An observation

"You are boring like your nation, a place which makes love without pleasure,conversation without grace and jokes without laughing". So spake the mistress of Simon Bolivar of her English husband.
Does this really describe us. Is love making a formality, part an expectancy because we have been prescribed by our Presbyterian upbringing which dictates responsibility over spontaneity.
The relationship between men and women in this country has always seemed  to our Mediterranean neighbours, to lack the passion which they seem to exhibit. A sort of hang over from our Victorian great great grandparents. Sex was a dirty word and the ignorance of matters pertaining to sex was due in large part to the inability to talk about it. 

"Making love without pleasure" articulates the immaturity of a society which finds 'form' more important than reality. 

"Making conversation without grace" reflects the high pitched, alcohol induced banter often mistaken for conversation when the English gather in numbers. A sort of competition to be the most bawdy and outrageous takes place especially amongst the women who feel liberated to excess and express their most private and intimate experiences.

"Jokes without laughing" were another rendition of 'form' where polite society preferred, innuendo rather than direct confrontation.  Today, the joke has to be explicit which then opens a Pandora's box of competitive up man-ship, each joke trying to be more outrageous than the next.

The English were taught to hide their feelings and became used to thriving within an emotional closed circuit , reluctant to let others in. Is it a lack of confidence which comes from being made to know "ones place", from being largely separated by schooling, money and the opportunities which flow to some and not others.

An Englishman's home is his castle and one is invited in on a very strict proviso that the stay is limited and the clock is ticking. 

The open door, stay as long as you like, the a bed made up in the back, which I have experienced in other countries, is an anathema to an Englishman who are at root very conservative and find the concept of opening their castle to others virtually impossible.

This is not to knock my fellow countryman, just to acknowledge what others observe.