I put this here because even though it seems like there should be a solid factual answer, I’m not at all certain that there is. Maybe it’s not even possible.
So my question is this;
What is the (possibly speculative) root of how social interactions are carried out between people?
For example, boy and girl see each other in <public or group context> and feel a sexual attraction to each other. They come together and begin what I can’t help but label as a “mating ritual”. They both know what they want, but instead of directly talking about it, they talk around it. I understand that a lot of it is about figuring out personalities, is this person safe for me etc. Why not just skip all that and go right to the heart of the matter? Get references, info that can be verified, do a little research etc. Why do we not just say hey we both seem to want to boink, here’s some stuff si we can check each other out and make sure we’re not axe murderers, in the meantime I like pina coladas walks on the beach and getting caught in the rain. Also I like getting my nipples pinched and ass slapped but no hair pulling, what about you?
Brought to you by another sleepless night sponsored by Counting Sheep Workers Union, Local 1234 (currently on strike)
This happens so often that establishing a relationship, or simply mating, couldn’t happen every time.
There is fear of rejection. Fear that you have misinterpreted the other person; maybe one of them just like hugs, or flirting. Maybe one of them is in a relationship; they may be physically attracted to the other person, but they don’t want to cheat. Maybe he’s a Catholic priest who looks like Robert Redford out of uniform. He still has a sex drive, but isn’t going to do anything with it.
I think one reason dating websites are so popular is this: you can skip the initial confusion, and you’re not going to be rejected to your face. You still have to find out if the person is safe, has a compatible personality, is sexually compatible, etc, but any person you’re interacting with is almost certainly looking for a date.
From who? I don’t tell any of my friends about my sex life, so if someone tried to ask my friends about that, they can answer with nothing.
Not everyone has a lot of info about themselves online.
Without the reference checking this happened a fair bit when I was young and single. I’d see a hot girl go up ask her name and some basic info and supply her with the same and then I’d ask if she wanted to leave the bar and go back to my house. We’d go have some fun and then she’d leave.
Now, the vast majority of the time girls did not want to leave the bar with me after an hour of chatting but there are a whole bunch of societal expectations wrapped up in there including not wanting to leave her friends behind or not wanting to look like a slut. Some times she would leave with me the end of the evening some times her friends would like my friends and we would all leave together and other times I’d just get a phone number. I think solving those social problems is the bigger hang up then the system which is why Tinder and Grinder are successful.
The problem is, most people have a set of assumptions about what we all want, or what we are all supposed to want, and also about how these things are done. Very few people are inclined to dismiss all that and start from scratch.
If they did (and some people do, they’re just rare), I can assure you that they don’t begin talking about pina coladas and walks on the beach and getting caught in the rain. There’s all kinds of actually substantive stuff they’d be comparing notes about INSTEAD: "Do you have sexual feelings of any sort at all? What are they like for you? Would you ever want to act on them? With someone? Would acting on them involve stimulating nerve endings, and if so whose, and with what, and how, and what would be the expected emotional content? Would you prefer tender or are you more disposed towards violent slamming and the drawing of blood? Would the beforementioned acting upon sexual feelings involve stimulation to orgasm, and, if so, on the first excursion into sexualized behavior or prolonged chastity with or without chastity-enforcing devices? Do you in fact like orgasm or it it something you’d want to avoid? How do you feel about the bodies of other people, the touching thereof and the nerve endings thereof, do you experience it as a positive thing to invoke sensations in others? Oh and by the way, assuming you intend that your sexual partner survive and all that, would you expect to continue interaction, and, if so, on a regular basis with some basis of understanding of yourselves as a sexual-romantic relationship? If so, exclusive or open? Do you expect your partners to engage in sexual behavior with your other existing partners of both sexes or only those of a specified sex or only if they find each other mutually cute? Do you have an opinion on cannibalism of body parts severed as part of erotic behavior, and if so with or without horseradish? Reproduction, yea or nay? Will we both stay home and raise the little cuties or did you expect I would while you continue to work, or will our significant others be the primary caregivers? Will we homeschool them or keep them locked in the basement chained to the radiator or do you have a prep school in mind? ETC…
For the ones who think “yeesh, who would want to discuss everything, that kills all the spontaneity”, and who think there’s a default set of answers because except for a few weirdos we want the same things, there is indeed a mating ritual and you see it taking place before your eyes all the time, but why would they need to “talk about it”? That’s not what they need to do. Nor is it what they’re prepared to do, since, as people who think they are just going with the defaults that “everyone wants”, they haven’t put much of what they DO want into words, even to themselves. They instead interact and keep getting surprised at how often the other people they meet don’t seem to be on the same channel after all.
