Until a few years ago, I had been quite unsuccessful with Dutch girls. I went to school with them, had a few of them as friends, saw them when I went out, but I never really got through that armor. I felt like a boxer that always gets TKO’d in the third round, or a tennis player dangling somewhere very low in the rankings. For the most part, I blamed myself, but I had a sense that there was more to it than just my incompetence to understand how the game worked. This realization calmed me while, slowly, the feeling of urgency subsided.

Years later, I found myself standing in an Eastern-bloc smoky nightclub, while Russian mafiosos with thick necks were pushing in on my lady. I thought: ‘while it is cool to stand by the bar wearing something my grandmother would have sent to Africa, while looking really angry and tough, you know that they are not there trying to impress a Dutch girl’. Luckily, the one on my arm was not that. Now I think that right there and then, I might have gotten a new perspective on the psyche of a Dutch girl, and I would like to share it with you.

This new perspective did not come out of the blue. As I grew older, my interests and tastes expanded. They were of the intellectual kind, and in the form of music. To discover new things, like the possibility to buy and grind my own coffee beans together with putting a little cream on top out of my own milk creamer, really adds value to life for a coffee lover like me. Another thing I found out: women do make life pleasant at times. Not everyone would agree though. I guess it was a movie where someone said: ‘You can’t live with them, but try living without them.’ Probably it came from Pulp Fiction or True Lies, and most definitely it was a lot crasser. At the same time, the convictions during the formative years of life, to assume for example that redhead beauties from Ireland are what really gets you going, slowly disappear. I mean, you might book a spontaneous trip to Abuja and find yourself attracted to burly, Nigerian women from within the deepest cells of your body.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. With me, it came with age, new romances and meeting different kinds of people when I traveled. Also, what really changes your outlook on things, like it did with me, is repeated failures. I was so convinced of what girl was the best for me that I limited myself. And that never got me anywhere. It showed I lacked self-respect, because I never thought I could see myself with another type of person than I had imagined right for me, in my head. Thus, it took me some time to understand the way a Dutch girl is. So, if and when you find yourself in the position of wanting to make a move at a Dutch girl, after trying and failing, there are some things to keep in mind. And I did try and fail, stumbling like a cripple, on the way to this treasure trove of knowledge.

Dutch society is comparable to many other Western societies, or even Asian ones in some aspects. We all live a hurried and fast life, rushing towards uncertainties that grown up people have, while at the same time these uncertainties give us lots of stress. People do not anymore take the time to sit down with a good book, but instead tap the refresh button on Facebook and have silly conversations on Whatsapp all day long. This, I guess, defines the 21st century. But Dutch society is, from my point of view, rather unique when it relates to the position of women and their hearts and whom they beat for. Imagine a vast meadow in springtime, with flowers blooming, sunshine radiating from the sky. A large tree stands on it, with a swing attached to one of its large trunks. A Dutch girl would have a few swings on that thing hanging from the tree, but only for fun. She would get bored after a while, and run towards the high grass. That swing is you.

What then, to do about this? What did I do once I realized that I lived in a society where a prevalent culture exists of strong, ambitious women using young, innocent boy’s hearts as a piñata?

I took a step back and calmed down.

Because the secret is to know that she is a little bit lonely. All the hurrying, all the staged photographs on Facebook, all the tv series that have to be watched because all of her friends watch them too, they cannot really compare to a strong shoulder to cry on. Even more if she is a hipster, because they have to be unique all of the time, with everything they do. Cute hipster girls need love too, and keep your beard for that occasion. So put some effort into it. What is rare and hard to attain, is all the more special when one can say they conquered it. A tall, blonde female with legs that shoot into the sky, with blue eyes and maybe some freckles here and there is a truly beautiful thing.

The overconfidence of a Dutch girl stems from the fact that she is universally seen as beautiful and she knows it, and it is not a form of arrogance that she displays towards her male counterparts in her own country. I feel that I can say the same of many Scandinavian women, having heard some stories here and there.

The Dutch girl is actually not always tall and blonde. Strolling along the streets of a city like Amsterdam is like hiking through the countryside in the South of France; you can pick cherries, strawberries, grapes, tangerines, apples and oranges…

There is a strong set of characteristics that apply to them though. They will be, as I said: confident, ambitious, a social animal, have very little patience for many different kinds of boys, and will carry thick plates of armor as skin. This can be intimidating for any man. The challenge, like in a medieval duel, is to find a way through. It takes patience, and you need to stand firm and show appreciation. It might not look like it, but you are on the winning side, even before you begin. If you can see through that brazenness and confidence, and recognize the beauty together with the loneliness inside, you know that there is something there worth fighting for. And who knows, you just might land yourself a universally beautiful girl.