As humans we are motivated by our drives to attain our goals. The common life that most everyone hopes to reach would be something like getting a degree, finding a good job, buying a house and hopefully having a family to share all of that with. Of course to achieve all of these dreams there are many things people must do. Schooling for instance is a must if you hope to finish college and find a decent job. Building good credit is worthwhile when it comes to financing your first home. Lastly, as much as some wish to avoid it, dating is crucial if you plan on finding someone to share your life with.
The definition of dating may seem like a simple one. Yet if you look to those around you for a description, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of variety in their answers. The truth of the matter is, everyone has a different opinion of how dating should be. What should a first date consist of? What constitutes a relationship? The answers to these questions will differ greatly when you factor in age, gender or religion.
Certainly if you confronted a forty something year old and a generation x’er on their dating habits, they would both give you tales with extreme differences. The same goes for if you were to ask a male versus a female or even a Catholic along with a Mormon. As sad as it may be, you could even compare a married individual as opposed to a single person. I think this diversity in opinions makes dating a topic worth discussing.
So how does one go about finding their Mrs. Right or Mr. Right Now? If only the myth of cupid and his bow and arrow were true. We could all live our mundane lives knowing that one day a puncture wound to the backside would cure all of our loneliness and ensure us a story book ending of happily ever after. The harsh reality of today is evident in statistics. In the 1990's one out of every two marriages ended in divorce.1
Thinking back on the history of marriage, divorce is a fairly new concept. Even in the early 1900's divorce was scarce with only 546 divorces nationally. Compare that to the whopping 157,000 that were apparent only 90 years later in 1990.2 There are many assumptions one could make as to why so many marriages end this way. I think culture has more to do with it then anything else. There are many different things that come into play. The average life span two hundred years ago was only 30 years. When you took a husband or wife you did so out of the need to survive. You had kids at a young age and if you were lucky, you died ten years into the marriage. Looking at things now you notice that the average life expectancy for a man and woman are 73.5 and 80.3 years respectively.3 This means that in order to keep an intact marriage you would most likely have to spend over two thirds of your life with this person.
Looking back to the 18th Century you can recognize just how different marriage patterns were. The concept of dating wasn’t even an issue then. People did not think to marry out of love. Most relationships were not based on affection, but rather financial stability and the willingness to procreate. It wasn’t until the last 19th century that people began to form unions out of love.4
Looking around it is impossible to ignore all the signs of dating culture. From celebrities two day matrimony bliss in Vegas, to full length seasonal prime time shows dedicated to helping you find that perfect someone. Elimidate is a popular show which allows one lucky (unlucky?) contestant to simultaneously take three people out on a date at once. A spokesperson for Warner Brothers said, “These candidates...need to outflirt, out smart and outlast their competition using their wit, charm and sex appeal. Every episode offers a regional look at survival of the fittest in the fickle world of dating.”5 He definitely hit the nail on the head when using that adjective to describe it, thus showing that our culture plays a big part in how we should date. In just a half hour someone must decide who is worthy of their time and affection. The fact that the supposed intimacy of the first date is viewed nationally says so much about how society an Hollywood influence our dating habits. The people we see on magazine covers and the quizzes inside them depict the kind of people you date or what kind of relationship you should be in. In an effort to fully understand the depth of dating, I decided to become a bit introspective and take a few quizzes myself that pertained to love and dating.
Dating Tips Online rated my Love IQ a disgraceful 15 out of 50.6 Women.com answers the question: “How Sexy Are You?” by labeling me a sex goddess, who knew? These two conflicting statements just prove the point that quizzes in Cosmo and their likeness conflict often and do not tell much. For the most part, the latter of the two did churn out some useful advice when saying, “If you want [someone] to stick around and get to know you, work on developing true sex appeal - confidence, poise and a positive attitude.”7 I think that statement can be universally beneficial to anyone in the dating scene.
