Love Evolving
- Friday, June 28 2013 @ 09:06 am
- Contributed by: Jet
- Views: 1,031
When it comes to talking about online dating, it’s not unheard of to hear snap judgements and criticism from friends and family. Funnily enough, even the most non-traditional are not afraid to bring up history as a reason why online dating shouldn’t be trusted.
“In my day we didn’t need to have hundreds of options,” says a member of a previous generation. “All we needed to do was walk around town, go to the corner store or the park. You’d meet someone. And it was a town of less than a thousand!”
While that’s not untrue, and people do meet in such serendipitous ways even today, the corner store is no longer the social hub of most towns. In fact, there is no social hub in many towns, unless you’re a teenager and you like ‘cruising’ through mall parking lots.
The fact is, social interaction is constantly evolving. Love may be a tale as old as time, but the details have certainly changed over the years. In general, unmarried adults no longer have to be chaperoned. Online algorithms are increasingly accepted, but the well-meaning meddling of relatives is met with resistance. Singles may still flock to clubs and bars, but very little of that atmosphere is actually conducive to meeting and getting to know someone (plus, contrary to what Grandma might have you think, bars are no novel invention).
Even in today’s world, the social scene varies considerably when it comes to location. Some might still view an ‘outsider’ - someone who lives outside the county limits - with suspicion, while in other locales everyone hails from someplace else. There isn’t even conformity of experience across a single country - why expect it to be so across multiple decades?
So why the criticism? Well, it’s in our nature to want to relate to and help others. What we don’t understand, we tend to reject. Instead of seeing the vast similarities in almost every love story - the butterflies, the excitement, the growing closeness - some first see the differences in the detail. For some, more than a bit of nostalgia has tinged their own recollections, too, and maybe they just want you to have the same sort of fairy tale they recall.
It’s entirely likely that no one means any harm by expressing their doubt or confusion - indeed, they might just be anxiously trying to help in their own way. So it’s best to let such things roll off like so much water on a duck. But when it comes to making your own dating decisions, remember: your experience is not the same as those of your parents, which is likely not the same as that of your grandparents. Love has evolved to keep up the way we interact; choose what’s right for you in this day and age.
“In my day we didn’t need to have hundreds of options,” says a member of a previous generation. “All we needed to do was walk around town, go to the corner store or the park. You’d meet someone. And it was a town of less than a thousand!”
While that’s not untrue, and people do meet in such serendipitous ways even today, the corner store is no longer the social hub of most towns. In fact, there is no social hub in many towns, unless you’re a teenager and you like ‘cruising’ through mall parking lots.
The fact is, social interaction is constantly evolving. Love may be a tale as old as time, but the details have certainly changed over the years. In general, unmarried adults no longer have to be chaperoned. Online algorithms are increasingly accepted, but the well-meaning meddling of relatives is met with resistance. Singles may still flock to clubs and bars, but very little of that atmosphere is actually conducive to meeting and getting to know someone (plus, contrary to what Grandma might have you think, bars are no novel invention).
Even in today’s world, the social scene varies considerably when it comes to location. Some might still view an ‘outsider’ - someone who lives outside the county limits - with suspicion, while in other locales everyone hails from someplace else. There isn’t even conformity of experience across a single country - why expect it to be so across multiple decades?
So why the criticism? Well, it’s in our nature to want to relate to and help others. What we don’t understand, we tend to reject. Instead of seeing the vast similarities in almost every love story - the butterflies, the excitement, the growing closeness - some first see the differences in the detail. For some, more than a bit of nostalgia has tinged their own recollections, too, and maybe they just want you to have the same sort of fairy tale they recall.
It’s entirely likely that no one means any harm by expressing their doubt or confusion - indeed, they might just be anxiously trying to help in their own way. So it’s best to let such things roll off like so much water on a duck. But when it comes to making your own dating decisions, remember: your experience is not the same as those of your parents, which is likely not the same as that of your grandparents. Love has evolved to keep up the way we interact; choose what’s right for you in this day and age.
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