Norms of Courtship, Part 2

Last week, I wondered when texts became the primary mode of dating communication, whether my generation wants stricter rules to govern dating/courtship, and what role internet dating plays in the whole shebang. 

Today, to put it bluntly, I want to ask exactly how much one ought to be able to know about a potential date's sexual habits before ever going on an actual date.

Before I really get into it, some actual questions people answer on OKCupid:

"If a trusted partner asked you to submit to them sexually, would you? Assume that this would involve letting them collar you, command you, and have control over you during sex."
"How old were you when you lost your virginity?"
"You are more likely to have an orgasm via:"
"Do you like sex toys?
"Preferred position: are you a top or a bottom?"
"How big is your porn collection?"
"Do you kiss on the first date?"
"In your ideal sexual encounter, do you take control, or do they?"
"Is it easy for you to achieve orgasm?"
"How often do you masturbate?"
"Do you enjoy giving oral sex?"
"Suppose you have an attractive cousin, and the cousin is also attracted to you -"

No, screw it, I'm not even finishing that last one. Now, I think people should generally be more open about sex than they are, and I think that some of these questions are telling about a person. (I also acknowledge that there is a certain type of relationship that sometimes originates on OKCupid for which these might be extremely relevant answers).

But it's one thing to answer the questions privately because you think that, for example, the frequency of one's self-pleasuring adventures is important information for your total match percentage. It is another thing all together to answer them publicly.



I don't think I'm stepping out on a limb when I suggest the following: Sitting down for a first date with someone whose intimate sexual details and preferences you already knew was a fairly unusual occurrence prior to the advent of internet dating. Knowing these things in advance totally changes the way dating happens. Let's take, as an example, "how easy is it for you to achieve orgasm?" This is normally the sort of thing one learns during a relationship (one imagines from experience more often than not, but that's largely beside the point), rather than prior to ever meeting the person in question. It seems unobjectionable to say that this is unusual, and similarly uncontroversial to say that the change is precipitated by the subtle (fine, not particularly subtle) changes in rules and expectations that internet dating as a platform has contrived.

This may be a simple point, but worth pausing on for a moment before reaching the post's climax (sorry) (actually, no: I'm not sorry). I can totally see how someone could think "sexuality is important, and indicative of facets of someone's personality" and include some of these questions (most of which I assume are user generated). But the knock-on effect has been that people on first dates know far more about each other than one might otherwise expect.



But just because it's different doesn't mean it's necessarily worse. That said, let me suggest two reasons this may not be a positive development.

First, discovering these things is part of the process and even the fun of dating. Anticipation, discovery, mystery, and the unexpected are part of what make dates interesting (at least to me). This is true of the physical as well. For my part, learning what a person likes or doesn't like (etc.) in the bedroom is part of the fun; it's a process of learning about a person that takes place in an intimate, personal space. Taking this out of courtship makes it worse as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I know we could all simply not answer those questions publicly, but let's face it: we aren't to be trusted. We're simply too curious what that cute boy or girl's answer to the salacious question is, and it's all over.



[The Greeks knew all about this; they called it akrasia. To Borrow Alain de Botton's definition: "A perplexing tendency to know what we should do combined with a persistent reluctance to actually do it."]

Second - and relatedly - we're so interested in sex, but it's possible - possible - that there are other important things, too. I worry that if we go into first dates preoccupied by sex (fine, "more preoccupied by sex than usual") we won't give proper attention to other personality traits that constitute compatibility.

We don't always know what's best for us, and even when we do we aren't always capable of the self-restraint required to get it. Sometimes we need rules and institutions to help us get there. When the rules and norms of dating require that you go on a few dates - or even just one date - before you get the answers OKCupid so readily provides, you are forced to be patient, even if reluctantly. You may be at dinner dying to know if your date likes taking control in the bedroom, but you still go to dinner. You still  have conversation; you still learn non-sexual things about the other person; you still learn some things about your compatibility. It's helpful when rules and norms make use take stock of important things we might otherwise be too impatient or selfish to think about.

