the good old days

I don’t tell my parents much about my dating life. To them, 98 percent of the people I date don’t even exist. I think it’s better that way. Talking to my parents about my romantic escapades generally results in annoying questions, lectures, and my parents imagining me doing things they’d rather not. When someone worth knowing about comes along, I’ll be sure to tell them. Until then, it’s a subject better left untouched.

However, every once in awhile, usually around a holiday, I think it’s fun to sit down with Mike and Carm, and over a glass of wine or six, try to explain to them what a shitshow the modern dating world is.

You see, the last time my parents were single, Nixon was President, Michael Jackson was still alive and black, and things like the Internet, cell phones and Facebook were unheard of. Beyond that, my parents’ dating experiences were somewhat different than mine. They were friends in high school, although they never dated, and my dad was a year older than my mom. A few years after high school, while my dad was home on break from college, they re-connected (on a date that almost didn’t happen. My dad forgot to call my mom to make plans for Saturday night, so she and some girlfriends went to the now-defunct Ground Floor club, where she ran into – surprise, surprise – my dad. “I was supposed to call you, wasn’t I?” he said, the memory dawning on him. “Yeah,” my mom shot back. “See how I waited?” This is why my mom is my hero.) Anyway, that was the fall of 1973; by autumn 1974, they were engaged, and on November 8, 1975, they were married. My dad was 24 and my mom was 23.

So to say that they have no idea what it’s like to be single and on the wrong side of 25 in the 21st century is an understatement. Over the weekend, while I was at their house for 4th of July, I tried to explain to them how even a seemingly innocuous thing like technology has turned the dating world on its head.

“When you were single, if you were interested in somebody, you had two options for communicating with them – in person, or by picking up the phone, and calling their phone. And not their cell phone, but their home phone. And if they weren’t home, you had to wait for them to call you back,” I said. “Now, we have cell phones, texting, Facebook, e-mail, but it only makes things more confusing. If I call a guy’s cell phone and he doesn’t answer, he can’t use the “I wasn’t home” excuse. You know everyone has their cell phone on them 24/7, so if they don’t answer, you immediately begin wondering why. Yeah, maybe they don’t hear it, or are busy…or maybe they’re purposely ignoring you. Same thing with texts. There’s only so many times you can text somebody before they think you’re a stalker. And then you have the people who think text messaging can replace an actual conversation…” I don’t think my parents couldn’t have been any happier to be Baby Boomers if I had reminded them that they will actually get to enjoy the benefits of Social Security, too. Man, our generation got fucked.

My parents also reminded me that, back in their day, there was less of this footloose-and-fancy-free, Wild Wild West attitude about communication between the sexes, meaning, boys asked girls out. That’s it. Those were the rules. And you know, even though I’m typically not one for rules, that sounds pretty darn tantalizing. Sure, it’s nice to know that I have some modicum of control of who I date and when, that I don’t have to wait around for a guy to make the first move (besides obedience, patience is a virtue I don’t have much of). But I feel sometimes like the scales have tipped too much in the opposite direction, and now the girls are expected to do all the approaching and asking. I’m not sure if this is because guys are super-insecure, super-lazy, or super unattracted to me, but I wonder, if we were to go back to dating rules circa 1973, how well modern men (and women, for that matter) would fare.

I think I finally got through to my parents this weekend, that things have changed a lot since they hustled their way into each other’s hearts 37 years ago. Then again, maybe not. My mom’s final thought of the discussion was her favorite adage: “When it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen.” My response? “Spoken like someone who’s been married for 35 years.”

back to life, back to reality

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about technology, and how it affects our love lives, probably because I’ve been immersed in a project for one of my grad classes that involves writing a book proposal for a hypothetical book about – surprise, surprise – how technology has affected our love lives.

I was working on this project over the weekend, and, in a hunt for statistics on the number of Match.com subscribers (1.4 million as of June 2009, if you’re curious), found this web site, which offers information and user reviews on over fifty dating and matchmaking web sites.  I was momentarily distracted from my homework (not that distracting me from homework is a particularly challenging task) by the sheer volume and specificity of these web sites.  Sure, you have your big, brand-name general dating sites like Match and eHarmony, but if you want to narrow down your search for a soulmate by race/ethnic background, age group, religion, even income bracket, there’s a web site for you.  There’s even a web site, PositiveSingles.com, for individuals living with STDs (because people with herpes need love too).   (Sorry.)

Anyway, this discovery stopped me in my tracks because, as I sat there reading down the list, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This is the most ass-backwards system I’ve ever heard of.  We’re all trying to meet people and connect with others – by sitting alone in our houses, hunched over our computers, disengaged from society.  What the hell is wrong with all of us?”

I echoed those thoughts later that night during my phone conversation with Ang.  (If it seems like a lot of posts have recently come out of that Sunday night conversation, you’re absolutely right.  In fact, Ang and I talked about how what we talked about would end up in this blog.  Christ, even my life is meta now.)  Anyhoo, Ang was telling me about how, on the train back to New Jersey after her date with her new gay boyfriend, she actually struck up a live, in-person conversation with an attractive young man (who was Ecuadorian, no less).

