Is dating a Bad Deal for women?

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”    Mark Twain

Dating and courtship, as we know it today, is a relatively new concept.  It started between 1920 and 1930 in both the United States and Europe, and for many years, dating was strongly linked to marriage.  It had the characteristics of what now is an engagement.  Before that, and as it still is in certain cultures, dating did not exist.  Thus, unmarried persons had only two possible states: single or engaged.  Singles were available, engaged were not.  There was clarity.  The person used to go from single to engaged, without dating.

The courtship and dating concept appears in the 1920s and 1930s, but it was in the 1960s, and because of the sexual revolution, the introduction of contraceptives methods, and the women’s liberation movement, that courtship and marriage get unlinked.

And so, dating becomes an ambiguous term.  The “boyfriends” or “girlfriends” are not engaged for marriage, but neither are single.  How is this?  Could it be that they are half available, and at the same time, half exclusive?  Are they available or unavailable to other romantic possibilities?  Courtship, no longer related to marriage, becomes a confusing term.[1]

The current “dating” status is not something that the human mind recognizes and social research reveals it.  It has been found that, unconsciously, flirting with romantic intent behavior is very similar in people who define themselves as “boyfriends” or “girlfriends”, as those that defined themselves as “single”.  Therefore, current relationship status in dating individuals has no specific meaning in the human mind; the subconscious does not recognize it.

There are four problems with dating.  First, dating is not privative of inexclusivity.  Without engagement, the human mind unconsciously continues flirting and involuntary body language reveals it. [2]

Second, it allows being in a relationship without a goal.  There is no purpose.  You procrastinate engagement and that is exactly what is expected; there is no hurry, you are only dating.  Relationships with absence of plans to marry tend to end, and so do relationships that are longer than 2 years.

Third, it allows for the development of unrealistic expectations and disappointment.  One partner may feel committed and closed to other options, while the other partner does not feel committed and is open to other options.  This phenomenon is called asymmetric commitment.  Studies indicate that romantic relationships were involvement is uneven eventually break up, and the abandoned part will have had lost time and opportunities.

Fourth, dating is an excuse for premature sexual intimacy – is an excuse for sex.  An investigation estimated that youth in dating relationships are 7 times more likely to have sex, and the age of starting to date is highly predictive of the age of first intercourse.  In addition, teens who enter early dating also initiate sex at an early age, and have more permissive attitudes toward sex. [3]

Premarital sex is more common in lower social classes.  Women of middle and upper classes are not as prone to dispense sexual favors to the point of intercourse, and seem to value more their virginity.[4]

In university environments, 4 out of 10 students start having sex within the first month of dating.  Young people who do not date are unlikely to have sex.[5]

Most of those who are “boyfriends” or “girlfriends” today are nothing more than “persons who have sex.”  One of the main problems with sex is that when people think about marriage, they tend to prefer partners with less sexual experience, especially men.[6]

It could be considered silly that a reason to get married is to have sex, but let’s think again.  People respond to incentives, and sex is a highly valued product when you are not having it.  It is an economic principle.  If the supply rises, the prices lowers.  If sex is much, its value lowers.  If sex happens all the time, it is worth nothing.  However, humans react to incentives, and a little incentive goes a long way to bring people to compromise and engagement.  Dating sex removes the incentive, and the logical consequence is the delay or the avoidance of commitment.

These four behaviors are associated with relationships that eventually fail and are encouraged in today’s dating culture.

We said that the current dating is also a product of the feminist movement that began in the 1960s.  Why?  Is not that an outrageous and sexist claim?

In fact, it is not.  The reason is due to basic human gender biology.

Virginity and sex is something so appreciated by men that it is, in general, a value that belongs to women.  This feminine value comes from a fundamental difference between genders.  Women have it and men want it.  Therefore, sex is traditionally something that women give men, and if that is so, then men should give something in exchange, whether commitment or possessions.

However, the feminist movement, by proposing “equality”,[7] supposes that sex is an activity among equals for the mutual pleasure of both.  This idea is very convenient for men, since they use it for women to give sex in exchange for nothing, not even commitment.  That is what current courtship and dating is.  Feminist conquest and the women’s liberation movement accomplished what men could have never achieved on their own.  A relationship were the woman gives sex and the man gives nothing.[8]

Dating is an obstacle for the development of committed relationships.  “Boyfriend” and “girlfriend” are elusive and misleading terms.