I'll leave you with that thought: sometimes rules and norms are the restrictions we need to get what we really want. Freedom isn't necessarily being able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. Rules, norms, institutions, and the like can enable us to make the choices we want to by limiting or eliminating options that are attractive or tempting, but ultimately ill-considered. More specifically, let me say this: if you go on a date already knowing what the person sitting across from you is into in the boudoir, you've missed out on some of the fun before you ever started.

Norms of Courtship, Part 1

At some point during my grad school dating life - I'm not exactly sure when - a switch was made: texting replaced calling as the primary mode of arranging dates, flirting, etc. I can't put my finger on how I started to feel this way, but all of sudden when I would call a woman for a date, I felt decidedly old-fashioned (which isn't always how one wants to feel while trying to get a date). It also took me a while to understand that a text response to a voicemail isn't necessarily a dodge (which previously it had always been). Rules were changing, and I've frankly been slow to catch up.

It made me think of the scene in Swingers where Jon Favreau leaves a series of increasingly embarrassing messages on a potential dates answering machine (warning: this scene is totally painful to watch):

Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau later said that the reason this spoke to people in 1996 was that Gen X was the first generation to have to deal with the perils of leaving a voice message. It was total treachery: you couldn't win, you could only avoid a loss. 

For my part, I felt I had just started to really understand the art of leaving just the right message (though certainly I had not mastered it). Now the rules have been changed up on me. On the one hand, writing a text doesn't have the challenges of spontaneity, but it has a whole set of norms and rules associated with it that I have yet to discover (and that one worries about discovering the hard way...). 

This was already in mind when I read Tracy Clark-Flory's "Who Needs Casual Sex?!" at Salon over the weekend. Clark-Flory talks about transitioning from the hookup culture back towards something that looks more like traditional courtship, with a gentleman bringing her flowers serving as the symbol for the shift (with him turning down first-date sex as the clincher). 

There's been a lot written over the last couple of years about the hookup culture and changing romantic expectations, whether it's good for women, driven by men or women, good for my generation's future relationships, etc, etc. What seems undeniable, though, is that the rules of appropriate dating behavior are shifting and ambiguous at best, and perhaps even disappearing. 

I certainly don't intend to use this post as a call for a return to the highly formalized courtship practices of our male-dominated past, 

but I do think there is a relationship between our departure from rule-bound courtship and the rise of internet dating. I think we want some degree of constraint, some rules, and some reliable expectations. It's hard to go into a date without any idea if you're playing by the same sets of rules. We all know it would be easier if there were some norms or rules that could help us through. 

And it seems norms have started to emerge on dating websites. 

There are certain expectations about how long before you meet, what sorts of activities are appropriate when you first meet in person, etc. They're certainly variable, but the variability is a little more predictable: if someone marks on their profile that they're looking for casual sex, the expectations change, the rules change. 

I don't know why a more or less stable pattern of norms has emerged around internet dating (or maybe they haven't and I'm just wrong - always a possibility) but not around more "traditional" avenues. Part of me thinks that it was simply an easy supply to meet a growing demand. As I said, I think my generation wants more structure in this area of our lives, and that was an easier need to fill in fora that were already built around behavioral expectations: fill out a profile, and here are the rules guiding profiles; here are what kinds of pictures are allowed for the profile, you must answer x-number of questions, etc. Given that internet dating already had structure to it, we could more easily build new expectations around it. 

That said, I think it goes to far sometimes. To tease next week's Part 2: internet dating has created answers to too many questions. Is it a good thing that one can go into a first date already knowing if their date kisses on the first date? Knowing how many dates they usually wait before having sex? Knowing their answers to perhaps hundreds of (sometimes intensely) personal questions? Tune in next Wednesday for an off day post where I bloviate on those questions.