Hey ya’ll, I’m sort of getting back into the dating scene after an extended sabbatical and I’m wondering what the rules are these days. Who should pay on the first date? Are there simple ways in which to tell if a relationship is doomed/fate? What about opening doors, is chivalry dead and if not where is the ERA hiding? What REALLY matters most in a mate (and don’t say hooters)?
Everything looks better in black and white – Paul Simon
Well, Inertia, as a gray-haired dating veteran with a bitter laugh, I’d advise you to just Be Yourself. If he/she doesn’t like your door-holding or paying technique, it’s best to know it upfront.
Me, I am swearing off dating till spring. Going to the gym to get my Girlish Figure back, and will burst forth like a butterfly with the warm weather . . . Mothers, get your sons off the street!
Well, you can use Carbon-14 for the newer stuff, Potassium-Argon for the older stuff… 
Eve, you’re not Flora any more! Remember, we’ve seen pictures. 
My word, how will you ever find me if I’m banished to my room?
inertia wrote:
Hooters.
No, wait…
Polycarp, you’re funny … looking. No, seriously, you’re funny. Meaning “seriously” in the disjunct sense. Hopefully you’ll understand.
My number one dating rule is listen. Not that I have diddly for dating experience, but if I ever got a date, I’d listen a lot to find out why she liked to talk about, and then I’d learn enough about it for it to be interesting, and then everything would be perfect. Well, not everything. If it never got interesting, then I wouldn’t ask her out again. But I bet it would be interesting, since enthusiasm is usually contagious.
Now I said USUALLY. “So the paint is drying in my house! And as it get drier, it gets less shiny! Do you wanna come over and watch?! It’s totally enthralling! I spend all of my spare time doing it!” Not a pretty thought.
BTW, inertia, what the “dating scene” is like also depends on: what part of the country you’re in, whether you’re a man or a woman, and what your sexual preference is. Since I don’t follow a lot of threads here, and since your username doesn’t give any hints and you don’t have a webpage in your profile, I don’t know any of these 3 things about you.
Tracer:
Chicago (suburbish). Male. Female.
Everything looks better in black and white – Paul Simon
Okay, since nobody asked I’ll tell you about the closest thing I’ve had to a date in a coupla years. There’s this really bookish woman at work. She doesn’t work for my company, she works for a little non-profit that shares our building. Anyway, so what the hell do I mean when I say she’s “bookish”. Well, it’s hard to describe. Has spectacles. Glasses aren’t necessarily related to being studious, but super-vain women always go for contacts, so I figure it’s worth a few bookish points. She’s kind of shy and doesn’t wear any makeup, or else it’s so subtle I don’t notice.
So basically, she seems kind of like my type. Not a big-haired blond type, or a ravenous femme fatale type, or a cheery overgrown teeny-bopper type, or any other type, which is always woefully inadequate to describe someone but which is really all you have to go on before you’ve chewed the fat with somebody.
I figured I’d ask her to lunch real casually one day. No big deal; there’s a refectory in our building and people eat together all the time without getting teensy butterflies in their stomachs when they look at each other. So one day when I couldn’t quite muster the courage to ask her to lunch, I went to a little sandwich place near the office, and guess who was sitting there reading the newspaper! She looked like a very good-natured owl. I almost expected her to be tearing open the carcass of a field mouse with her beak.
No not really. She was having a grilled cheese. So I invited myself to her table (something I NEVER would have had the courage to do a coupla years ago), and she didn’t seem dismayed. We talked about her job - coordinating volunteers who work with first-graders in disadvantaged schools. That was what made me think of the listen edict from my last post. I listened to her mostly unfamiliar career, and I picked up on some of her enthusiasm for helping poor kids, and reading.
It was a lot of fun. I didn’t have to perform. I just sat and gabbed with her about how it bites that so many parents don’t find the time to read to their toddlers.
And no, it wasn’t close to a date, but it’s still the closest thing this old hermit has had to a date since like 1995. So one of these days I’m going to ask her to lunch, and we’re going to fall in love and have a legendary romance involving lots of parasailing, escapes from underwater complexes controlled by criminal masterminds bent on world destruction, chocolate mousse, and tropical lagoons.
There’s just one problem with my plan … what if she’s allergic to chocolate?!
Waaa! Everybody ignores me 'cept the Republicans!
[Moderator Hat: ON]
Sending this one to MPSIMS.
David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator
[Moderator Hat: Being handed off to Eut.]
Boris B: You’re a sweetie. Good luck.
“Wednesday the 15th - Chris made one of her rare good points today.”
