Dating in Our Society

Note: While this post deals with cultural things and norms and values particularly important in how we relate things to children, it does contain some material that may be inappropriate for some children, particularly those who are younger. Therefore, parental discretion is advised. Thank you.

 

 

 

I'm going to switch gears here and talk about something that's actually important in the scheme of things. I mean, stats and sports and cryptography is nice and it's fun, but at the end of the day... well, anyway, just be forewarned, and feel free to ignore this if you want (like anyone was reading this to start with... sometimes I crack myself up)

 

Culturally, we put a lot of stock into ‘finding the one’. This is hugely problematic. There are lots of problems, actually. The first and obvious one is that we’re setting up this expectation that we’re going to find a perfect person, there is some magical perfect person out there for everyone. Of course this isn’t true; there hasn’t been a perfect person born in over 2000 years, and the rest of us killed him. Perfection is not required for love; indeed, there is something incredibly powerful about loving someone with their imperfections, and it’s important to realize that this with is distinct from what we might more commonly see phrased as ‘in spite of’. Ultimately, if you love someone, you should love them, and love all of them, love their imperfections – it is a part of who they are. We can even embrace these imperfections.

At the same time, there are people who realize this, after some time or thought, because we’ll, it’s sort of obvious that no one is perfect. But because we don’t get this right up front, a problem is often created in that people can be too positive towards the imperfections, towards the problems. We can at once love someone, love them with all their problems, and recognize that they are indeed problems. This is really important. And it requires a great deal of trust – people need to understand that A can call a problem in B a problem, as it is, it doesn’t mean that A loves B any less, or that A devalues B, or hates or judges or whatever you want to call it. Saying this should be a sign that A loves B even more. Further for this to occur, B needs to be able to trust himself (or herself; I am using all masculine pronouns here, but the intent is the neutral gender – this shouldn’t be as big of an issue as it is, but that is another essay for another day), so that B can recognize that this is a problem in himself. He also needs to be able to love himself anyway, and realize that while it may be a problem, and it may require a lot of work (in many cases continuous and never-ending work), but that this doesn’t need to be the end of anything; B needs to know that he can in fact work through that. And A should be reaffirming this in B and helping him to work through it. This is one of the great and beautiful things about love.

So the expectation of perfection can lead to improper expectations in these ways.

 

But there are other problems as well. Take two people, C and D, who get married. They need to not expect for things to work out ‘happily ever after.’ This simply doesn’t happen. Even the best marriages have difficulties, disputes, arguments, problems, and lots of hardships. Creating the expectation of ‘the one’ can lead C and D to believe that these things won’t happen, and thus can cause them to be far too finicky about this relationship, far too willing to jump, to cut, to run, for any number of reasons. Even something resembling boredom, or disappointment, because things aren’t great in the way they once were. Things change, relationships change, people change all the time. And this needs to be something recognized and realized – there is no ‘the one’ who is always going to be that perfect and exciting and glamorous person, or whatever the fantasy is. It is a fantasy.

Again, there’s another side that people can go to in a sort of backlash against this, which can lead them to ‘well it’s never going to be a perfect person anyway, let’s just stop here’ kind of settling, or rushing into things. While there is no one perfect person just for you, there are people who you can trust and be trusted by, love and be loved by, support and be supported by, in the good and happy times and the bad and sad times, in the fun and exciting times and in the boring and disappointing times, in the easy times and the hard times, in anything and everything. There’s a reason that the vows are what they are. It’s not that you will agree with their position on everything – you might disagree on their position on many things; but you will be able to support them as a person, regardless of the positions they take. You should know that they are trying to do the right thing, be ready to point it out (lovingly!) when they aren’t, be ready to accept such pointings-out as also from love and good intentions, and of course recognize that wrong actions can come from good intentions. You should also recognize that sometimes they will be in error, and sometimes they will be in error, and you don’t necessarily know which is which. You should respect them enough to have an honest conversation, and respect yourself enough to not always blindly defer. And ever-so-importantly, you need to know when it matters, when to take the stand, and when to just let it slide.

