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Your Culture Dictates How You Love
If you lived during the Heian period in Japan (794 to 1185), you would find life somewhat familiar but also pretty odd when compared to the time and place you live now.
To get into a long-term relationship, there is the opinion of a matchmaker, your family and your potential partner’s family to consider. You had to write poems (or have someone very good at writing and calligraphy do it for you), prepare for sexual visits as the man snuck into the woman’s room, write more poems and then eventually get married.
On the other hand, if you were a man who just wanted to hookup, it would be best to look as pathetic, desperate and weak as possible, and if you were a woman, it would be wise to be standoffish, callous and demeaning.
I know this all sounds really sexy but the truth is that this is the game Heian men and woman played in order to get into each other’s pants.
The man would beseech the woman for sex looking as pitiful as possible, the woman would either be aggressively saying no or be super passive. But as long as the guy kept up his act and didn’t force himself on her, he would win her favor and they’d have sex.
Some of these sexcapades, much like in the Western world, could lead to something more long-term.
