Are Relationships Becoming Extinct?
The New York Times recently published a piece in which they posit the question: Is this the end of courtship? Courtship, by their definition, means actually calling someone up on the phone and asking them out on a proper date. You know, like what our moms and dads used to do with each other. It’s the reason why we’re all here today in fact! Frankie called up Annette and asked her to go out for sodas after school! Then one soda led to another and all of a sudden Annette was on her back and about to be pregnant with you! Ah, romance…
I’m 26-years-old. When my mother was my age, she had already given birth to a child and was pregnant with her second one. She’d also been married for a few years. Nothing illustrates a generational shift quite like comparing your life to your parents. In that sense, The New York Times has a point. The dating landscape has changed. Things aren’t what they once were. But wouldn’t it be weird if it had stayed the same? Everything else has changed so why would the way we date be any different?
Here’s how dating has changed, according to NYT: People don’t “date” anymore, they simply hang out.
True and false. The definition of a date has become a lot looser in the past few years. Like, you don’t have to buy me flowers or pay for dinner for me to know that you want to put your P in my A. But, honestly, thank god it’s not like that anymore! How awkward! How stuffy! How expensive! While it certainly feels nice to have an old school chivalrous moment, I find the antiquated definition of dating to be too suffocating. I much prefer to invite a dude to come with me to a friend’s party or over to my house to watch a movie. If he doesn’t understand that it’s a date, he will when I’m lunging at him by the end of the night!
Hookup culture has taken the place of actual relationships.
Again, true and false. I think everyone can relate to sleeping with someone for a few months, unsure of what you are to each other, and then poof!! The “relationship” disappears overnight with no explanation. That is one thing I hate about the current dating culture. No one thinks they owe anyone an explanation. You meet someone, you decide to see each other for a bit, and when you’re over it, you can just quickly exit through the backdoor. I don’t care what year it is, that kind of behavior is just bad manners! Unfortunately, I do think all of this technology has given us severe penis and vagina ADD. We always think there could be someone better waiting along for us because, quite literally, the whole world is accessible through our fingertips. It wasn’t like that when our parents were dating at our age. If you found someone you could stand, you held on to them for dear life because meeting someone new wasn’t so easy.
That being said, almost all of my friends are in relationships. Some of them may have been obtained through modern means (OKCupid: It’s real!) but they’re together and happy and loving each other like people have been doing since the dawn of time. You see, no matter what happens, people will always need to be loved. We will always yearn for companionship. It’s how we’re wired. So, even though the steps to landing a relationship may’ve changed, the end goal will always stay the same. Courtship is not over. It just got a fucked up facelift.