Dating paves the road to relationship and marriage failure.  Dating is illogical.  It is not clear what it is.  It cannot be a time to get to know each other better because that is better done while friends. Dating is a relationship designed to conceal rather than to reveal.

It cannot be a time to decide – by definition a person first decides, then chooses.  It is foolish to choose first and decide later.  In other words, deleting options before choosing is illogical, and that is exactly what dating does.  First removes prospects by engaging in “dating”, and much later you must decide whether to marry, but, where are the options among to decide?  That is why when many people decide to get married, they also decide to seek another partner.  It is just the logical conclusion.

It cannot be a time for waiting for the right time, because that is exactly the definition of engagement.

It cannot be a time to see where things flow without rushing, because that is exactly the definition of being single.

Current dating dynamics is an invention of the sexual revolution and sexual debauchery.  A person who jumps from partner to partner in dating only losses time and opportunities.  Today’s courtship has been defined as “jumping from person to person sowing seeds of divorce.”  It is better to be single until true love breaks barriers to a formal engagement.  Many obstacles do not stop true love.  Only the most determined and the more in love pass over barriers and ask for engagement.

Nonexclusivity, indecision and sexual satisfaction know how to hide and dating is the perfect camouflage.  The practice of dating produces marriages that fail because it establishes a pattern that leads to divorce.  Many men have girlfriends to see if a better one shows up along the road.  Many women do too.

In secret, a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” thinks something like, “stay and satisfy me while I see if the world brings me something better than you. Of course I love you as boyfriend and girlfriend we are, but this is not the time for something serious, we are still too young, lets enjoy without guilt and if I decide in the future, then we’ll see what happens.”  That is not love.  He who loves is ready to be exclusive, to get serious and to delay sexual satisfaction, at any cost.[9]

However, in American culture dating is not only common, is a social norm, and we must learn to handle it.  Dating is like institutionalized school, a social norm that failed, but that remains a social norm.[10]

Dating is stupid.  Some relationships die because dating dynamics stagnated them.

 

Article by Frederick Norman Tate, author of “Why Romantic Love Dies… Or Thrives”

 

[1] The dating system and contemporary courtship is a social arrangement that allows more sexual contact.  Lewis.

[2] 7 out of 10 college-age relationships suffer from infidelity (Shakelford, LeBlanc & Drass, 2000; Wiederman & Hurd, 1999)

[3] There is significant relationship between early sexual initiation in girls and younger age of dating. It was also shown that having a boyfriend and dating is related to the incidence of premarital sex, promiscuity and early sexual initiation. See Lewis.  It has also been shown that the more a couple wait to start having sex, the better the relationship when married, and those who wait until marriage have more marital satisfaction, better communication and better quality of sex. See Willoughby.

[4] Kanin and Howard, Postmarital Consequences of Premarital Sex Adjustments.

[5] Women are more likely to have sex when they start dating or have a boyfriend.  Dating is strongly associated with premarital sex.  The most reliable indicator that a young woman is having sex is the fact of having a boyfriend.  The second is the use of marijuana. See Dorius.

[6] A person with little sexual history is perceived as more desirable for friendship and marriage.  Those with moderate or high sexual history are preferred as short term partners or friends for going out with, but not for close friendships or marriage.  See Sprecher, McKinney, Orbuch. The Effect of Current Sexual Behaviour on Friendship, Dating and Marriage Desirability.

[7] Men and women are not equal, the differences go all the way down to the roots, they are biological.  For the differences.

[8] The idea that perhaps the women’s liberation movement was a conspiracy created by men to deceive women, is plausible.  Today women not only give sex for free by their own will, but they demerit legal marriage, an institution whose main function is to ensure a fair economic exchange in the event of male abandonment.

[9] Those who delay sex have a higher quality relationship, especially women, and are less likely to enter into cohabitation. See Sassler, Addo, Lichter, The Tempo of Sexual Activity and Later Relationship Quality, Journal of Marriage and The Family, 2012.

[10] The school is not a good source of sexual education.  Where parents are the primary source of sexual education, girls are less likely to be promiscuous and to have sexual experience. And the more sexual themes parents discuss (e.g. how pregnancy occurs, sex, disease, sexual pleasure, self-control, etc.), the lower the probability.  Sex education received outside the home, whether school, friends or other means, is related to more permissive behavior.  However, only a minority of parents talk to their children of these issues. See Lewis.