Huh. I was reading this and thought to myself, 'Man, being in the USA really must suck!' I never expected you to be from the Netherlands.

As a fellow Dutchie, I'm really surprised by this. I'm older now (>35 years), but I had a very different experience between the ages of 14 and 23 (when I met my wife). It was always easy to get a date, and we were treated as equals, either treating each other or splitting bills (going Dutch). Is there a difference between big cities and small towns? I'm from a small town myself.