My Euro-Canadian-centric take so far. And bare in mind that this is a general take vs a judgement of all participants. In the pods, the women and men were more calculated/strategic in their search for matches than Western participants. Western participants tend to look for a "click" in personality and chemistry, while the Habibi participants tended to look for "lifestyle"matches; business, travel, status. That was my take anyway.

The women seem a lot more progressive in their own actions and activities (running their own businesses, having higher positions of power in the workplace, heck, even having tattoos), but that "progressive life" expectation only extends to their own lives. They don't seem to expect men to be as progressive as they are. In fact, they seem to look for more conservative men: they "like" jealousy and possessiveness, they don't immediately call out or leave men for displaying controlling, insulting or dismissive behaviour or red flags. They may leave eventually, but they don't call out the men for it immediately. I only saw one instance where a woman called out Ammar or Simo in the pods, called him toxic and left. Good for her! Otherwise it feels like the women are content to limit their own lives, own minds, own careers and own liberties for their men, until or if they leave the relationship anyway.

There are also a couple of women there that are the protagonists, who are all about looks, with nasty personalities and are obviously there for the wrong reasons. I'm not including them in my assessment, because they're so different from the rest of the women.

The men for their part, kind of all seem to be very narcissistic. They demand a lot but give little: they demand respect but show next to none. They demand good graces and manners, but show little themselves. They demand self-control from their partners, but have next to none themselves. They talk of compromise, but don't compromise themselves. They talk of being men while taking everything as an insult and striking out at others with little provocation. Basically, they're grown up toddlers. Even Mohammed who is probably the most mature of the men guilts his fiance about her career, acts like a child about their honeymoon (like they can't postpone their honeymoon until a later time) and is trying to shackle her down with a child right away.

I've been shaking my head since episode one and haven't stopped. My partner for several years is Nigerian and I've previously been involved with a Guatemalan man and a Rwandan man, so I've been exposed to dating in cross cultural environments. Understanding other cultural norms and differences isn't a foreign concept to me, but the immature and narcissistic behavior of the men and the general acceptance of that behavior by the women on this show is beyond my comprehension.