As many ways as there are to be rejected, whether we want to believe it or not, there are just as many arenas of dating. You have traditional dating, online dating, speed dating, virtual dating, blind dating, Myspace, Facebook, and even text message dating. Yet despite this extensive selection to choose from, it seems as if dating, like a gallon of milk, has reached an expiration date in our young adult society.
As I pondered on this idea, I decided to get some more evidence for my newfound theory of the “outdated date,” and I knew the best place to look: my friends. After a nice long lunch conversation at Play It Again, Sam’s, I tallied the results. It was just as I suspected. No one could really say she had ever dated or even been on one non-committal date. I suddenly felt as if I was in a Dr. Seuss book where everything was topsy-turvy. What was a date? Why wasn’t it here? Why was it lifted and taken somewhere?
I for one know that my entire love life has been a stream of relationships. Commitment, symbolized by a public outing seemed to be the motto of my exes. It was then, looking into my delicious Alaskan at Sam’s, that I set out to crack the code on why dating seems to have suddenly become antique. It wasn’t until I was back in my dorm room a few hours later that an answer began to formulate.
If I were to ask anyone on campus if he or she know a particular person, I’m 90 percent sure that he or she would say yes, and even if he or she is the 10 percent that doesn’t know the person, he or she would at least know the face.
In elementary school we knew everyone at recess, in high school we knew everyone in our homeroom, and in college we get to know every one in our residence hall. The levels of schooling in which we are enrolled are the clocks of our entire young adult lives. Yet we don’t go through these educational systems alone. We have vast communities to relate to and interact with. Friendships are formed for survival. Relationships are formed as tools of connection. A simple date or the lifestyle of dating provides you with only fragmented relationships. A date is not binding like a relationship.
Another reason steady dating is preferred in our generation over non-committal dating is time. The community of a college or university allows for two individuals not only to have the same classes, but the same residence hall, and even the same extra curricular activities. Who needs to plan a date when you know you’re going to see each other tomorrow afternoon at 12:30 for biology?
I thought that once I figured out why dating had become outdated in our age group, I would have achieved some closure on the subject. However, I still can’t help but feel that we are missing out on something because dating is no longer “in.” What about all the men and women whom we don’t get to interact with in biology class, or the individuals we don’t live with in our residence halls? What if all this time our expired love lives have been going sour not because of bad choices or broken hearts, but the deterioration of dating?
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