This seems like an old-fashioned term to me and that seems strange because the US used to be more conservative in some ways, though perhaps that's exactly why it was okay at one time for some people to do this: The expectation was that dating was a social thing and you were not supposed to have casual sex outside of marriage.
So you could potentially go out to dinner and a movie or what not with multiple different people and try to get to know them better before picking one for a committed relationship. This strikes me as having a lot of potential upside for trying to figure out how to establish a really good relationship.
It's been my observation that the tendency for people to behave like this is a committed, monogamous relationship and see no one else starting with the first coffee date or perhaps even email exchange via a dating app actively makes it harder to create a solid beginning for a healthy relationship. If this person you barely know is currently your only hope for getting your emotional needs met, you will tend to be scared to rock the boat before you really know them.
I think that goes bad places. I think it makes people less honest about who they are and I think it actively hampers the process of developing real intimacy.
And it's especially problematic these days because we have, to a large degree, lost the social fabric we once had which helped inform us who a particular person was. Historically, people tended to live in very small communities, so people exploring a potential relationship likely already knew a LOT about each other simply because they lived in a tiny village and everyone knew a LOT about each other.
And they knew all that about each other with a high degree of confidence for reasons touched on previously: It's harder to actively deceive someone when you have a lot of social contacts in common.
So historically it was in some ways easier and more natural for people to know each other well without necessarily dating per se and it was out of this social context that romantic relationships grew. These days, it is more common for two people to be starting from scratch without much context, which can have its good points but also has a downside.
It can be problematic to limit yourself to dating one person exclusively for the purposes of getting to know them well enough to determine if a serious relationship even makes sense. This creates a bottleneck on your dating prospects that means there are only so many people you have any hope of getting to know well.
These days, you can potentially recreate the old fashioned practice of knowing each other socially first or, alternately, playing the field. You can do so using the internet.
You can know someone via an online forum or other social media and have online friends in common to help make up for the lack of IRL contacts. Alternately, you could play the field by letting multiple people chat you up at the same time before committing to one of them.
You would need to think where to draw certain boundaries. All human societies have various expectations concerning physical intimacy and those expectations are generally very reasonable when viewed through a lens of germ control.
I think a good rule of thumb would be: it's fine to let more than one person chat you up online but you shouldn't be physically intimate with multiple people at the same time.
You may run into some folks who are possessive and want to insist you speak with no one else but them even at the earliest stages. My personal opinion: You should never accept such an ultimatum and should tell people who are overly possessive from the get go "You don't own me." They can either lighten up about that or walk. And I think it would be foolish to accept such ultimatums in a one-sided fashion for any reason -- where they expect you to be monogamous and faithful while they are not.
If, say, their divorce isn't final and they are still sleeping with the future ex, they have no grounds to tell you whom you can speak with. When they are with you and only you, then they can ask you to be with them and only them.
That doesn't mean you need to actively be seeing or talking with multiple people to "prove a point." That's probably not a healthy thing to do.
But should the topic come up in conversation, it would be wise to voice your point of view that "This is not yet an exclusive relationship. We aren't at that stage. IF I meet someone else and want to chat them up, I can."
You can see just one person while they are wrapping up their old relationship or what not without agreeing to be their property. You do that by reminding them that you are still a free agent and if you don't happen to be seeing anyone else at the moment, it isn't because you aren't allowed to.
So you could potentially go out to dinner and a movie or what not with multiple different people and try to get to know them better before picking one for a committed relationship. This strikes me as having a lot of potential upside for trying to figure out how to establish a really good relationship.
It's been my observation that the tendency for people to behave like this is a committed, monogamous relationship and see no one else starting with the first coffee date or perhaps even email exchange via a dating app actively makes it harder to create a solid beginning for a healthy relationship. If this person you barely know is currently your only hope for getting your emotional needs met, you will tend to be scared to rock the boat before you really know them.
I think that goes bad places. I think it makes people less honest about who they are and I think it actively hampers the process of developing real intimacy.
And it's especially problematic these days because we have, to a large degree, lost the social fabric we once had which helped inform us who a particular person was. Historically, people tended to live in very small communities, so people exploring a potential relationship likely already knew a LOT about each other simply because they lived in a tiny village and everyone knew a LOT about each other.
And they knew all that about each other with a high degree of confidence for reasons touched on previously: It's harder to actively deceive someone when you have a lot of social contacts in common.
So historically it was in some ways easier and more natural for people to know each other well without necessarily dating per se and it was out of this social context that romantic relationships grew. These days, it is more common for two people to be starting from scratch without much context, which can have its good points but also has a downside.
It can be problematic to limit yourself to dating one person exclusively for the purposes of getting to know them well enough to determine if a serious relationship even makes sense. This creates a bottleneck on your dating prospects that means there are only so many people you have any hope of getting to know well.
These days, you can potentially recreate the old fashioned practice of knowing each other socially first or, alternately, playing the field. You can do so using the internet.
You can know someone via an online forum or other social media and have online friends in common to help make up for the lack of IRL contacts. Alternately, you could play the field by letting multiple people chat you up at the same time before committing to one of them.
You would need to think where to draw certain boundaries. All human societies have various expectations concerning physical intimacy and those expectations are generally very reasonable when viewed through a lens of germ control.
I think a good rule of thumb would be: it's fine to let more than one person chat you up online but you shouldn't be physically intimate with multiple people at the same time.
You may run into some folks who are possessive and want to insist you speak with no one else but them even at the earliest stages. My personal opinion: You should never accept such an ultimatum and should tell people who are overly possessive from the get go "You don't own me." They can either lighten up about that or walk. And I think it would be foolish to accept such ultimatums in a one-sided fashion for any reason -- where they expect you to be monogamous and faithful while they are not.
If, say, their divorce isn't final and they are still sleeping with the future ex, they have no grounds to tell you whom you can speak with. When they are with you and only you, then they can ask you to be with them and only them.
That doesn't mean you need to actively be seeing or talking with multiple people to "prove a point." That's probably not a healthy thing to do.
But should the topic come up in conversation, it would be wise to voice your point of view that "This is not yet an exclusive relationship. We aren't at that stage. IF I meet someone else and want to chat them up, I can."
You can see just one person while they are wrapping up their old relationship or what not without agreeing to be their property. You do that by reminding them that you are still a free agent and if you don't happen to be seeing anyone else at the moment, it isn't because you aren't allowed to.
Comments