Dating a Brazilian? - Think Twice…

Brazilians - the exotic nation from South America, that became popular in the 2000s around the world, with the vast production of supermodels and football players.

Colorful and carnavalish, Brazil lures you with the vibe of eternal holiday, non stop fun, party and smiles all the time. 

Sounds like a dream ha? Well think again…

Brazilians come in all shapes and forms, there are nice ones and not so nice ones, but there is one quality that unites them all and this is the eternal socializing.

The first time I came across these people it was a friend of mine - Bulgarian who was dating casually a Brazilian girl. She was stunning, a mixture of white and black with beautiful face body and apparently fun personality. You’d say - a dream girl.

I was always asking my friend, who at that time was 26 years old and really sexy bachelor, how are things progressing. But he did not sound quite happy with her. 

I could not understand his lack of enthusiasm: “ But how come you are not crazy about her? She is everything a man would want?” I kept insisting.

He said: “ Oh no, she parties non stop. She calls me to party with her on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If I cannot go out with her she calls the rest of my friends. It is overwhelming and I don’t like this.”

I could not wrap my head around it. How can a young guy who goes to clubs can complain of this?

Few months passed and I met a Brazilian guy. Very charming, very handsome, fun and educated. My dream man. We liked each other, started dating and later on we got married.

From the start I he showed me that he was very popular and I will be attending social gatherings with him regularly. He had different social circles and we were constantly surrounded by his friends. 

Being charmed by my new boyfriend was exciting and I was eager to learn more about his culture. We were constantly attending gatherings at his friends or hosting bbq-s at home, clubbing with his friends, playing sports with his friend, hosting his visiting friends and family over our house for months, entertaining guests and sometimes even his friends who were living in our city would like to stay overnight at our house after getting tired of parting at our bbq's.

In the first year of our cohabitation, during the spring and summer there were 3 different men who came to stay at our house for a week at a time in our house, then his parents stayed with us for a month. After the last guest left, I started crying - it was too much. My boyfriend and I did not have any time for intimacy and "us" time, all summer, he was all consumed in entertaining his friends. We had a talk - I told him we need to reduce the amount of visitors.

Next year, he had a couple of friends staying over + his parents who came with a couple of close family friends. So things got a little more compact, but in general same situation of constant entertainment.

In general I never felt like we had time for intimacy, no time for bonding, but it was too late, we were engaged getting married so life was going on.

There was no limit. The barbecues that were happening at home often lasted over 6 hours and were held weekly. Same was happening when we would go to gatherings at other Brazilians. 

Sometimes he would want to visit friends and relatives to drive 4/5 hours to their homes and to stay overnight, while I was pregnant and in uncomfortable physical state. He would not really get the fact that the pregnancy gives you discomfort in sitting for extended periods of time. It was all about to see the "Friends and Family".

We would spend all our vacation time (3 weeks) to go to visit his relatives in Brazil. And during this time we would be hanging out with the same people for lunch and dinner. Discussing the same unimportant topics of conversation over and over again. Think about how you will spend your precious 21 days of free time per year, eating the same meal 42 times with the same 20-30 family members of your husband, who in Portuguese are speaking the same small talks over and over again. And not think about how this will happen every year. Nothing new, nothing surprising, nothing different, nothing explorational - same place, same people, same talks. 

Even if you'd like to just go chill by yourself, because you want to change the scenery, they want to engage you because they feel you need to participate and not to be alone and "bored". They think you are antisocial because you are not excited to sit with them. They do not understand that you have seen this so many times that you need to do something else.

During one of these vacations, I met the boyfriend of a friend of my husband who was visiting the home of my mother in law. He was German. He would find a couch in the house and just lay and wait for the bbq/social event to be over. Turned out he was feeling the same way I did - overwhelmed by the constant eating and talking, eating and talking, and again and again and again...Apparently Germans also needed more sophisticated way of spending their free time. 

The German guy and the Brazilian girlfriend did not last very long and when she came to visit us un US to complain of him she said that the guy was annoyed by her constant cheerfulness, constant childish positive reactions toward simple events from the day to day life. I was seeing her point, but I was also feeling for the guy because I knew exactly what was the problem.

Another example, a couple also made of German husband and Brazilian wife hosted us for a long weekend. The wife had a birthday and invited us to attend her party. We were 6 people visiting their home. After socializing and celebrating for 3 days, the husband asked the wife to keep the last dinner private only for us the 6 guests and the couple. The wife promised, and then invited another 2 families... The man was not surprised, but also not happy.  

Brazilians are still hanging at  the level of development which is praising food and excessive eating over everything else. Bulgarians are not so inclined into eating and only those who are coming from poor and underdeveloped communities value the culture of "big eating" and "celebrations at the table". Many Bulgarians despise those who prioritize their stomach over their brain and their their soul balance.

If for us, Europeans, the state of equanimity is the mid-point between feeling ecstatic and feeling sad, for Brazilians the mid-point on the scale of feelings is to feel ecstatic. 

I have not seen a Brazilian genuinely to be in a state of equanimity, there is always something going on - illness, drama, big happiness, big sadness, some scary event like kidnapping, or threats, something "evil" that he/she is fighting against, huge grief and all the friends and family is empathizing to the person with the same intensity. So this collective feeling amplifies the emotions of the event happening to the person.

They like to think in a magical, miraculous way. They believe in spirits, in ghosts, they are very religious, praying daily.

It became overwhelming.

When I told another friend about my situation, he asked me: “But when do you have time to think?”

And I said -“We don’t. We are not thinking... This is what I am missing the most, the recharge and think time.“

We Bulgarians have social life and private life. Sometimes we hang out only with our boyfriend/ girlfriend without other people. The couples go to explore places together, not only to visit extended family and old friends. We go out with friends daily for dinner and go to vacations with friends, but these meetings are definitely more brief, less engaging and definitely not with the same friends and relatives all the time. Hosting people in your house for long periods of time is not happening more than once a year if at all.

The love couple forms a unit in which the two partners are a core while the parents, relative and friends of the couple are treated as external objects. That is not the case with the Brazilians, where their partners, loved ones, kids, friends and relatives are part of one core unit all together. And if something happens the two partners of the relationship, the foreign partner is placed in front of the "tribunal" of all the Brazilian audience that consists of friends, family, coworkers and etc (the folks I mentioned above).

We Bulgarians like downtime, we like the time when we recharge the batteries and have time to think.

The independent thinking is very important for us, not everything needs to be discussed with or copied from the friends and family. Not everything needs to be public, posted on social media, played out to the audience like a soap opera.

At the end our marriage collapsed, under the pressure of this constant Carrousel of Brazilian Party Lifestyle. 

Under the pressure of the constant brainless socializing and BBQ-ing and spending you energy and resources to entertain other people and the need of your husband to feel stimulated in order for the marriage to function.

The outside people cannot understand how socializing can cause a break up, well I was also puzzled when my friend did not want to date the hot Brazilian girl. But know I know. 

Before you enter in a marriage with a foreigner, think precisely, will you be able to keep up with their lifestyle, with their culture. Is that person really interested in you or is he interested in something else. Investigate what are you really getting into before hand and decide weather or not that works for you. Because as the old Bulgarian proverb says: "The little rock can turn the car up side down."