Some smart observations from Echidne on the study we were annoyed by* a few days ago:

The study defines dating as a traditional male-initiated process: The man invites the woman, he picks her up, he treats her, he takes her back home. He can ask for sex and she can refuse it. Hooking-up, on the other hand, is defined as a fairly egalitarian process about necking or kissing or intercourse or whatever. Either party can initiate it.

Note that there is no third alternative, such as some kind of egalitarian dating with going Dutch. It’s important to keep that in mind in evaluating the study findings. We have no idea how the study participants would have ranked egalitarian dating.

4. The checklists of items the study used (for the subjects to agree or disagree about) were not identical for men and women. An example about the possible benefits of traditional dating:

For the benefits of traditional dating, we listed 36 possible benefits for men and 34 possible benefits for women. Twenty-seven of these benefits were identical for both genders (e.g., “Traditional dating is romantic”), with the remaining possible benefits gender specific (e.g., for men, “You can ask anyone you are interested in on a date”; for women, “You have the power to reject a date”).

Similar gender differences were applied to the checklist covering the possible risks of traditional dating. The checklists for the benefits of hooking-up were identical for both sexes but the checklists for the risks of hooking-up were not:

Two items were gender specific. (“Risk getting pregnant” vs. “Risk of getting partner pregnant” and “Can get a bad reputation for being ‘easy’ or a whore” vs. “Can get a bad reputation of using women”).

Why would such differences matter if they are not about the questions discussed in the above summary? Because the overall experience might affect the answers one gives. For instance, men get reminded about their responsibility in the concept of traditional dating this study used, and that reminder is different from the reminders women get.

That’s why my point about the two choices is an important one. The study did not ask how students would have felt about egalitarian dating.

*In that post, by the way, I should have specified that by “traditional dating” I didn’t mean boy-always-takes-lead dating; I just meant going-on-DATES-dating.

Ah, springtime in the city. Birds are chirping, trees are blooming, squirrels are frolicking, and MATH is in the air? The Huffington Post’s “Why Dating in New York Sucks (With Mathematical Proof!) reminds me of another article in which a British economist employed Drake’s equation to figure out why he had no girlfriend. In the HuffPo iteration, Satoshi Kanazawa is presented with the question: “Is there mathematical proof that dating in New York is difficult?”

Kanazawa references a theorem proven by two dorks without dates (ahem…mathematicians in 1966). According to Kanazawa:

This applies to anything, dating, looking for a job candidate. If you have a pool of candidates that you haven’t seen and if your job is to pick the best candidate then it’s been mathematically proven that the best strategy to do is to reject the first 37% of the candidates regardless, so you just reject the first 37% of the candidates and then choose the next candidate that is better than all the candidates that you’ve seen before. So if you apply that to a dating situation that means that you have to reject the first 30% of all the people you date regardless and then you marry the one who is better than all the ones you’ve dated before.

Already, I am finding some holes in Kanazawa’s rationale. First off, if the mathematicians said your best strategy is to reject the first 37% of candidates when hiring someone for a job, then why would you reject only 30% of all the people you date? Isn’t a life partner supposed to be a little more important and hopefully permanent than your employee?

(more…)

A new study at James Madison University (based on a limited sample) suggests that “more women than men continue to prefer dating whereas more men than women rate hooking up above dating.” At least that’s the way Science Daily describes it. And that’s not wrong in terms of the study, but how come it takes a whole bunch more paragraphs to get to this part? “Overall, both genders showed a preference for traditional dating over hooking up…On the whole, men and women agreed on the benefits and risks of dating and hooking up.* It’s not that gender differences are never interesting, or worthwhile to note. But maybe if we paid more attention to what we actually — demonstrably — have in common, there’d be, well, even more traditional dating.

I’m fascinated by stories of my parents’ courtship, even though it was a bit pedestrian. Meeting in journalism class, the Under The Sea fraternity dance, my mom’s pixie cut. But now I’m fascinated by other people’s parents’ stories, thanks to an adorable piece by Peter Smith at nerve.com. While they were dating, his parents took a long walk — a really long walk, like from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin — and somewhere along this 1200 mile trek (Bucyrus, Ohio, actually) the two decided to get married.

