you were polite to them, so let them be polite to you by acknowledging your expression of gratitude

But it’s not an expression of gratitude in this context unless they did something beyond their job duties. Thanking them is just the universal polite way of ending the exchange and most customers do it. This interaction is routine and necessary to complete a purchase, and customers aren’t expressing genuine gratitude just because the cashier did their job.

When you thank a cashier, that’s the standard polite way to close the interaction and both of you understand you’re not actually expressing gratitude to them for simply doing their job.

Responding with “you’re welcome” implies the settlement of a social debt (i.e., yes, I did you a favor and your gratitude is acknowledged) that wasn’t part of that purely transactional exchange. It’s an exaggerated response that comes across as presumptuous. You thanking the cashier doesn’t indebt them, but their “you’re welcome” implies that you owed them.

BUT that’s not their intent, they’re just mindlessly saying it because that’s how their manager or grandma or someone taught them to respond and they never stopped to think about it. So I find it mildly annoying, but I’d never point it out and neither of us wants that discussion.

Similarly, I find it slightly annoying when you thank a cashier and they respond by saying you’re welcome. This exchange was purely transactional (I paid for my items and you did your job), so please don’t imply that you did me some sort of personal favor. But like you, I won’t say anything about it to the cashier because their job is already hard enough.

I do “international date nights” with my girlfriend, where we pick a country and make some food from it and enjoy a bit of its culture.

Tonight is Bulgaria. We’re making tarator (cold cucumber soup) and shopska salad and drinking a Bulgarian mavrud red wine and snacking on kashkaval sheep’s cheese. I’ve gotta introduce my gf to some chalga music while we make dinner, and we’ll watch the Bulgarian movie “In the Heart of the Machine” while we eat – it’s about a group of prisoner factory workers in communist-era Bulgaria who find a pigeon trapped inside of a machine and they work together to rescue it.

I’m still best friends with an ex from 7 years ago, it’s not awkward at all and us being exes rarely comes up. Her new boyfriend is cool, we enjoy chatting and we text occasionally. My girlfriend and my ex are pretty good friends, they hike and do outdoorsy stuff together without us guys.

$3.50 here too at almost every gas station in my area in the mountain states.

Two weeks ago I filled up for $3.00, and a few months ago it was $1.70 (that only lasted for about a week though).

I was hoping for better answers than the ones you got! Here’s my take as a Swedish/American dual citizen.

Swedes and Norwegians are genetically so similar that genetic tests can’t make any meaningful distinction between them. They’ve interbred for thousands of years, since long before Norway and Sweden emerged as distinct kingdoms. Whether your ancestry is more Swedish or Norwegian doesn’t really matter since the two are very closely related genetically, culturally and even linguistically (Swedish and Norwegian languages are highly mutually intelligible). While there’s no way to know for sure without a well researched family tree, you’re almost certainly a mix of the two.

Unless you’ve researched and know this not to be the case, it’s even possible that your ancestors were from a part of Sweden that was historically Norwegian and that’s why Norwegian culture was passed down to you. For example, Jämtland was ceded to Sweden in 1645 and even today Norwegian culture has a strong presence there.

Lucky for you, there’s WAY more Norwegian culture in the US than there is Swedish culture. Unless you’re prepared to do some serious genealogical research to arrive at a conclusive answer, I’d say don’t worry about whether you’re technically more Norwegian or Swedish – just keep enjoying the Norwegian culture you’ve known your whole life.

I can appreciate beautiful/charming women when I meet them, and sometimes I even get flustered talking to them. But I wouldn’t say I desire them. My girlfriend is peak woman IMO, the perfect partner for me. As long as she’s with me then I don’t need another person in that way.

That said, I’ve absolutely been in relationships in the past where I desired others and wondered what it would be like to be with someone else.