The dating “scene” is another word that can be argued over. For the most part, it used to be generally thought that a the setting for a date usually consisted of dinner in a restaurant where you could make small talk with your date and find out the trivial basics about them. With the invention of the world wide web, the internet has brought the intimacy of dating right into your home. There are literally hundreds, if not more, on-line dating sites that boast of happy endings. On the majority of these sites you enter critical semi-personal information in a survey format and match yourself up with others who share a certain percentage of interests with you. It’s a far cry from even just ten years ago when you paid a couple dollars to have a few cryptic words published in the personal ads of your local newspaper.
One of these sites, Match.com offers free service to singles around the nation. I took a moment to browse around the site and was amazed at the vast majority of people who are members. If ever I had questioned where all the nice, good looking men were, the web was my answer! Everyone seemed to exude redeeming qualities. So many doctors, lawyers and philanthropists who claimed to be too busy saving the world to have a social life, so they turned to online matchmaking. Enticed by the gorgeous pictures and awing profiles, I signed myself up and answered some of their questions such as: age, gender, religious background, relationship status and so on. They even gave me limited space to conjure up some witty one liners about myself, which I did. Of course there was a miniscule amount of exaggeration in my self description, such as calling myself outgoing rather than eccentric. Or magically shrinking to 5'11" instead of my natural height of six feet. It didn’t occur to me as I was publishing little white lies about myself, that others might be doing the same thing too. So after finishing up the basic facts about Julie I clicked the finish button sat back, relaxed and waited impatiently for Match.com to tell me who my perfect other half was. The very next day the website sent me an e-mail proclaiming twelve different men all of whom were supposed to me my other half. After perusing their profiles I realized that matched made in minutes are no way matches made in heaven.8
I don’t think it would be a proper case study if I just sampled one twenty something year olds view of online dating, so I interviewed my good friend Patty (who wishes to remain un-anonymous). She’s a forty two year old divorcee with three grown children, who fell in love with falling in love online last September. A few days ago I had the opportunity to sit in on one of her online dates and asked her a few questions about her ideas on dating. Chuckling at my serious nature as she began to explain the events that lured her to online dating, “Curiousity. Finding my ex on Match.com really threw me.” With a cigarette pressed between her lips, she glanced at her margarita and pointed a crimson painted fingernail at the group of guys sitting across from us. “You see those men over there? What can you possibly find out about them at a bar? Meeting people online is no different. You can actually find out a lot more about people through chatting on the internet.” I smiled in agreement as she continued. “The best part about it is you can decide who you want to meet and who you want to ignore.” A boisterous cackle erupted from her mouth. “Don’t you wish we could have an ignore button in real life?” Again pointing at the men across the bar she laughed, “IGNORE!” The whole culture involved in online dating I’ve learned is almost surreal. While I imagined all the men to be mildly to severely psychotic, the stories of some of them seemed rather normal. Patty derived pet names for each of the men who had at one time accompanied her. “Harley was the first.” She mentioned the motorcycle rider while grinning ear to ear. I had met him. The man who, in remembering her daughter worked for Wrigley, brought a pack of Big Red gum to their first date. “We saw each other for a few weeks after that, but nothing ever came of it. DUI guy was next.” While the first man seemed to be decent, the story of this next guy really just blew my mind. After the misfortune with him, I inquired as to how she could muster the courage to keep doing the online dating thing. “You have to be strong and confident.” She replied, “Be honest and straight forward.” We sat for a couple hours reliving the past few months of Patty’s social life. Her eyes got a bit misty when she reminisced about the times she spent with Dave A., who she met in a chat room and in essence he is her soul mate. Even though he moved to Florida, thanks to instant messaging they still communicate everyday.
After we paid our bar tabs, but before we left I asked the online dating expert for a few pearls of wisdom. She came up with these five tips that even the brilliant minds at Cosmo couldn’t beat:
• Do not do things you don’t want to. When someone wants to meet you, don’t be at their beck and call. Make them come to you. Your territory. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you wont be comfortable.
• Be honest. As with any relationship, honesty is the best policy, but it doesn’t always have to concern the big things. Little things matter too. If you don’t like to drink, tell them. If smoke bothers you, speak up.
• Be yourself. It’s not just a matter or letting your personality show. When dating online don’t try to make yourself out to be something you’re not. If you’re poor, don’t lead them to believe you’re rich. At the same time don’t be ashamed of what you do have.