How long had you known each other?

D: For three years. We were beginning to feel that we needed to make a decision of some kind. In fact, while walking, we did decide to get married.

M: Yeah, because we realized that we could do even something stressful – and it was stressful – like that and still want to be with each other most of the time, which is as good as it gets. We also got far enough away from home that it really felt like our decision. It didn’t feel like anybody’s parents peering over our shoulders.

Read the whole piece at nerve.com. Do you know your parents’ story? And have you ever used traveling together as a test of your relationship?

What if BG’s The Big To Do was an iPhone app? It’s a herd, it’s a plan … it’s Super Dates, a brand-new partly crowd-sourced activity-idea generator for social iButterflies like your bad self. Basically: “Super Dates puts more than 350 unique, high quality date ideas at your fingertips — a number that grows with each update. Ideas are rated and reviewed by users, with the best percolating to the top. Our recommendation system compares your ratings with those of other users to help you find the best ideas that match your interests and situation in life, whether single or married, young or old. All ideas are categorized, fully searchable by title and description, and available even when you don’t have a connection to the Internet.” Ideas include “Public Transit Dice Roll,” wherein you roll a die to decide how many stops you’re going to ride, and then get off and find a restaurant wherever you land. Of course, that would work only in certain cities, and even then could result in a triangular tuna sandwich box from a hospital vending machine, but you get the idea!

Meanwhile, a new website takes a similar activity-based approach (does this micro-trend mean that you guys have SO MANY DATES that you’re plum OUT OF IDEAS?): How About We has you start with the idea (“How about we…sip tea and slurp noodles?”), and then find a date who’s up for that. It’s like niche-based Internet dating, but without limiting yourself to one niche. For now, it’s still in beta, and New York only, but it costs only a bit more than an iPhone app (and its single employees pay, too!). Founded by two dudes who used to teach high school, How About We’s goal is to “put the date back in dating.” Love it.

Try them both out and let us know how they go! (“How about we … order Thai and read ALL of BG’s comic adventures?”)

Age: 9.

City: Detroit, MI

Activities: Standing in a department store trying on school uniforms. Being adjusted in said uniform by my mother. Witnessing my first public fight as another mother yells at her son.

Quotations: From yelling mother – “Pants don’t fit you. You’re too fat. You should stop eating. Why can’t you be more like the other kids? My life is hard enough without having to come home and deal with your sorry %*@!

Status: I watch furtively, and then hide behind my mother. A silent thank you to the powers that be. My mother says something to the woman about being in public and embarrassing her child. The woman scoffs.

In the New York Times’ I Need to Vent. Hello, Facebook, Skyler Hurt, 22, friend and bridesmaid to a feuding couple, likewise, intervened:

“Hey, you guys know we can still see this right …?”

Apparently, couples DO know their fights are being observed, and like the mother yelling in the store, they don’t care. In fact, as the Times article notes, some of them welcome the chance to publicly air their grievances for friends and family to see.

Michael Vincent Miller, psychologist and author of the book “Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion” notes:

Today, popular representations of marriage tend toward “two very self-protective egos at war with one another,”…“each wanting vindication and to be right by showing that the other is wrong.”

The thing is, isn’t marriage about two individuals coming together as a couple? By using Facebook and other social media to gain “support” for their respective “sides” in an argument or disagreement, it feels more like they are keeping separate counsel and setting up camps to do battle. Additionally, when you ask your friends and family to constantly choose sides and what they see most is your Facebook status rather than your faces at the dinner table, that support each person is looking for individually can quickly turn into disapproval for the couple as a whole. [Plus: “Tacky!” — BG]

Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia would agree.

“People tend to do better in their marriage when friends and family are supportive,” Mr. Wilcox said. “When that support dries up, that can be a really big problem.”

Additionally, in an era rife with passive aggressive forms of communication, from sites that allow you to anonymously tell your friends and family what you really think to others that allow you to virtually “slap” someone, one has to wonder exactly where we’re going. Are we really evolving as thinking and feeling human beings or is technology slowly unraveling us? Have we become a society where we are more comfortable interfacing virtually with our partners rather than speaking with them when they are sitting in front of us? Just as importantly, will couples venting their frustrations with each other in the new public spaces, as parents, do the same to their children? Will anyone say anything?

