I guess one problem that's come up with online debate is that too many of us assume that those we're talking with share a similar cultural background. For us, the "standard method" has been to groom yourself well, have polite interactions with the women you meet through your day, and when you encounter someone that you fancy, who shows signs of interest in you herself, you ask her for lunch/coffee or something similar. Then while you're there, you discuss your interests to see how closely aligned they are, and whether or not you can agree on a similar life plan. It may take longer to establish, and there's a lot of flirty interplay for those who put effort into such, but the point is to recognize that men and women do both want to live with each other, you just have to work things out so both of you are going into it with a mutual goal.

It doesn't even have to be a terribly long process if you find the right person. For both my parents and my sister, this process was actually quite quick, taking only a week or two over several meetings. We tend not to even have sex until after marriage either, because when you share that experience with only her/him you aren't always thinking of other lovers as comparisons. I've actually been celibate for over a decade now, while I work on correcting the bad habits that I picked up in my younger years, so that when I do finally find the one she'll be the only lover I have a strong memory of.

I think this is perhaps the largest area that westerners have been failing with in their role in our newly interconnected world. We've taken our own perspective for granted, despite the fact that the world we grew up in is barely existent anymore, and so we're not sharing this cultural wisdom with those who need it the most. Rather we've been getting caught up in trying to approach life from the lens of foreign cultures, and doing a poor job at that because it's all filtered through media.