Amor or A-moron?

One cool part of living in a different culture is being able to really see how each culture responds or deals with certain aspects. What I have found is that Argentina and the US have a very different approach about some issues and have a very similar stance on others. Let's take, for example, the topic of love, fidelity and relationships. For some reason, this topic has come up a lot this past week.

First Encounter: It started Wednesday morning- I was late for class and I still had to print off my homework so I took a cab from my apartment to FLACSO, where the majority of my classes are held. On the way I started talking to the cab driver- he was an older man, in his 60's I'd say, and we got talking about relationships. He asked if I had a boyfriend and I said yes, in the US. He smiled and said, Oh! What about Argentina? Do you have a novio here as well?? I told him I did not, but I had a bunch of Argentine friends. My cab driver half smiled and said, "Ah, la amistad is difficult between men and women." Now I couldn't help myself, he totally set me up, I had to bring up that constant debate- I asked him if he thought men and women could just be friends.
His answer: given an opportunity to be more than friends or to hook up, no they can't just be friends. If not given that opportunity, then they can have a friendship but they will always secretly want each other.
His story behind this answer: His best friend (who is a girl) is married to his best guy friend, and he says the only reason that nothing has happened between him and the girl is because:
1. Out of respect for his best guy friend
2. Because there hasn't been an opportunity- a.k.a. they are never alone
(I dont know which of these is the more prominent reason......)
His advice to me: never be alone with your guy friends.

Second Encounter: Thursday night I was at a party for an Argentine company called MultiRadio with a couple of my closest girl friends from my program. One of my friends, Sofie, started talking with one of the guys who works at the company while they were waiting for drinks at the bar. He asked her to dance this salsa dance with him, but told her it "doesn't mean anything" because he is "comprometido," or engaged. She has a boyfriend in the US, so she was relieved. They danced for a while when he pulled her over to the side of the dance floor and tried to kiss her! She pushed him away and said that she wasn't going kiss him- they are both "taken"! They went back to the dance floor and after a few minutes he thanked her, as if it was out of his power not to do anything earlier.

How does anyone in this country have a boyfriend? How is anyone in a committed relationship? It's a very interesting dichotomy between the image of relationships here and people's actual ideas about relationships. On one hand, there are couples all over the streets walking around holding hands, walking hands in pockets, making out on street corners, etc. You are hardpressed to walk more than a block before you see some PDA, it is extremely acceptable in Argentine culture. However, everyone seems to have the idea that it's ok to have more than one steady boyfriend or girlfriend, especially if you are in a different country for a while. It's not just Argentina that shares this idea though, a lot of European cultures believe the same thing about relationships. The American culture treats relationships very differently though- fidelity and monogamy are the key components to a true relationship. Yet, look at the extremely high rate of divorce in the USA- its around 50% of first marriages end in divorce, putting us at the third highest divorce rate in the world, according to this site:
http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/countries-by-highest-divorce-rate.html

Either way, I prefer the US's system to the Argentina's!