Thursday, 09 July 2009

• "Dating"

  
  I was chatting with a girl friend through our office messenger application. She had met a guy through friends and over the last three months, has been getting to know him more via phone and in person. She likes him and believes it's mutual. So I ask, "Are you guys dating now?"

   

  "No," she replied. "I think we over label things and I don't want to put a label on this before we're actually ready to call it something. You can't put a label on getting to know someone."

   

  "Yeah, I see what you mean. But isn't 'dating' a label for two people getting to know each other exclusively and regularly?"

   

  "ha ha. um...maybe."

   

  Sounds like she doesn't want to call it what it is? But I recognize that's what we all struggle with now. The area of relationships and how it begins/ends/grows/etc has gotten so fuzzy. I read another article from boundless.org that spoke to this and provided some reasons for it happening. The article is written as a conversation between a male student asking a professor for insight into what he thought was a "just friends" relationship with a girl gone awry.

  The professor says (and I've paraphrased in some parts to pull their conversation into a paragraph) "these days neither girls nor guys seem to want to admit that their dates are dates. But they have different reasons for not wanting to, and those reasons kick in on different occasions. I think one common reason girls today don't call dates dates is that guys today think 'date' means 'sex.' The idea of dating as courtship has almost disappeared." (I agree with this one...if someone at the office says they're dating someone, it means they're sleeping together.)

   

  "Also, girls these days often don't call dates dates because guys these days are so afraid of commitment. The girl may feel that the only way the guy will ever court her is if he doesn't have to admit that it's courtship." (I also know this from experience. A guy initiated/pursued and we spend time getting to know each other but when I finally ask after six months if we're seeing each other because people have been asking me...he can't say....and then the "relationship" ends.)

   

  He continues, "Girls are right — guys these days are afraid of commitment. It's part of their fear of growing up. And there's another reason. Fear of failure. If you're 'just friends' and she says no to pizza, it's no big deal. But if you ask her on a pizza date and she says no, it's humiliating. To relieve the pressure, guys don't call dates dates. Which relates to another girl reason. Most girls don't want to humiliate guys, so if the guy doesn't call it a date, they go along with him."

   

  "We have the pressure for sex, fear of commitment, fear of failure — all those things have changed the rules of relationships. Add to those things the feeling that men and women are adversaries, and things look pretty grim. No wonder guys aren't willing to call dates dates. They don't know what they might be getting into."

   

  "The problem is that not calling dates dates doesn't work either."

   

  "When you're enjoying a social activity with a girl, you should admit to yourself that it's inherently unlike a social activity with a guy friend. Call it what it is: A date."

  "That makes it sound like it might lead to something," grumbled the student.

  "It might lead to something. That's the point. Dating generates expectations. The problem in our time isn't that it generates expectations — because it ought to generate them. The problem is that too often it generates either wrong expectations or conflicting expectations...An example of a wrong expectation is when the guy thinks he's entitled to sex. The sexual powers are too powerful to play around with outside marriage."

  "I see that well enough. What about the conflicting ones?" asked the student

  "For instance when the guy views the girl just as someone to have fun with, while the girl views the guy as someone she might be interested in marrying."

  This sounds pretty high pressured...particularly as they approach the latter half of their child bearing years. Physiologically we've got time limits and so there's a bit more pressure for us to not waste time with those who don't have deeper intentions for marriage. But I believe, male or female, there's a number of common pressures coming from all sides. Emotionally we're designed to desire relationship and intimacy. Spiritually we know we're "not meant to be alone" and that marriage is something God uses to break us out of selfishness so we can be more Christlike....but we're also constantly reminded by our marriage-phobic, noncommital culture that "it's not a race" or that we should "enjoy being more selfish right now." And even spiritually we're also thinking we ought to "just" depend on God and deny our desires. We tell ourselves and others we're content and not actively looking as to not come across as desparate but internally despair that we'll be alone forever and then counter that with the thought "God is enough....somehow."

   

  Mildly stated....it's a bit of a struggle.

   

  (Interesting side note: There's a part of the brain that communicates between the sensitive, emotional side and the rational, analytical side. It's said to be smaller in men than in women. It doesn't mean they don't feel as much; they feel the same range of emotions as females, however they don't notice it. Explains a lot.)

   

   

   

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