Break the Rules
While watching a cute date movie recently, a line about using dating rules struck me as funny. Do people really still do this, I had to wonder. As much as the whole “friends with benefits” culture sort of makes me ill, I have to admit that dating rules seem pretty old-fashioned. Some might consider dating as a way to evaluate potential lifelong partners while others consider it the road to getting laid, but in every instance it’s personal and unique. So why should there be these weird rules to follow?
I’m talking about things like, “Wait three days to call.” This is just stupid. If you really like each other, why wait? If it’s Friday night and you’re both free Saturday, you might want to have lunch again or something. And what if you decide to wait three days but by the second day, he or she has been in an accident or is in a coma or even dies and you never got to see where it went—or worse, you could have prevented the catastrophe from occurring by simply having another date! Okay, that’s far-fetched, but it could happen—and I could totally see Hollywood taking that one on, too.
Many people are also advised to not talk about politics or religion on a first date, but to some people that is their whole life. What if you are a minister or a politician? What if you met on a Christian dating site in the first place? It just wouldn’t make sense to avoid these topics. And why not weed out someone right off the bat if he or she is a racist homophobe that you wouldn’t want to spend the rest of your life, let alone night, with?
I think not sleeping together on a first date is a good idea, but is that any worse than a one-night stand? What if you’ve been friends for years before your date and you’re comfortable with each other already, and you already know each other’s histories? I can think of a few reasons to skip this rule, too.
In fact, why not skip all of the traditional rules for dating and just make up your own personal rules? Doesn’t that make much more sense? Or to simply forgo rules altogether and just do what feels ethical and authentic to you on a date by date basis? It seems as if dating rules were created to make girls remain “good girls” or to make guys not take advantage of said “good girls,” but since we live in a time where men and women are supposed to be equals—I won’t even imply that we’ve reached a post-modern equality yet at all here, but we’re definitely closer than we were 100 years ago—doesn’t it make more sense to behave as such on dates?