And I say ‘people’ above, and I think this is an important point, too. There is not just one person who was specifically made for us, and we for them, in some kind of predestination. We are people, we are different, we change, etc. etc. And we make mistakes. We make lots of mistakes. And there are so many of us, it’s a bit ridiculous to think that there is some magic moment when you are supposed to meet that one person, and if you take the wrong bus or crack the wrong joke or are in the wrong mood or whatever, that you can miss your one and only chance. God has a sense of humour, but it’s not so cruel as that. Having said all this, once you do fall in love with someone, once you do commit yourself to them, then this should fundamentally alter you as well – you are transformed into someone who is for this person, and while there might be other people out there, you are not for them, in that way.

Conversely, even though there may be multiple people, there isn’t a guarantee that you will ‘find them and marry them and live happily ever after’, which is another lie we are often fed in this society. And there may be no one. Not everyone gets married. Not everyone should. When we say these things, it can create the impression that such things are necessary for the fulfillment of our lives. They aren’t. Not anything against marriage here, it’s a great thing, it’s a wonderful thing, it’s a sustaining, life-defining thing. But one does not need it to have meaning and definition in his life. We should all be okay being single, at least until we are to that committed point, because all of us at some points need to be. And people who aren’t married are not at all lesser people than those who are. They are wonderful people, extraordinary people, every bit as nice and useful and good and loving, yes loving, as married people. They walk different paths, but different does not need to mean better or worse. Sometimes different is just different.

And on these points, friendship can often get downplayed. Eros is not the only kind of love. Nor is it more important than the others – each love has its own place. And the unfortunate reality in today’s society is that for any male and female who are friends, there is some expectation or implication somehow of some kind of romantic involvement or interest. I know that’s far too many qualifiers, but I hope you get my point. Not every friendship has or needs to have a romantic involvement. And eros is not the natural progression of philia. This causes multiple problems. On the one hand, the outward expectations can cause a gossip-like suspicion of activity which acts as a hardship for the friends involved but moreover as a sort of poison towards the gossipers (it should be noted that ‘gossipers’ here might be one person suspecting things by himself). Furthermore, the outward expectations for such things can create pressures and unnecessary and false expectations for the people in a friendship, which can push them into bad decisions, and either insodoing or quite possibly independently, damage, perhaps greatly so, the friendship, which can itself be a most beautiful and meaning-giving thing.

This disconnect also leads to some problems which I am sure I am not the first to mention with how societal attitudes toward courtship and dating are changing. Now, to be fair, this really has been changing for some time. Long ago women were more or less sold by fathers to husbands, at least in some societies, and I am certainly not advocating for that. But if we go back not even that long, men would come to call upon women, with the permission and/or approval of the father. Whilst I am certainly not suggesting that this is a necessary reversion, either, I also think it gets far worse a rap than it is deserving of. And I want to examine that dynamic some more and see if any proverbial babies have been thrown out with their bathwater.

More recently, and this still holds to a certain extent, it was common for men to pick women up from their houses before going on a date, or at least some dates, and there is this stereotyped menacing gauntlet of male relatives to face them, particular brothers and most importantly fathers. And while that does not happen so often, and the menacing gauntlet thing even less, there is still some memory of it, at least inasmuch as asking a father’s permission to marry his daughter is still a thing, even if this too is dying out. First of all, why did this change? Well, let’s look at the father’s perspective first of all. They don’t want to give off this menacing intimidation factor, they don’t want to be scary, etc. Well this is largely good – you want to be on good terms with your children, and really there is no need to scare the water out of every guy who likes your daughter. But on the other hand, it’s possible to swing the other way – parents nowadays are far too willing to not be parents in an effort to be friends with their kids. Being friends (and I use the term loosely here, because truly close friends have many of the same responsibilities as parents, as outlined above; ergo being friendly is probably a more accurate phrasing) is nice, but being a parent is necessary. Anyhow, this deserves its own essay as well, but let’s leave it here for now. The other side of the story is probably the bigger driving factor. Women are dating now (insomuch as this term still applies) at later ages. And they want to be in control of their own lives. And indeed, a woman should not be forced or at all coerced into a marriage she doesn’t want to enter into. Nor indeed should a man. But the point here is that they are on their own, or with their friends, when these things happen, very often. And you know, that is fine. It really is.

