Ah, Valentines Day. The day when the V and D come together. You’ve returned home from therapy. It’s been a while, but you’re finally ready to tell your friends about your disastrous Dutch date: aside from the dauntingly towering beauty of Dutch girls, there are some things that you may need to consider when embarking on date with a Dutch dame…

Lesson number one. Respect their principle religion: smoking. The Dutch love to smoke. And no, not with pancakes! On the coldest nights, the only people you’ll see are Dutch women, desperately taking drags of their death sticks. But don’t even mention that smoking damages their health: they don’t want to hear it! Hold your tongue… for now…

Two. Don’t look embarrassed when Femke announces that she’s going for a piss. Women shouting ‘ik moet pissen’ is perfectly normal in Groningen. Women break the seal, too, and if you’re okay with that, perhaps you’ll be breaking seals of your own down the road.

Three. The Dutch aren’t generally renowned for ‘dressing up’. They like to keep it casual, which is not necessarily a bad thing; but, take heed, as you’ll look like a ‘pretentieuze buitenlander’ sitting in a suit opposite your (denim-dressed) Dutch date.

Four. Dutch directness may frighten the feeble, but a real (cultured) man stays strong. When you compliment a Dutch dame on her desirability, don’t be surprised when she then tells you, quite frankly, that you’re ‘okay’. Many Dutch women don’t acknowledge compliments, and can be painfully truthful in their assessments of you.

Yet, this doesn’t mean that they don’t like compliments, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they don’t like you, so just tell her how you feel. ‘Mijn tepels exploderen van verukking!’ Who knows, maybe later she’ll be saying, ‘laat uw kousen vallen, Heer Willem, ik kan niet tot lunchtijd wachten!’

Lastly, the Dutch are all about equality, and rightly so. This is particularly advantageous to us moneyless males, as, unlike the TV trope of ‘men pay the bills’, Dutch women insist on ‘going Dutch’: splitting the bill. Don’t persist to pay the bill yourself, as that can often repel your date rather than impress them: Dutch women are not so materialistic.

There’s much more to learn, so (in an unashamedly brazen plea for dating advice) if you have any more tips for disastrous Dutch daters, please write below. For the moment, after selfishly taking the rare opportunity of making a Dutch oven with a Dutch dame, I’ll be spending my nights with my ex… box 360…