Loading ...The Mating Or The Baiting Game
By
True love sounds so great that entire industries are built around it. Does the dating industry really help us find it?
Back in my parents’ generation, a person graduated college and then marched down the aisle without too much delay. It was common to marry a childhood or college sweetheart or get set up on a blind date, always wide open to the possibility of it leading to a trip to the altar in the not-too-distant future.
Since 1900, the average age at marriage has risen for both sexes, in the United States and in most other industrialized countries. It has not been a steady rise. In 1900, our man at the altar would have averaged 25.9; his bride-to-be, 22. From 1910 to 1960, the average age for men actually fell, to 22.8 years. From the 1970’s onwards, the average age for both sexes has increased, but not by much when you compare those ages to the 1900 figures. Men today are, on average, 26.8 years old, and the women 25.1.
The idea of eternal love and marrying for it has been tossed around in songs and movies for eternity. Were the couples of 1960 so much more attuned to love than the couples of today to find true love at younger ages?
Stats on eternal love are hard to come by, if they exist. We’ll leave that debate for another day. Let’s look at what we can examine. If people are marrying later than they did in 1960, then they’re probably dating more partners beforehand; and if they’re dating more partners beforehand, their experience should be broader and their choices sounder.
Back in 1960, there wasn’t a dating industry. You didn’t need an industry when you probably married a person from college or a friend of a friend. But today, people don’t usually marry out of college. I remember thinking it unusual that geeky (and probably virginal) Alan Scheinbaum was going to be marrying his college dreamboat a few weeks after graduation. It was behavior from another era, like opening up a car door for a girl: it might look chivalrous, but it also seems old-fashioned. And since people no longer feel restricted to attend a college and settle down in the locales where they’ve grown up, their friendship network can change radically, so radically that none of us really expect a buddy to set us up on a blind date that can lead to marriage. Anyway, it’s the Information Age now, and all of us expect lots of choices at our fingertips. Why rely on your pals to set you up when there’s an industry in place that will gladly do it for you?
The match up protocols haven’t fundamentally changed since the matchmakers of Eastern Europe paired up children from families of similar backgrounds. It’s just gotten more efficient. Anonymous dating usually involves filling out some kind of detailed questionnaire about your interests, hobbies, and physical attributes. Video profiling became common in the 1980’s. Someone seeking a potential date could view videotapes of potential prospects. Today, with the ubiquity of the internet, the date seeker can skim through hundreds of profiles while sitting on his coach potato behind at home until s/he finds one that appears suitable.
I can see the appeal of online dating. If given the choice of finding a boy- or girlfriend by visiting a smoky bar or discotheque and trying to chat with him/her over loud music vs skimming a profile while lying on the couch drinking a fine wine, who wouldn’t opt for the latter? A month’s subscription at one of the most popular sites, Match.com, costs $30, less than half the money I spent bar hopping in Perth one night on watered-down cocktails and meeting women I wouldn’t want to ever see again. There’s just one major problem with these online dating sites.
Members draft their own profiles.
[Click the picture to read the rest of this brilliantly insightful article]
Related posts: