My roommate and I were talking after many glasses of wine, which is when all brilliant ideas form, and we decided that there should be a default setting for dating. There used to be. One person would date one other person at one time. No. I don’t want there to be dating rules. Fuck rules. It’s more like standards. They can be changed to fit your emotional needs, but for the most part everyone has the same settings. They know how things should operate.
The problem is that now single people don’t know what the hell to do. Is it too desperate to say I’m only dating to find a long term relationship? It used to be the norm. It used to be odd to say, “I just want to date around.” or “I like Joan and had fun on our date, but I think I want to ask Susie out next weekend.” The person was thought to have a giltch and probably had a virus too. I have no idea when in the course of human history there was an alteration to this dating software, but it was probably in the 70s or maybe the 80s. It was definitely before I became an adult.
Back in the day, people dated to get married. If you dated more than one person at a time, the other person got pissed off. This was applied to both sexes. Plus, odds were that you were going to be caught. People weren’t distracted by technology like they are now, so they interacted with people in real life, weird, I know.
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I’m this way. I cannot date more than one guy at a time and I cannot handle it if a guy I’m dating dates someone else while he’s dating me. Even if we haven’t declared ourselves to be boyfriend/girlfriend, I can’t handle it if he dates me while he dates someone else.
I wish people could be more open with each other about their settings. I’m not judging people who want to date multiple people at a time. I just can’t be with one of those people. I’m not that version.
These are people we want to see naked, so why is it so difficult to be honest about our intentions? Women & men both do it. We are afraid to show them our code. It would be nice if we could have a set dating program. Then if someone wanted to change their version, we would know. “Oh, I can’t date John. He’s a 4.0 kind of guy. I’m not into that sort of thing. It’s 2.0 for me or nothing. I’m finally out of my beta testing mode. I need someone stable.”