Watching rom-coms and sitcoms, and there’s a trope that’s gone beyond that, and is now a cliche: the single who hops into bed upon first meeting someone but is horrified at the idea of becoming romantically attached. This evidences itself in plot points like:
“OMG, he stayed the night and then made me coffee in the morning! Ew!”
“Ack! I accidentally said “I love you”!”
“Oh no, now she thinks she’s my girlfriend!”
etc.
I am far removed from being either Young or Single…but I thought the point of dating was to eventually find a meaningful relationship.
So is this actually a thing, now? If so, what does that say about our society? If not, what does that say about Hollywood?
What time frame are you talking about? That’s always been the standard one-night-stand cliche for as far back as I can remember, and is a close cousin to the person who gets attached way too early after one date or a friendly lunch or something.
One thing I have noticed is that younger people seem to be less hung up on societal expectations that they get a steady long-term job, get married, have kids, and get a house in the suburbs like Gen-X and the generations before. Being permanently single is ok, married without kids is ok, owning a home seems to have become a pipe dream, and having jobs be less permanent and wound up in their personal lives seems to be a (good) thing as well in that set.
So along with that, I can see there being no hurry to even have a committed relationship, if there’s not the pressure to get married, have kids, etc… Since conventional dating is at its heart, a winnowing type activity driven by the desire to find a suitable marriage/parenthood partner, if that pressure is gone, then the rest of the game changes a lot as well, I think.
Sexytimes are (for most people) pleasurable to watch, but a movie story needs conflict to be compelling; if the bed gymnastics immediately lead to happy relationship, there’s no movie. Hence, the cliche, serving both audience indulgence and the needs of narrative. It’s not more complicated than that.
Another possible circumstance, is that we have a full generation growing up in a society where divorce has become easier and more acceptable, if still very often acrimonious and painful.
NOTE - this is not a slam on divorce and a "collapse of family values sort of statement, it’s just that generally a divorce that involves children can be very emotionally wrought on all involved.
If they, like myself as a not-so-random example have been children in such a situation, there may be an emphasis on finding someone whom you can not only love but live with presumably for a long time, if not automatically until the end of your life.
My wife of (just this month) 21 year and I were in an exclusive relationship, including living together, for 6 or so years (5 before we formally got engaged) and I know it was somewhat stressful for her because her family was far more traditional than mine. But, we got past all those stages of working out ours / yours / my money pains, agreement on yes/no kids (no), and countless other niggles.
Not to say we’re perfect, but I think we’re happy at least, more because she puts up with me than she’s a problem.
Still, I think the trope is MORE trope than reality. I know plenty of both young men and women who want to find their life-partner (of various flavors) quickly, sometimes too quickly in the case of several friends. And I definitely believe that especially in a day and age where reproductive choice is limited, that women (as a whole) have a lot more at risk then men do, especially ones that are ambitious at pursuing a career and fear being pushed by family and social factors (less so than the past certainly, but still) into compromising in order to have a “traditional” relationship.
This. Rom-coms have always been formulistic and as society changes, they adapt. I’m not sure we can take any greater truths or generalizations from them.
I think the question is a solid one, but the romcom-as-evidence kinda hindered the OP.
I have no stats, or even pop science articles I just read about this, but I do know that in my social circles, there’s a large number of people who are single by choice. Women in their early 30’s with zero trouble getting a date etc.
It’s like more and more people don’t need or want a significant other. They value the perks of staying single more.
This wasn’t always so, as exemplified by my mother, who said back in her youth a woman who didn’t find a man to marry was considered a failure, plain and simple.
Not disputing @Toxylon just above, but I’ll call attention to something they said so neatly it might pass unnoticed.
Mom said she’d be considered a failure. IOW, it was others who judged and she felt compulsion to comply with that judgment. Meanwhile, the current generation is deciding for themselves as individuals. That’s a ginormous difference in attitude which leads to an enormous, and much more widely varied range of behaviors by current folks. And not just about marriage.
Moving on to my opinions.
Once one is not forced by social convention or instinctual bio-imperative to reproduce, one doesn’t need a spouse/SO. One might want one, but they come with a lot of disadvantages too.
As a widower in my then-early 60s I definitely saw / see lots of women in similar situations that need a marriage to a man like they need an accordion. Dating is fun; co-habiting is a PITA, and being married means no escape when his / your stuff becomes more than you’re willing to put up with.
See here for more on this from older folk’s POVs:
Taking note of the disastrous baby dearth in many unsettled countries, e.g. Russia, I’m wondering if concerns about global warming, Russian & Chinese aggressions, far-right lunacy in many countries but relevant especially to us here, mostly the US, is leading lots of young folks to say “Baby maybe, but for sure not right now”. Which again really undermines the rationale for committed LTRs versus serial short term “fun in the sun while it lasts” relationships?
I think there are definitely some people who are relationship-averse, though I don’t think its related to age or generation. The classic stereotype of this (in San Francisco, where I lived for 15 years) is the “Peter Pan” type, the middle aged (or older) hetrosexual dude, still living like he’s a 21 year old, with a room in a shared apartment, out partying every night, with a “girlfriend” half his age (though they will never actually admit to being their boyfriend or in a being in a relationship). I know a few people who conform to that stereotype.
Despite the stereotype that its always the guy that doesn’t want to commit to a relationship, and the woman who is looking for commitment, I’d also say its not gender related either, I’ve known plenty of guys who are looking for a relationship but end up with women how want to keep it casual and commitment free.