Guanolad
So…are you cute?
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
“We are here! You are saved!” --R. & F.
There isn’t much of a dating scene anymore. At least that’s my experience.
Easy for you to say George. Finding womens undies wink wink nudge nudge all the time and all!
-Frankie
Lack of charisma can be fatal
Thank you Chris. I’m hoping she’ll feel the same way. I’m still stung from David’s implication that my romantic life is mundane and pointless. !-(
Just kidding. I’m hoping to reduce the mundanity of my romantic life soon.
And yes, it’s true in some ways that there isn’t much of a dating scene as such any more. Dating was part of a formalized courtship thang, like Elizabethan “courtly love” for the modern day. You’d meet somebody and figure out if you wanted to marry them by dating them.
Nowadays, it’s all gotten haphazard, with people marrying later, if ever. Plus, casual sex has appeared in the culture in the last coupla decades, which has complicated things incredibly. So basically, you have to make the dating scene for yourself, which is very intimidating, yet somehow liberating.
That’s the extent of my philosophy on this subject. Discuss amongst yourselves.
That which does not kill me just makes me really irritable
I, too, am re-entering the “scene” if there is one.
My question is:
Where do people meet each other these days?
Please, no tales of love at first sight in the grocery store.
I don’t go to church or other herd-like institutions.
Forget bars. That’s how my failed relationships began (being of unsound mind and all).
Coffee shops just aren’t as conducive to approaching strangers (probably caffeine-induced anxiety).
I’m trying the cyber-match thing and meeting all kinds of women:
Advice?
woooo the dating scene. Supposedly I’ve been in it for the last nine years…give or take a few engagements that I’ve broken along the way…it comes in cycles…sometimes I really like to get out there and date…the whole dinner and movie thing…other times…just leave me alone and let me sit at home and watch the tube and play on the computer. Best advice I can give…just be yourself…don’t sweat the little stuff…don’t try to impress…if you don’t open the door for her at least make sure it doesn’t slam in her face…and if you ask someone on a date…you pay.
“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda
I’ve given myself a no-dating edict for one year. This is mainly because I’ve spent too much of my young adult life with one serious relationship or another, and none have really been what you could call healthy. Finally I decided I can’t really finish the development of my own mind and spirit while hanging onto (or being hung onto by, as the case may be,) a guy.
That said, an interesting thing happened last night. There’s a radio station here in Kansas City, talk radio, and I have been a fairly frequent caller on one show for about a year now. The producer of the show and I had exchanged a few e-mails and phone conversations over the last few months, but nothing deeper really than “So, you’re bald, huh?” and I never thought anything of it.
Last night, the producer called me and said, “Hey I’m hungry, let’s meet at IHOP in 45 minutes.” It happened to be my birthday yesterday too, btw, and I was sitting as bored as a duck at the time. “Why the heck not?” I thought, so hopped in the car and went to meet him.
I’d like to stress that I considered this a NON-DATE in every way… however, it was the best time I’ve had in sooooo long, and I laughed so hard with him my face was hurting all the way home. If anything is going to be ‘healthy’ for me, or for anyone else, it would be finding someone and not even considering them as a romantic possibility, just finding someone as a COMPANION possibility and maybe, just maybe, along the road something will develop.
Meanwhile, I’m just going to enjoy having a friend to hang out with for once, instead of jumping headfirst into a fullfledged courtship.
“Argue for your limitations; sure enough, they’re yours.”
Yeah, TennHippie, I have this problem too. (If only you weren’t 3000 miles away ) As I said in my personal - “I tend to do things slightly differently than everyone around me” I mean, I’m in the middle of the frickin Bible Belt and I belly dance - that eliminates 80% of the single guys out there and turns another 10% in sleazy scumbags!
Back to our original OP, I had a similar thread a couple of weeks ago that asked some of the same questions, you might want to find it.
The person doing the asking does the paying.
Are there simple ways in which to tell if a relationship is doomed/fate? No
Opening doors: I don’t care what anyone else says, the first rule of opening doors for someone should be don’t stand in the damned way! If you have to stand in the doorway to hold it open, for goodness sake, walk through and hold it open from the other side. And I hold doors open for men if I get to the door first.
Finally, what matters most in a mate? Well, that’s different for everyone but here’s my list:
Loving
Supportive
Intelligent
Honest
Wants to have children
Cooperative, yet assertive
Open
Reasonably free of hangups
Artistic
Reasonable about money
Responsible
Hmmm… Do you think God lives in Texas?
…in a state so nonintuitive it can only be called weird…