The accompanying photo was particularly powerful as one of the couples sits together on the couch, their faces aglow, not with love, but lit from the screens of their laptops. While the Victorian ideals of marriage are thankfully passé, the openness that modern couples should be striving for is openness with each other, not the World Wide Web.

Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com’s Broadsheet calls out the New York Times for misrepresenting statistics in the title of their article, “Living Together First Doesn’t Make Marriage Last, Study Finds.” Clark-Flory examines the statistics of said study and looks to other sources to sum up with her title “Living in sin not so bad after all”.

Now, a little something from revelations…for those living in sin, marriage isn’t always the end goal. Whoa. SHOCKER. How do I know this? Live in an overpriced metropolis where rent-controlled apartments are as hard to come by as the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant and you find a lot of people shacking up for reasons other than a trial run for a walk down the aisle. Some of these reasons include freedom from rooommates, convenience, mobility, economics, and well, just plain old lust. So, what’s important in moving from “living in sin” to making an “honest man/woman/etc. out of someone/yourself”?

Having co-habitated a time or two, experience has taught me that what makes or breaks your relationship isn’t decided from the day to day stuff of living in each other’s space. It’s about sharing basic values and goals as a couple. It’s also about knowing why you moved in together and realizing that can change for both people. The day to day stuff just exacerbates an eventually doomed union. Really, even if someone keeps a clean house and finds your keys, it’s not going to fix your fear of commitment or the fact that you hate their work ethic. However, if a relationship is already working on the inner levels, leaving the cap off the toothpaste or drinking out of the orange juice carton isn’t such a big deal. Whether or not a couple lives together isn’t going to break them so much as reinforce what they already know – good and bad. As Clark-Flory notes “you’re better off following your own heart than any supposed make-or-break marital rules.”

The couples who do end up married after first living together most likely would have gotten married anyways – whether they both saw marriage as a possible end goal or they were the type to ignore doubt and just push forward. I am actually curious to know how many couples move in together and break up before the point of marriage. If living in sin is bad for anyone, it’s most likely divorce lawyers.

Just don’t forget the pre-prenup!

Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough–which started life as an article that got a whole lot more people to read The Atlantic–has been getting heated attention since its publication in early February. The book has garnered high praise from many relationship experts, book critics, and readers, and also — shall we say — spirited dismissals from nay-sayers who question Gottlieb’s facts, premise, or even her emphasis on marriage.

Gottlieb’s thesis: a woman, particularly an older woman (and by “older” we mean not 27), who allows pickiness and a sense of entitlement to restrict her dating life is missing an opportunity to find her “Mr. Good Enough.” It has, understandably, rankled some who take issue with the idea of “settling” — shifting definitions though it may have — or those who wonder if women, in fact, aren’t picky enough.

An animated, friendly lady with a good sense of humor about it all, Gottlieb is well-prepared to counter criticism from people who have read no more than her book’s title and thus feel qualified to reject it.

I have to admit, the subtitle of your book (The Case For Settling For Mr. Good Enough) is a little hard to digest, and I wonder if it doesn’t subvert what is basically a helpful and positive message about having more realistic expectations. Was this your choice of words, or your publisher’s?

Well, this came from the original subtitle of the Atlantic article, but it’s used to really get people to think about what “settling” actually means. Forgive the pun, but some people are unsettled by the idea of “settling.” But the thing is, I’m not telling women that they have to set low standards, or put up with relationships that don’t work. I’m suggesting they revise the list of things they’re looking for in a man — to conform with what actually makes a strong relationship and actually makes people happy in love.

There’s a presupposition here that marriage is a good thing for people–

Nope, no presupposition there at all. I’m saying that marriage is something I want personally, and I’m not alone in wanting it.  So I was trying to figure out what was keeping me from finding the right guy. If you aren’t interested in marriage, there’s no reason to read a book about how to be happy in a marriage.  This book isn’t for people who are happy to go through life single.  It’s for people who want to find long-term romantic happiness and are curious about how to do that.