To address the trope in sitcoms, there’s a logistics issue here. If you have a show about single people, you want to have them date people. But when you appear in multiple episodes of a TV show, your salary goes up from guest to recurring to regular. So it’s cheaper to have someone date a new character every episode than have them date the same person for a whole season. That’s also why when when a character eventually settles down, it’s usually with another cast member.
The way I’ve read it, women are the gatekeepers of attraction and men are the gatekeepers of commitment. Of course there are exceptions, and at some stage in many relationships there’s an overlap, but it’s the was humans pair off.
Of course, this is effected by time and place: tradwives with no outside job skills had to find the best man they could while still dewy maidens. Literature is full of examples of the pitfalls: Lilly Bart in The House of Mirth taking in sewing because she’d been fickle, the parents in The Painted Veil insisting “so what if he’s boring and you don’t love him? Just get married and get out of our house!”
Nowadays that’s not the issue. While not on full earning parity with men (not to open that can of worms, but even if men earn more: call it sad, call it funny, but it’s better than even money
that the guy’s only doing it for some doll), women don’t need men’s money like they used to, they can have freedom of choice when they’re young (or as much as their 60+ hour workweek allows), can nowadays opt out of motherhood with less side-eye from society, and as they age can choose to not be some old man’s nurse (it’s called “gray divorce,” and it’s growing).
Another factor is how online dating skewed the conventions of social connection. And our economy does not facilitate family life - rather the opposite. The worst aspect of this, IMHO, isn’t the “men’s loneliness crisis” that gets blamed for mass shootings (instead of gun manufacturer’s flooding the market with product) is that young people are not developing relationship skills. Those of you in good relationships can agree: they are indispensable.
Finally, a smaller factor but interesting: approximately 5% of men and 4% of women are psychologically incapable of falling on love. They’re not psychopaths: they just don’t get that delightful phase of the oomphies as the rest of us (part of which is our immune systems ramping up to protect against our new sex partner’s germs), which helps in the binding and bonding. Better off that these guys not feel obligated, since when they try to fit in out of social pressure it’s as bad as the old days when gays and the non-monogamous made their spouses miserable by living the lie.
There is also the golden rule of sitcoms, that everything must be the same at the end of the episode as it was at the start. If your lothario type was single the start of the episode, they need to be single at the end, even if there are storylines about engagement, etc in the intervening show.
To be fair, that’s what they said about non-online dating a century ago. “Whatever happened to the days when a gentleman caller politely conversed with his sweetheart in the parlor under the watchful eye of a chaperone?”
Bicycles were blamed for 1890s female promiscuity, and cars even more so later, but the trend ramped up post-WWII with reliable birth control (reliable because it was a pill she could swallow, not a condom she hoped he’d wear), and effective VD treatment. The increase in urbanization meant less gossip over your behavior in the anonymous big city.
But online dating is much, much more than the 70s meat-market singles bars writ large. Then as now, a few guys made out like bandits, but the other guys still had the chance to exchange words and plant the seed for a future connection with a woman. Now he’s just swiped-left. Also, these guys (and I was one of them 45 years ago) could hang out together and the night out wouldn’t be a total loss. Now they’re lonely online, prey to the incel resentment-mongers and Andrew Tates.
Women could also enjoy each other’s companionship. While girls night out is still a thing, now it has to compete with FOMO online, the addiction to male attention safety restricted to their phone and not some potentially dangerous lummox approaching them in public.
Not necessarily true. Recurring characters do not get more than guests. I know this from personal experience. Depends on the guest, of course. And the agent.
Now, regulars do get more, probably. (Depends on the agent.)
I think the writers and show runner has more to do with this. A recurring romantic interest, especially one who moves in with a character, can change the whole balance of a show. An arc of attachment and then breakup is fine, but a full time relationship limits what a character can do. It obviously can happen if it makes sense, but money is the least of it.
Existing characters hooking up may not change things that much - but one of the categories in the old Jump the Shark site (when it was good) was how characters marrying caused shark jumping, with Moonlighting as the highlighted example.
I have to Gen Z kids. Daughter is trans, attracted to women. That makes it harder, but I don’t know that she’s averse. Son is 23 and has had the same partner since Freshman year. They’ve lived together since Junior year. My parents thought I was relationship-averse, but I just had a hard time finding someone who didn’t find my quirks a deal-breaker. I’ve now been married for 27 years. I know, small sample size.
Maybe I wasn’t very clear. My mother was not talking about herself, but directly commenting on the huge difference in realities between the happy single women of today and how single women were seen back when she was young (Northern Europe, early '60’s). She already had a man, and was relieved by that, given the prevailing attitudes at the time, by most young women and most everyone else.
I think @LSLGuy 's point is that it wasn’t the case that your mother was talking about her feelings about herself , like I might consider myself a failure because I never finished my Master’s. Your mother was referring to how society as a whole would considered her a failure regardless of what she may or may not have felt about herself. She might have been content to be single but the people around her would have considered her a failure anyway - and the fact that everyone around you thinks you’re a failure is likely to influence your behavior. After all, you say she was “relieved” that she already had a man - she wouldn’t have been relieved if she hadn’t felt some pressure.
@Doreen nailed it. I wasn’t trying to personalize this about Yo Mamma specifically. In talking with you she was simply a candid spokesperson for her era in her culture.