“And everybody else on the train must have thought I was crazy, because, you know, people don’t actually talk to each other anymore, let alone talk to a stranger,” Ang said.

I had to agree with her.  “It’s so ridiculous,” I said.  “People always say if you want to meet someone, to go to a coffeeshop or a park or wherever, but you go, and everybody’s sitting there by themselves, listening to their iPods, playing on their computers or iPhones or whatever the fuck thing everybody has these days, not talking to anyone else.  It’s incredible.  We have more ways of communicating and staying in touch than ever, and we’re still completely isolated.”

It’s the irony of the whole thing which just gets under my skin, I suppose.  One has to imagine, that at some point in time, somewhere in this universe, in some coffeeshop or classroom or city park, two lonely, single strangers have sat, mere feet or maybe even inches apart from each other, yet completely unaware of the other’s presence – probably because they’re both too busy plowing through  Match.com profiles.  And that, my friends, is the definition of fucking irony.

I’m not trying to hate on the Internet in general, or dating web sites in particular.  I’m in no position to judge, having been a paying member of Match for a year; it can’t hurt to have as many irons in the fire as possible, I always say.  But it’s a slippery slope, as we all retreat further and further into the isolated, virtual world to find connections, forgetting that there is a whole great big bustling REAL world too, and that your potential soulmate may be out there – maybe even on the train seat next to you.

speed bump

Today I was thinking about Microsoft’s recently launched search engine, Bing.com, not only because I don’t know what the hell the difference is between that and any other search engine, but because of the tagline that’s been used in the Bing.com commercials – “What has search overload done to us?”

I thought of that slogan because lately I’ve been asking myself a similar question regarding technology and relationships – “What has living in a world of instant gratification done to us?”

This thought had been forming in my head for some time, but it really crystallized Sunday night during my phone conversation with Ang. We were talking about how, thanks to social networking and dating web sites like Facebook and Match and Twitter, we expect to know everything about everyone and their lives– before we even meet them. It’s like the process of getting to know someone has been reversed; nowadays, we want to be able to get the skinny on people (what they like and dislike, what kind of job they have, what they’re doing), and decide based on that if they’re actually worthy of our time, rather than meet someone spontaneously, and go through the process of getting to know him or her little by little, through conversation and spending time together. Imagine that!

Not to mention the fact that, when you come right down to it, no one in our generation has any patience. How could we? We came of age in an era of instant gratification, with everything at our fingertips. The Internet and 24-hour news stations brought the world right to our homes or classrooms; we watch news and history as it happens. Cell phones, e-mail, BlackBerrys, laptops and netbooks mean we are never more than a click away from communicating, from a friend or loved one, from an answer to a question. And it pisses us off to no end when getting that news or making that connection takes longer than that. Think about it – how many times have you cursed at your computer or closed a tab because a web page was taking too long to load, or asked yourself, “Why hasn’t so-and-so texted me back yet? I sent them a message like, five minutes ago.”

I’ve begun to wonder if this addiction to and expectation of instant gratification has leaked into our personal lives, based on the way people tend to, or at least try to, zoom through relationships at top speed. We are so used to getting everything instantly, I think we’re starting to believe relationships work the same way. I’ve heard tell of a bygone era in which people took the time to really get to know each other before committing to an exclusive relationship or engagement or marriage, rather than agreeing to be boyfriend and girlfriend .5 seconds after meeting each other (exaggeration added for effect).

I understand that mutual attraction is a powerful force and plays a large role in the quick stone-hopping from strangers to lovers. Trust me – I know from experience; when you meet someone with whom you have chemistry so palpable you can practically bathe in it, it’s hard to pump the brakes instead of going full-steam ahead. We’ve all been there, and sometimes, it actually works out, and the couple finds out that there is something more substantial underneath that initial, knee-jerk attraction.

What I’m talking about here, I suppose, is the expectation that so many people seem to have that every relationship should be that way, and the pressure – intentional or not – that it puts on others. The concept of taking it slow, and letting a relationship develop organically at its own pace seems to have gone out the window. Nowadays, relationships have a shelf-life, and it’s shorter than an ice cream cone on a hot day. It seems like, if two people are dating, it’s not long at all before one of them starts checking the clock, wondering when it’s time to make a commitment, or make a break for it, and move on to the next one (the prevalence of ADD, real or imagined, in our generation has something to do with this as well, I imagine.)

If I sound like I’m being condescending and judgmental, I’m not, because I’m just as guilty of these habits as anyone. What I’m concerned with is changing these habits, if that’s even possible. It would be nice not to have to feel the pressure to decide if I want someone to be my boyfriend after two dates, or to put that kind of pressure on someone else. And I would think it would be in everyone’s best interest to actually get to know people before we commit to them, and get emotionally involved and wind up engaged or married, only to wake up one morning and realize, “Wow…I really, really don’t like you.” Maybe if we all took a break from our instant gratification fixation, slowed down and gave ourselves time to think things through and process them, we’d stop getting what we think we want, and start getting what we really want.

Just a thought.