Your book is unusual in that it’s not truly a self-help book, although it does give advice to readers. Maybe it’s more like a memoir of a certain period of you life, with some breaks in the fourth wall…

It’s not self-help or a memoir, really–this is journalism. I’m a journalist by profession, and I did a lot of research to explore the question: what really matters in love?  I interviewed neurobiologists to talk about chemistry, sociologists to talk about how the culture influences us, scientists and researchers who study relationships and marriage, men and women who were out there dating and who were married.  The goal was to get some answers for myself and others struggling with these questions.

You emphasize the importance of distinguishing between “needs” and mere “wants” when looking for a life partner, and how learning to separate the two led you to a successful online match with the man you dub “Sheldon2.” I know you were only seeing him for a few months, but it sounds like the experience provided an important insight for you anyway.

Actually, I’m still in touch with “Sheldon2.” We’ve stayed in touch, and talk regularly, but yes, definitely: that was a lesson in not letting superficial criteria get in the way of more important qualities. I mean, I saw his bowtie in the [online dating profile] photo, and thought “Ugh! I don’t wanna date Orville Redenbacher!” but then it turns out the bowtie was from his grandfather, and was a way of honoring his connection with him. And his profession, which was listed as “real estate”—well, he had studied architecture, really loved his work, but I wrongly assumed he wouldn’t be creative enough.  And Sheldon2 is 5’ 6”—I’m 5’1 ½ —and I just never thought I’d be attracted to a guy who was 5’6”. And I was so wrong, again!  I was very attracted to him.  But I learned that I had to get past that stuff, the stuff I always thought was important but had nothing to do whether he might make me happy

Were you able to process that lesson in your dating behavior after that?

Oh, yeah, and I have to say, my inbox is full of emails from men who’ve read the article or read the book and like what I have to say. Cuz I’m basically saying, let’s stop judging men on these superficial criteria, and value them for what they bring to a relationship–and they appreciate that.

Early in the book you pose the question “how much compromise [in a relationship] is too much?” and the question doesn’t explicitly get answered. I’m curious if you were able to answer that question at least for yourself.

Sure, that’s something that people have to address for themselves, and I think, again, it goes back to valuing what is going to make you happy in the long term, not what might look good on paper or what you assume will make you happy but so far hasn’t.

Your book is clearly written from a female heterosexual perspective, but have you gotten any feedback from the gay community?

Yes, the response has been very positive–it’s a universal theme.  Hey, everyone wants to find their Mr.–or Ms.–Good Enough!

As Amy noted earlier, Christian at OK Cupid’s blog recently found, using all sorts of lovely charts and graphs, that  “the male fixation on youth distorts the dating pool.” Maybe so, but I have an observation — or maybe a confession — to make: The fixation on youth isn’t just male. While it may be represented as such online, there’s still a whole lot going on offline. Since moving to New York almost 5 years ago, I have, ahem…well, I have developed a habit of dating younger men. Before living here, I mostly dated older men. Why the shift? Is it something in the water?

At the ripe age of 31, while staring into space writing at a coffee shop, I noticed a guy looking at me rather intently. He caught my eye, smiled furtively and then took a swig of his grande. I smiled back and continued about my business. The next time I looked up, his eyes met mine and he executed a rather sheepish wave of his hand. Within seconds he was sitting in front of me and by the time I left, a date was planned. About four dates in, we met up with one of my friends for drinks. Somehow the subject of age came up.

I figured he was younger from conversation and just how he carried himself. I’d also dated a 22-year old the summer I was 29, so when coffee shop guy told me he was 26, it didn’t faze me. What I wasn’t expecting was his reaction to my age. At first it was incredulous disbelief. Had I no proof of identification and a friend to verify, he wouldn’t have believed it. He had guessed I was 24 or 25, but suddenly it clicked. I was confident and self-assured, had lived on my own in quite a few places, and pursued various interests. I wasn’t 25 or even close.

Suddenly he made assumptions about what I wanted: something serious, marriage, babies. Like, with him.By next week. It didn’t matter that we were on date number four or that I was just out of a tumultuous relationship. In his head my age screamed entrapment. Like I was ready to drag the first guy who smiled at me that morning to the altar. Needless to say, our date was cut short and the warm goodbye that ended our previous date was replaced with a very reticent hug.