• No funny business. Don’t get your advice from Kim Cantrell on Sex In The City. It is not okay to sleep with someone on the first date if you expect them to have any sort of respect for you. You should be in control and that relates to the physical atmosphere as well.
• Bring the money, but never pay. Always offer to split the bill. A gentleman will most always pay for dinner and a movie. While dating may have evolved in many ways, some traditions are thankfully still going strong.9
Patty’s sense of self confidence really shattered my image of how dating would be like as we get older. After twenty odd years of marriage and three grown children she has really come into her own. Regardless of how you meet your insignificant other, I think self esteem plays a major role in how healthy your dating life is.
Take away twenty years from Patty, a few ounces of self love and you’ll have my next example. Instead of conducting an interview, I decided to take a few quotes from this anonymous single young, brilliant, tall, talkative, A+ research paper writing college student’s Weblog. While it doesn’t say much about dating (more like the lack thereof), I think it offers up good insight into the mind of a girl who is bitter beyond her years!
“With that I’d like to give a big THANK YOU to all the men who were briefly in my life. You made a slight impact the size of a crater and in doing so enabled me to derive some pretty pathetic poetry.”
“For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” Here’s an update for you: Nowadays 80% of women are AGAINST marriage. Why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying the entire pig just for a little sausage.”
“Just when I thought my so called social life had plummeted to extreme lows this Spring, I signed up for Fall classes and came to the realization that unless I’m doing unspeakable things in the janitor’s closet at school, I’m most likely not going to have any excitement for a long time. A full load of educational enlightenment consisting on Speech, Accounting, Public Relations, Math and Botany are ensuring a dead halt on my *cough* dating life.”
“While working diligently in the Meijer Deli, I am confronted with what I think was a pick up line. An older man with a mullet winked at me surreptitously and said, “You got anything back there that I can eat that’s hot, besides you?”
“A king size candy bar to console me. Nothing can comfort me from the pain I am feeling ... No, it’s not from a man. I actually just bit my lip and it hurts like a bitch.”10
It’s a shame that someone so young can be so cynical. That just goes to show that a bad experience while dating can sometimes ruin future relationships for you. This is all part of the psychology of dating. Believe if or not there is an entire manifesto written to relate the sciences of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychiatry and Psychology to dating. It is plainly called: “The Soulmate Manifesto: Uniting All Soulmate Believers in an Effort to Solve Dating”, by Chau Vuong, Pharm.D.11 He insists that, “Human dating behavior is very predictable and dating problems can be avoided or solved.” With that statement he tries to put a mathematical precision on matters of the heart. “People fall in love because the total benefit of being in love outweighs the total cost of being in love. So the probability of falling in love is related to your prediction of the probability of the net benefit resulting from being in love. Mathematically, the Model is written as: Your Love for Love Interest = Love Interest’s Love for You. Once in love, you both work to maintain a state of equilibrium, where your love for each other is equal to your lover’s love for you.” It all sounds rather asinine to me. Just another way to squeeze money out of those who are already bankrupt in the relationship department.
I think after browsing the web and exposing myself to the abrasive world of online dating, I have found that it does nothing but add to the already complex world of relationships. While in Patty’s case, she seems to be enjoying herself, I cannot fathom a positive outcome from anything that evolves in a chat room. Call me old fashioned, but after all is said and done I think I prefer the less modern alternatives to meeting people. Does this mean I’m going to have to dress up to go grocery shopping from now on? Or possibly make myself up for a study session in the library? Not necessarily. I have found through my own personal research that you meet people in the oddest of places when you least expect it and that leaving things up to fate is a lot less complicated.
A few words of advice from me, the new expert on dating: Don’t listen to any articles hurling words of wisdom. The do’s and don’ts of dating can’t apply to the masses. It’s the unique and individuality of a person that makes them attractive.
I hope that with any luck those who are in the dating scene could glimpse some fresh insight into what they might be doing wrong. Fore those who are happily taken, hopefully they had a giggle as they thank their lucky stars they are rid of dating forever!