[neel_k]

Actually, there are very similar situations in Chinese culture!

My understanding is that when someone gives you a gift, in Chinese culture there is a social obligation to give them a gift of similar value at some point in the future. So giving a very expensive gift can be a very rude gesture, because it effectively inflicts a large, unexpected expense on the recipient.

In Western culture, there is a similar dynamic when it comes to dating and courtship. The general expectation is that men will ask the women they are interested in, and the women will then accept or refuse the offer. The difficulty with this is that it puts women in the position of having to reject someone who is 20 cm taller/20 kg heavier than them -- this can be very scary.

So it is artful/polite for a man asking a woman out, especially in the initial stages, to do so in a way that is ambiguous enough that if she decides she doesn't want to continue, she can back away without having to forcefully reject him. An overly strong confession of love removes this ambiguity, and thereby forces a woman into the uncomfortable position of having to directly reject the man. This is rude, in exactly the same way that giving someone an overly-expensive gift is rude in Chinese culture.

Naturally, though, in China very close friends wouldn't be bothered by how expensive gifts are, and that in the West, a woman pining for a particular man would be delighted if he directly declared his love for her. But we have etiquette to handle the failure cases, not the success cases!

Anyway, I'm always surprised how even though people are basically the same everywhere, and share the same desires and impulses, we end up building very different cultures. It's just amazing how situations can be radically different and utterly familiar at the same time.