But there was this stereotypical question, “what are your intentions towards my daughter?” or some other way of phrasing the same. And that’s a really important question, and one that women are not asking for themselves, at the very least so bluntly, very often. And it’s an important thing. Really, it’s an important thing for men to ask as well, and it’s an unfair double standard that all of this is targeted towards women, and yet our society is full of these kinds of unfair double standards, so there you are. But the question is important. Because if the intentions aren’t right, the thing is doomed to fail before it even starts. And if they aren’t clear, you get bogged down in a mess of confused expectations, and this leads to troubles as well.

But I guess at this point we need to start talking about sex. And I guess before I make my point here, I think that it’s important to make a point about talking about sex in general. People need to do it. Parents need to do it. Society needs to do it. It makes people uncomfortable for whatever reason, but they need to get over it, and that uncomfortability needs to stop. And I am not saying that people need to talk about intimate details and secrets – quite frankly people are too willing to do that. But when we cannot be frank with each other and with our children because for some strange reason we find it icky, there’s a problem. You know, this relates to the whole ‘abstinence only’ education thing. Those programs are all misguided. And I am not saying that because I think the abstinence message is wrong – if you know me at all, you know that I absolutely think this to be a totally good thing. But when we don’t talk about things to kids, well they aren’t stupid. They know that there’s contraception out there. It’s out there. And when we don’t talk about it, when we lie about it especially, or skew things so heavily and deceptively with how we word things and what we talk about, then they feel like we are trying to deceive them and cheat them. And you know, that’s a real problem, and it actually makes more issues than it solves. It solves no issues actually. I mean, if you really believe that your position is right, as I do, then you should be able to make it on its own merits, after giving out all the information both ways. And when you do that, people are going to trust you more, so they will believe you more. It’s actually more convincing.

Anyway, there are people out there who would say that if A and B are both looking for ‘casual sex’ then go them. But this is not the case. It is not that sex isn’t about pleasure – let’s please not lie about that; if sex weren’t supposed to be pleasurable, it wouldn’t be, and people aren’t stupid, so I don’t know why this sometimes gets repeated. Yeah, it’s pleasurable, and it should be. But that’s not all it’s about. And this is a self-degrading act; it devalues the person in his own eyes, whether he goes into it ostensibly consentingly or not. Just as one cannot sell oneself into slavery, you cannot do this. All you are doing is sowing seeds of unhappiness, seeds of discomfort, and they will sprout and multiply, and the problems you have now, that you are running from, are only going to compound upon themselves.

So going back to dating or lack thereof. These things are often not defined up front and this leads to confused expectations and problems. Furthermore, it creates indirect problems as well; dating has encroached not only upon dating, but to the point where people are ‘hanging out’. Not only does this confuse things, it devalues the courtship process. Because the answer to the question should be “I want to marry your daughter.” This would frighten a lot of guys. It shouldn’t. I don’t mean to say that the guy needs to be convinced that he wants to marry the daughter already, then and there. But he should be interested in it, that should be, if everything works out, his eventual goal. It doesn’t even need to be likely – it just needs to be plausible. And this is true of the daughter as well. Anything less is simply not sufficient; it is like building a teleporter which could only take you to a black hole – it might seem nifty, but in the end it’s just going to kill you.

So there is a danger in not having this definition, but this often happens in today. People will ‘hang out’, but ‘hanging out’ is somehow now code for ‘dating’. Well, it seems sort of stupid to have to call it ‘dating’ you may say, it is just a word. But it is important, because having a clean understanding of going on is necessary, as we’ve just seen. Furthermore, ‘hanging out’ itself is great. It is something you can do with friends, you can bond with them, have fun, all kinds of stuff. And that need not have anything romantic involved. So turning ‘hanging out’ into this kind of a code word is once again degrading towards friendships, and I want to stress again that having friendships is really important in every person’s life. Just like it’s okay for someone to be single, it’s okay to be ‘just friends’. ‘Just friends’ should not be a disappointing thing. It really shouldn’t be a ‘just’ as in disappointing thing. You’re friends! Friends are really special people, you know? As for the word being sort of stupid, I mean yeah, it’s a word; but it is very important to be very clear. People need time to prepare themselves for things. And people need to have their expectations move in the right ways, and… I am going on here. I think I’ve covered this already.

