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be expected to pay at all. Chilean women will not offer to
pay, but if a foreign woman insists on paying, the man will
politely but adamantly refuse her request.
Pololos
Dating in Chile is a very serious undertaking. Single Chileans
either have a pololo (boyfriend) or polola (girlfriend) or are
not seeing anyone. It is not common for Chileans to date
casually or to date more than one person at a time. Although
the younger generation may be more open to casual dating,
many still form serious relationship rather quickly. The
word pololo comes from the name of a bug that buzzes
around people incessantly.
The majority of couples meet through friends, at school
or at work. By the time they finally go out in a romantic
setting, it is fairly clear that a serious relationship is being
formed. Once a couple is officially a couple the relationship
becomes very intense and possessive. Couples will likely
spend all their free time together. If they see their friends,
they do so as a couple as opposed to going out with just
the girls or just the guys.
Coming from a different culture, these relationships could
be described as suffocating and might offer an explanation
for the relatively high number of failed marriages and
adulterous affairs. The choice appears to be either to
have no romantic life at all or to enter into a very serious
relationship. There is no middle road.
Couples tend to be very affectionate in public. Young
couples hold hands, embrace and kiss passionately whether
at a restaurant, the movies or just out walking around. If you
come from a more reserved country you will have to get
used to this practice. Some couples can be particularly hard
to ignore, but giving them dirty looks will not cause them
to change their behaviour. Because most young couples
live at home, they have no private areas where they can be
intimate. As a result, parks, particularly Santa Lucia Hill or
Parque Forestal in Santiago, have become a meeting place
for countless amourous couples. In fact, in the small town
of Pichidangui, there is a space among the rocks along the
