Corny as it sounds, when I watched Happy Days as a kid I always thought Joanie and Richie's realities would someday be mine as well. Every Friday or Saturday night they seemed to be getting ready for a date. For some reason I took this to mean that as a teen/young adult, I'd have some kind of social calendar marked with steady dates. Boy was I mistaken. While I'm sure at some time people went on dates on a regular basis, it seems that in 2008 a date is an anomaly of sorts. At the overly ripe age of thirty four, I could probably count the number of actual dates I've had outside of the two or three boyfriends I've had in adulthood. I have to believe that something is wrong with that. So now I'm wondering what happened to the age old custom of dating. Of course I considered all the possibilities first; maybe I'm not very attractive, perhaps it's my ongoing disagreement with my bulging belly, or maybe I just don't seem all that interesting. However, at the risk of sounding unrealistically confident, I have to say that I don't think this change in tradition has anything at all to do with me. Removing myself from the equation still enables me to see the many young, attractive, intelligent, responsible, funny, and ambitious women I know who seem like viable choices on paper but suffer from consistent datelessness.
So, after all this pondering I still can't seem to pinpoint one specific reason why there is a dating drought these days but I do feel there may be several factors contributing to the demise of the Friday night date.
Young people no longer seem to socialized to date. Sure, lots of young people, particularly the young men, are encouraged to play the field but while that term once meant to wine and dine many different women until he could get his fill, it now seems to mean sleep with as many women as you can without spending a dime. How a date in the "olden" days used to consist of food and drink and perhaps a movie has changed to a glass of juice, a rented movie, and some pillow play. The whole idea of what constitutes a "date" has changed.
Now, people no longer date to see if they like a person. Now, they drink the juice, watch the movie and get naked then decide whether or not the person is likable and worthy of an "out in the public, real live, date". Somehow, we ended up functioning in reverse and backwards has become the new sensible. I haven't gotten there yet and am trying my very best to avoid coming along for the ride. Besides, I have found it incredibly difficult and mind numbing to get a cart to pull a horse.
Perhaps a little of it is the economy. I'm sure that at one point one could have had a good date with $25 (back when stamps were still around ten cents). Nowadays, a movie for two is $20 not to mention the additional $10- $15 it costs to buy snacks. Then dinner is going to be another $40 for a cheap restaurnt. I can understand why a man would wanna be sure about liking a woman before spending such a large amount of money. However, there are other ways to enjoy a cost effective date without completely blowing the budget. There are coffee dates, dessert dates, going for a walk and eating some ice cream dates, and even sitting on a park bench with a hot dog dates. I figure if a man is curious enough about me, he'll suggest one of those at the very least.
I think single people are also jaded these days. Traditional dating has gotten such bad press that folks are too busy trying to protect their over sized egos to take someone out. They figure paying for a date would kill their reputations and set them up to have some unsavory person take advantage of their kindness. Sure, the worst does happen sometimes but I refuse to believe that it's all the time. I think that if more people at least invested more time (before more money) talking to and getting to know a person, they wouldn't have to be so afraid about spending some money on dinner or some other type of activity.
Even though I know that many people seem bitter, upset, untrained, and downright illogical about the concept of "the date", I still cling to my old-fashioned, Happy Days ways and cling to the hope that I'll begin to have them more than once in a blue moon. I believe that if single people really want to, we can improve upon the bad name that dating has gotten. We'd probably all have better success with relationships if we spent more time talking and dating each other instead of quickly hopping into Horizontal Happyland. I believe dating can be good for the soul.
1 comment:
All they do is this, all they do is this?
I think you're absolutely right; the mystique of dating - spending time, really - has flown right out of the door. Part of it, I think, is that women teach men that their primary contribution has to be fiscal, and men react accordingly. Another part, though, is that men feel as though they can have and do what and whomever they choose, so they don't feel obligated to generally take it there. I've been assured, though - just recently, in fact - that there are still men who go all (okay, at least halfway) out when they meet someone they really like. I don't know what that means about my standing Saturday night date with my sister, but...
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