What you are clearly not understanding is that the biggest part of a relationship is not the sex, but intimacy. Building intimacy relies in no small measure on trust, and trust is something that is built between people, not passed around like a referral card.
If I’m reading the OP’s intentions correctly, one party to the date would say, “Now is the time to consume mass quantities!” and the other need not say anything at all.
Do they, though? What they want and know they want; what they want but don’t know they want; what they think they’re supposed to want; what they want right now but would be profoundly unsatisfied with… these can all be different things.
And in the situation you describe, the two people don’t know each other very well, which makes it hard to know what they want, or can reasonably expect, from each other.
Wow, now that I have a moment to come back to this thread, I’m really hoping this sparks some discussion that will help me figure out what I was thinking. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it seemed clear to me at the time, but when your drunk from not being able to sleep for a couple of days, well, after the fact you realize that it’s not so much so. My apologies everyone.
Kimera757, I didn’t mean references about sex life specifically. I was thinking references that would allow a sort of informal (or formal I suppose, if one was so inclined, but that requires much more) background check. Is this person a love’em and leave’em type or are they steady and reliable? Are they a really great person or do they actually spit on the homeless person who asks for some pocket change or are they somewhere in between.
Not knowing anything about the OP, the phrasing of the questions IMHO sounds like someone who was grew up in the “digital” world of social media and dating apps, as opposed to maybe someone older who grew up in the more analogue world of complex, ambiguous interpersonal relationships. That is to say, a desire to distill people and interpersonal relationships down to a series of quantifiable metrics and algorithms that ultimately produce a simple “yes or no” answer. Like why can’t you place 50 or even 100 or so parameters into a database and have some machine learning algorithm predict whether someone is a match.
The short answer is that interpersonal relationships consist of way too many variables and there is a world of difference between “not an ax murderer” and “I want to sleep with this person”. Someone could check all the right boxes, but still be annoying.
Heh! I was a kid in the 70s, so maybe did some growing up in the very early digital age, but my roots are pretty much analog.
So, anyway, I sort of figured out what it was I was trying to ask. Seems kind of stupid now.
Does anyone know of an app that monitors sleep and prevents insommial posting if the user hasn’t slept for 53 hours?
Oh yeah,
the original question can be boiled down to this, pregnancy and disease are something easily managed with education and contraception, is this person going to hurt me is still a legitimate fear, wtf is wrong with us as a culture and society and where is all the free and easy sex I was promised?
OKCupid (especially before it was ruined by the people who bought it out) was doing a very nice job of matching, not based on a mere 50 to 100 parameters but 250 to 1500 or more. So yes, given enough questions and (in particular) an ability to do a search for who answered a specific set of questions in a specific way = a remarkably good way to find appropriate matches.
I’m in your club. Sleepless and confused. I thought your OP seemed a bit hazy, but I got it, as if that mattered to anyone.
In this tech/info age we live in, everyone wants instant gratification. Interpersonal relationships just don’t work like that. Plus people lie like crazy online.
Any method of contraception can fail; and many of them have significant nasty side effects for a percentage of users. Disease prevention methods can also fail; and not all strains of all diseases are curable.
The chances of pregnancy and of disease can be massively reduced with education and easy access to preventative measures, yes. But that doesn’t remove them entirely from consideration.
Plus which of course one of the things people need to assess – or at least very many people want to assess – is the degree both of education and of willingness on the part of the potential partner. Which unfortunately one can’t count on being able to accurately assess just by asking them.
Because it’s fun. Flirtation is one of life’s greatest pleasures. The uncertainty, the sexual tension, getting caught in that furtive glance, the secret smiles, the conspiratorial jokes. It’s fun.