Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers or editors of Best of Sicily. Before talking about Sicilian boyfriends, I would like to make a point. Well, somebody has to. The best way to compare life in different places is to actually live in one place and then another. Getting to know the people, the customs, the language. Social values. All those things. The observations will be endless.
People are the same yet different. The opposite of firsthand experience is an investigative technique used by police called "profiling" that uses certain traits to identify entire groups of people. It's a controversial form of state-sanctioned stereotyping, and usually not very nice. But certain superficial generalities are innocuous enough: Most Italians eat pasta. Most Americans speak English. Most Chinese have dark hair. It gets trickier when individual behavior is at issue, and when a generality seems to be true, most of the time.
That's what happened a few weeks ago, when I was out with my usual female tribe --eight single Italian women and one American between 30 and We didn't talk too much about actual sex, sexual harassment or platonic friendships. The subject was long-term relationships, especially with Sicilian men in Sicily.
In reading my notes for this article, my man wasn't offended but he compared our observations to the kind of things he reads from a male perspective on Ask Men. Unlike nine out of ten of the men one meets in Sicily, mine speaks English fluently, having spent two years in London and a few months in New York, and he's nothing like the ones described here. Fortunately, we all agreed, most of our relationships were perfectly normal, but the consensus was that by the age of about 35 the average single Sicilian woman had been involved in certain types of unconventional relationships.
It was amazing that every one of us except our American friend who has lived in Catania for about a year and was scandalized by some of our candid revelations has had the same kind of experiences. Profiles of some "typical" boyfriends:. The Princeling. Also known as the Bambinone "big baby" or "Mama's Boy" , this is one of the most common profiles of Sicilian men, or perhaps we should call them "boys. The best solution would be to date orphans, but if your boyfriend has a mother it's best to gauge the situation before entering into anything long-term.