So now it’s time to talk about sex again, because the next thing that is bound to come up is what about the so-called serious relationship? Well, you know, love is important too, eros, romance. Sex is about these things. Yes, it is. It is about pleasure, and it is about these things. But it’s about more than that, too. This is necessary, but it is not sufficient. There is a level of intimacy, a… a very creation itself. It’s absolutely beautiful, but as transcendent as romantic love is, without marriage, this will fail to support things. It is a beautiful celebration of creation, in every act, whether fruit happens to be borne or not. Well anyway, you don’t want to ask me, I’m not some kind of expert.

But you know, there shouldn’t be, for example, a movie called The 40-year-old Virgin. There should be no “The” about it. And it should not be a shameful thing. It ought to be more of a thing of pride, you know. There is this perception out there that people are wired for sex, that they need sex. “I have needs” and “I’m a man” are phrases that are thrown around a lot, and well, it is true that men (and I am not sure how true this is with women as much, but to some extent it is anyway) are wired to want sex pretty much all the time, at some level, but this is certainly not a need. You can control these things. People can handle it, you know, and that is in no way meant to be a pun. I mean, sexual desires are not our masters. So this myth that people can’t control themselves is wrong, and moreover dangerous, because it gives this impression that ‘oh well, it’s okay’. You know, it’s not. Not that if people make mistakes, life is over or anything. But it hurts, mind you, it’s hard and it hurts a lot. And again, no double entendres here. This is difficult and emotionally and spiritually and psychologically difficult. So a 40-year-old virgin, well that’s something to celebrate, really, it’s something to be proud of, because it takes courage and strength. This person has successfully not succumb. And I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not saying everyone should be a virgin at 40, or even most people; most people get married well before this. But it is not something that’s remotely close to being so outlandish. Anyway, it’s not just The 40-year-old Virgin. This kind of stuff is all over out there. You see it in all kinds of television shows and books and what have you – ‘they haven’t even had sex yet? It’s not serious’ or ‘X hasn’t had sex in (some amount of time)?!’ said with enormous incredulity. All of this feeds into unrealistic, unhealthy, and false expectations, which lead to numerous problems down the road.

So at this point I should probably talk about love, romantic love, eros itself. You know, there are a lot of people who don’t think that you can know what it is without experiencing it, and I don’t think that’s true. But it certainly is difficult as a thing to describe. Very often you hear it said that “you’ll know” when it’s “the one”. Well, again the whole “the one” thing is baloney, and love at first sight – well, there is sometimes something to that, but it’s not really love in this sense – this must take more time than first sight permits. But the “you’ll know” is, well it’s quite possibly a true statement, but it’s pretty dangerous as far as advice goes. Because people, particularly young people, can very easily think that they ‘know’ something when really they don’t. They can be fickle, they can change rather quickly. And it’s not their fault, you just don’t have the kind of bank of… maturity? Something, whatever it is, that gives you a sense for these things. You tend to get this with time, but that’s only a tendency, and it’s definitely different for every person, so there is no growth chart to measure by on age, no set prescription. So what is eros? Well, it is this transcendent thing, and any words will never be enough to describe it fully, save to name it. This is not to say to give up, of course. Indeed, I could probably right a few thousand words describing it, though this would not be easy, and they could all be accurate, though the picture they give would be incomplete.

Anyway, it’s very clear that we can list out things that it is NOT. And I think that this will be helpful, potentially very helpful. It’s not friendship. Friendship, as I’ve said is a great and wonderful and transcendent thing, but it’s distinct. It’s not lust. This is one that comes up all the time, but just because you find someone attractive doesn’t mean you’re in love with them; just because you find someone particularly attractive, in a different and special way, still doesn’t mean you’re in love with them. It’s not a super special friendship or that other friendship or a close friendship. I mean, part of the problem is that there are many different kinds of very awesome friendship, so it looks like, at some times, because this one is so different from all the rest, maybe it’s romance. But no, it really can be just a very different kind of friendship. It’s not any of the kinds of friendship plus attraction. This is a tough one a lot of times, I think. You can really really love someone and care about them and want to spend lots of time with them and find them to be really pretty and beautiful and attractive and all that doesn’t mean that you are in love with them. Eros is something emergent – it is not merely the sum of different constituent parts, but rather it transcends that.

Well anyway, that’s all I have. For now.