While looks have something to do with attraction to the young and virile/fertile, maybe the reason per Christian’s data that “the median 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging 18 and 19 year-olds as he does women his own age” is not only about physical attraction. What might also be at play is what those men want at the moment and what they perceive rather than just cut and dry looks. People seem to think that once women hit a certain age, we’re on this warpath to the altar or the birthing center. Yes, we have a time limit with reproduction, but we already know that and a lot of us make peace with it one way or another. However, we don’t have an expiration date when it comes to love, lust, spontaneity or enjoying life. We also don’t want to marry and make babies with everyone we go out on a few dates with. While we are more likely to be looking for a real relationship, we also like to meet new people and explore our options. What we don’t want is a constant reminder of how old we are and questions like “shouldn’t we be finding that special someone soon?”

For me dating younger men has been an eye-opening experience. At first I found myself drawn to them because they are cute and fun, but that’s not all they are and that may be a common mistake when going younger – the seriousness factor. The men who are choosing younger women are potentially not doing so at a disservice to older women, but possibly as a disservice to younger women.

When I dated a 22-year-old at 29, I embraced the experience. Surprisingly, fitting into each other’s worlds wasn’t actually that much of a stretch. What I was surprised about was the reaction from my friends, particularly my female friends. A lot of them voiced some concern because 22-year-olds wouldn’t want to get married anytime soon. That was just it. At the time, I wasn’t ready to get married. I was running far away from commitment and wedding freak-outs. Dating a 22-year-old was safe.

In terms of OK Cupid’s data, I would like to see a chart comparing what exactly each person is looking for – like are the 30 year old men who are messaging 18-19 year olds looking for a relationship or a “playmate”? Odds are, they are not looking for a life partner. As such, young women as a whole may be getting the short end of the deal in terms of their interactions with much older men. They may not be taken seriously or seen as viable long-term partners. Maybe the disparity between men and women’s dating habits with regard to age in the OK Cupid data is just as much about emotional age as it is about physical attraction. Hell, if those men need convincing that older women can be as full of fun and energy as a younger woman, then maybe older women don’t want them anyway.

My point is we often date people we think we might not get serious about when we are not ready to be serious –- which is fine, but we should also be open to the possibility that someone will surprise us. What I’ve learned as I’ve returned to a place where I am ready for a relationship is that men of all ages can be both fun and serious, thoughtful or thoughtless. Internet dating eliminates nuances as it makes us all check a box, but it’s only reflective of what we as a society already perceive. It’s time older women and younger women alike get as much credit for their whole person and not categorized by stereotypes of age and gender.

What a rollercoaster of emotions we’re feeling at BG today. We found this blog entry via Wired from OK Cupid, noting a bias in their dating pool against women of a certain age (“a certain age” being a year or two older than you are, but whatever).

The good: It’s a veritable candy store of charts, graphs, a javascript widget (ooh! shiny!), and the like. Plus, the blogger, Christian, makes his case enthusiastically, circling the ages 30-45 and labeling it the “Zone of Greatness.” Plus, he’s done extensive research (statistical research, you naughty-minded harlots) to support the thesis that older women are more sexually willing, open-minded, and hotsy totsy. Sure, in an ideal world he’d be all “and they have the most beautiful minds!” but given that we’re talking about a dating site, we have to assume a certain meat-market mentality. And how!

Plus, that’s only part of his picture. And with phrases like this:

There are two operative stereotypes of older single women: the sad-sack (à la Bridget Jones) and the “cougar” (à la Samantha from Sex In The City) and both, like all stereotypes, are reductionist and stupid and I’ve tried to avoid them. I hesitated beginning my case for older women with something about their sexuality, like I did in Exhibit A, because that territory borders right on cougar country. But the evidence there was too compelling to ignore.

Christian reveals himself to be a FOBG in a BW (big way). We luuurve him.

Plus, the comments section speaks well of OK Cupid users.

So why the roller coaster? The original premise. Like the one bad review in a sea of raves, we keep mulling it over and wondering if all the blog posts in the world will knock any sense into unwilling minds. What do you think?