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.]