Coco says romance is always the woman's idea and that even if a man asks a woman out, it must first become her idea and what she wants for it to go anywhere. I have been thinking about this a lot lately and trying to come up with a working definition of dating as well as a deeper analysis of what it means to date. According to Wikipedia and Websters Online Dictionary, a date is : " an occasion when one meets and goes out with a potential lover or future spouse. In this sense, the purpose of a date is for the people dating to get to know each other and decide whether they want to have a relationship. However, the term is also used to mean a social evening between people who have an established relationship, particularly if the goal is to relax away from day-to-day responsibilities, such as caring for children."But what about the gray area? Can you go on dates if you are neither looking for a lover or a spouse and don't have an established relationship with someone? I guess you could call it fake dating. All of the ingredients of dating, but without the expectation.
A little over a year ago, I met a hippie at a coffee shop. We'll call him Julian. Julian is more than 20 years older than me, he doesn't have a phone, he works when he feels like it, and he has and continues to travel around the United States hitch hiking. We had known each other casually for a few months, when he asked me to accompany him to dinner and a movie in celebration of the anniversary of his giving up smoking. I agreed to go, but subsequently felt really weird about it. Was this a date? The purpose was to get to know each other and hang out in a new way, but he is really not my type. At that point, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to be real friends with him or if I wanted to maintain our acquaintanceship. I get kind of weird about new friends when I'm not sure of their motives, but in the end I went and we had a lot of fun. In fact we decided that we would see another movie the next week and the next.
During this time I met and began dating my most recent ex....we'll call him the Big Round Headed Liar (RH for short). Real dating RH did not interfere in anyway with my fake dating Julian, but now RH is gone. Julian went to New Mexico for a couple of months, cause that's what traveling hippies do I guess, then he made his way back here. We have resumed our fake courtship, but recently he has made gestures that suggest that I may be the only one fake dating, such as giving me a giant heart shaped box of chocolates on V-day and asking me out on a "double date" with some mutual acquaintances. We never kiss. There is no hand holding. Payment varies, sometimes we go dutch, sometimes he pays, sometimes I pay depending on who has more money.
In trying to figure this out I have come to some realizations about my belief system. Most of what I believe about dating comes from TV, not from real life. On TV, real dates end begin with flowers and end with kisses, so I am always kind of looking for both, and often irritatingly disappointed. Wisconsin was horrible place to begin dating. I started when I was 17 and it was a disaster of awkwardness. To have all those lovey, crush feelings returned in such a garbled, complicated way, made me weird about dating. Perhaps that is why I often slip, trip, and fall into my relationships. They sneak up on me. I don't date a lot, I either get involved with people I already know or I have 1 or 2 real dates and suddenly its like we're in a relationship...which of course shifts the focus of the date.
I recently went on what might have been a real date with a very tall and brilliant man who we'll call Brooklyn. During the course of post dinner tea, we started talking about dating and relationships and Brooklyn confessed that throughout his 20s he was all about being in a couple. He says he is decidedly more comfortable in relationships. Which is exactly the opposite of me. I want to be in a relationship, or so I tell myself, but when I am sometimes I find myself feeling a little constricted. It can be work...I mean you have to compromise, there are hurt feelings, and conflicting time schedules. Being alone is so much simpler. I confessed this to Brooklyn and he kind of laughed at me. I told him I'm not that great at dating and that I wish I knew what it was supposed to look like. If I can see something done right, I can usually imitate it. He said the big secret is that no one knows how to date and that for him it was just always better having someone else there with him not knowing either. Brooklyn is embracing singliciousness at the start of his 30s and finally getting brave about figuring it out alone. And as I end my 20s, I think I'd like to be brave as well and start real dating, hopefully with less disastrous results.
A little over a year ago, I met a hippie at a coffee shop. We'll call him Julian. Julian is more than 20 years older than me, he doesn't have a phone, he works when he feels like it, and he has and continues to travel around the United States hitch hiking. We had known each other casually for a few months, when he asked me to accompany him to dinner and a movie in celebration of the anniversary of his giving up smoking. I agreed to go, but subsequently felt really weird about it. Was this a date? The purpose was to get to know each other and hang out in a new way, but he is really not my type. At that point, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to be real friends with him or if I wanted to maintain our acquaintanceship. I get kind of weird about new friends when I'm not sure of their motives, but in the end I went and we had a lot of fun. In fact we decided that we would see another movie the next week and the next.
During this time I met and began dating my most recent ex....we'll call him the Big Round Headed Liar (RH for short). Real dating RH did not interfere in anyway with my fake dating Julian, but now RH is gone. Julian went to New Mexico for a couple of months, cause that's what traveling hippies do I guess, then he made his way back here. We have resumed our fake courtship, but recently he has made gestures that suggest that I may be the only one fake dating, such as giving me a giant heart shaped box of chocolates on V-day and asking me out on a "double date" with some mutual acquaintances. We never kiss. There is no hand holding. Payment varies, sometimes we go dutch, sometimes he pays, sometimes I pay depending on who has more money.
In trying to figure this out I have come to some realizations about my belief system. Most of what I believe about dating comes from TV, not from real life. On TV, real dates end begin with flowers and end with kisses, so I am always kind of looking for both, and often irritatingly disappointed. Wisconsin was horrible place to begin dating. I started when I was 17 and it was a disaster of awkwardness. To have all those lovey, crush feelings returned in such a garbled, complicated way, made me weird about dating. Perhaps that is why I often slip, trip, and fall into my relationships. They sneak up on me. I don't date a lot, I either get involved with people I already know or I have 1 or 2 real dates and suddenly its like we're in a relationship...which of course shifts the focus of the date.
I recently went on what might have been a real date with a very tall and brilliant man who we'll call Brooklyn. During the course of post dinner tea, we started talking about dating and relationships and Brooklyn confessed that throughout his 20s he was all about being in a couple. He says he is decidedly more comfortable in relationships. Which is exactly the opposite of me. I want to be in a relationship, or so I tell myself, but when I am sometimes I find myself feeling a little constricted. It can be work...I mean you have to compromise, there are hurt feelings, and conflicting time schedules. Being alone is so much simpler. I confessed this to Brooklyn and he kind of laughed at me. I told him I'm not that great at dating and that I wish I knew what it was supposed to look like. If I can see something done right, I can usually imitate it. He said the big secret is that no one knows how to date and that for him it was just always better having someone else there with him not knowing either. Brooklyn is embracing singliciousness at the start of his 30s and finally getting brave about figuring it out alone. And as I end my 20s, I think I'd like to be brave as well and start real dating, hopefully with less disastrous results.
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