'The Difficulties of 21st Century Dating'

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens ... ating.html

Interesting newspaper website article

"The difficulties of 21st-century dating

21st-century singledom is a baffling realm of non-date dates, non-relationship relationships, crossed wires and failed semantics. Rebecca Holman, a possibly single 29-year-old, reports."

I found this part especially interesting:-

"As Voyer explains, ‘People are increasingly constructing two identities – their online identity, and their offline identity.’ He points to Twitter in particular, saying that ‘new ways of interacting have widened the gap between our actual selves – who we actually are – and our “ought” selves – who we think other people want us to be.’

So, proper, honest, face-to-face communication is key. Unfortunately, for a generation practically weaned on telecommunication devices, person-to-person communication is not exactly our strong suit – as evidenced by a stand-up argument I recently had with a man I was seeing. We were having a drink in the pub when I referred to him, to his face, as my boyfriend.

‘I’m not your boyfriend – I never said I was!’ he exclaimed, panic rising in his voice.

‘Well, what are we then?’

‘We’re friends – you’re my friend.’

At this point, I’d been sleeping with this man for… well, far longer than I care to admit; yet most of our communication was via text message or drunken conversations at the end of the night. In retrospect, it was clear that our ‘relationship’ was no such thing, that he wasn’t willing to give me what I wanted and deserved.

But I’d missed this fact entirely because I’d read what I wanted to into his messages – and because we were in constant communication. To my mind, I was never that pitiful caricature of a desperate woman, waiting by the telephone for him to call; we texted, Facebooked or emailed every day. He always seemed available, even when he wasn’t."

There's a chapter on that in "He's Just Not Into You" (which is a great and funny read!). Everything nowadays is casual and vague. Group dates and hang-outs, friends-with-benefits, two people who seem to be a couple then one of them is shocked to find out their (non!)partner sees them as a couple, freaking out over being called X's boyfriend/girlfriend when they have been seeing X most days for six months...

It's just messy, confusing and weird.

I was shocked to find out you now have to have a discussion on whether or not you are exclusive, otherwise either partner has every right to be sleeping with other people!

Yes it is very confusing, especially if you see people out of your age range as you move into relationship etiquette territory that is completely alien to what you are used to!

I am 46 but see a person who is 32 and he had all this 'we're just friends' thing going on but woe betide me if I saw any other man or even talked about one! It was a case of 'exclusive' friends even if it wasn't a standard bf/gf type relationship.

At least people knew where they stood in my day - you were either going out as bf/gf or you weren't! If you just slept around you were a 'slapper' or 'slag' - not that I used these terms myself. The definitions and boundaries of the different ways of interacting with people have all been blurred so no one knows what's going on half the time!

That just makes me feel old. A whole generation that doesn't know dating without a cell phone?! I'm so old.

Hear, hear. What disturbs me just is much is that much of my dating pool seems to be adopting the "hook up" style of their children's generation!

I feel like an old-fashioned dinosaur for wanting a permanent, stable, loving relationship!

It's probably all take place via holograms in the future too - not even in person!

Or with robots

What are you driving at... you referring to the impersonal sext-ing generation?
You have a good point... as soon as someone develops a computer/phone attachment that feels better than real sex, the human race is done for.

Yes the general lack of human warmth and connection

As long as the sex is good people won't care that it's not with an actual human any more!

Reproduction will be something that is planned and booked like a visit to a clinic - it will be a totally separate act to sex

There will be two distinct forms of interaction - 'I want to have sex with you' or 'I want to mate with you' and only one will need a human but they'll probably devise a new form of reproduction that doesn't even need 2 humans in future anyway eg cloning

I shall call him Mini-me!

I have this eerie feeling I have seen this played out in the movie Vanilla Sky...