westerners marry. I tell them that a young man meets a young woman (often one younger than he) and they begin the process of getting to know each other. If he happens to fall deeply in love, the man will ask the woman to marry him, and if she loves him as well, she will say yes. (Obviously, it’s more complicated that this in practice, but I get the main points across this way.)
    Stunned expressions always meet this description. “The man is young?” the Japanese questioner will say. “If he is young, how can he possibly have enough