On Monday, February 11, the topic is How Dating Has Changed . . . We Aren't in Our 20s Anymore.
Here's the video.
Here's the video.
So the question is . . . has dating changed since most of us were in our 20s. The answer is, yes, quite a bit.
When we were in our late teens and early 20s, we were likely in school or had friends who were going to school. We were out and about and regularly meeting people. I tell my college students, especially freshmen, that as much as college is for getting an education, it is also the greatest opportunity to meet new and different people that they will likely ever have.
As adults in our 30s and 40s and 50s and beyond, we no longer have the repeated and abundant opportunity to meet new people at the start of every new semester. Rather, our lives are fairly routinized. We see the same people we always see at work and at church and where we volunteer or grocery shop. Then, we come home to the same people who are always at home. These might be family members or roommates or no one at all. All of that repetitive sameness of every day life creates a daunting challenge for folks dating past their middle 30s to even meet a potential date. So, we combat this by doing something new. Be somewhere different. Visit the vending machine on a different floor of your office building. Have lunch at a new restaurant. Sit in and drink your latte rather than taking it to go. If you don't expose yourself to new environments, you won't expose yourself to new people. If you've already ruled out everyone you know as a possible dating partner, you need to meet new people.
It isn't just that meeting people is different than it used to be. Technology has changed the way we date - truly. Personally, I find the business of building a relationship by text messaging to be annoying to say the least. Worse than that, though, there is an abundance of research that suggests that we develop inaccurate and idealized versions of people with whom we are building new relationships via text. We can edit texts and emails. We can think carefully about customizing our messages to our potential-partner's preferences. We become an edited, manicured, ideal, and seemingly perfect version of ourselves that our beautiful, imperfect selves could never be in reality. The discrepancy between who we seem to be via text and who we are in real life can undermine the growth of a relationship.
Technology has changed dating in another way as well: it makes our potential dating partners constantly accessible to us. Actually, it's not that we have constant access to a possible partner. Rather, we expect that we have constant access to a possible partner. We keep our mobile phones and other devices close by at all times. We get calls and texts and emails and chat messages all on the same gadget (and so do our potential dating partners), so by golly, we expect that if we call or text or email or chat that our communication will be responded to as quickly as possible. We have lost all sense of communicative boundary. Gone are the days of calling once and waiting by the one phone with the one answering machine for a call back or a message. Now, if we don't reply to an email, we send a text. If we don't get a reply to the text, we chat or send another email. Finally, after all of that, we might decide to call. The fact is, technology provides us an abundance of ways to make a nuisance of ourselves at the start of a relationship. Call. Leave voicemail. Step away from the smartphone.
Although technology has posed new challenges for those of us who are dating after 30, it has also allowed us the opportunity to meet people we would never have run into in spite of our best attempts. Online dating allows us the unique chance to, in the span of 10 minutes, scan profiles, find one we like, send the fella an email, read his response, and immediately decide if we wish to reply or move on to someone new. On top of being able to evaluate a possible partner in less time than it takes toenail polish to dry, we have the added bonus of being able to do all of this all without the hassle of getting spruced up and ever leaving the comfort of our couches or pajama pants. The great thing about online dating is that we really do have the potential to meet folks we would never have run into without the help of a website. The trouble is . . . rather the troubles are numerous. We have to contend with a certain amount of misrepresentation. Often, people who create online dating profiles lie about personal characteristics like weight and height which increase their apparent physical attractiveness (which, as it happens, is especially true of people who are not particularly physically attractive). Although people tend to be honest about other things like income and relationship status, the fact is, online dating encourages self-misrepresentation that dating face to face allows us to avoid. Although it has its challenges, dating online isn't impossible and can be fun if you do it safely and smartly and never spend more than 2 days emailing before you get them on the phone, and never spend more than a week on the phone/online before you meet them in person.
Clearly, this isn't an exhaustive account of how dating past 30something is different than dating at 20something, but it's a start. Finding someone to love later in life isn't impossible, it's just a new and different set of challenges we eventually learn to navigate just like we've learned to navigate so many challenges before this. The best part about dating past 30something is that it gives us a good reason to break our routine and find creative ways to spend our time. In the end, dating is about adding fullness and richness to a life we already love living. If we commit to living some of our lives out and about in our communities and we look happy and confident while doing it, we've already improved our chances of meeting someone we want to have dinner and a movie with . . . and that is something that hasn't changed a bit.
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