The SuperYenta is all about being serious about your love life. In this apt article, writer @tonybravosf reminds us to have fun while you're at it. Be an adult; but don't be too adulty.
Seizing the dating game like in our youths
When did our dating lives get so … grown up?
The question hung in the air over drinks one night with my oldest friend in the world, Jacqueline, as we surveyed the changes in our romantic scenes since we turned 30. First dates have always been a mixed bag: For every good one, there were easily two that required scouting emergency exits without alarm bells, but they could yield some unbelievably good times if you had a sense of adventure (and humor). Sometimes these adventures led to dating and long-term relationships, sometimes they led to fantastic one-night stands: Either way, we were rarely bored.
First dates now seem to involve an added pressure to see if we are connecting right away, as though our time is so limited that we can’t waste a second enjoying the wine selection until we know whether or not we’re on the course for a relationship. If that connection is there, the situation snowballs immediately into determining compatibility and alignment of goals. The stakes seem to be so much higher than they were on the other side of 29. Perhaps it’s the ticking of the biological clock, which is now a wearable that counts your steps each day and measures your vital signs.
“When was the last time you had fun on a first date?” I asked Jacs. She squinted and swirled the brandied cherry in her Manhattan against the glass, a sign she was thinking.
“When did I last wear winter pastels?” she asked.
“2014,” I answered.
“The year before that, then.” As Jacs recounted yet another first date where the topics veered too adulty too soon (past relationships disclosure, career minutiae), I thought about how far she and I had come since we were first dipping our toes into the dating waters.
As teenagers, Jacs and I were basically exactly the same as we are now, only with more pedestrian taste in liquor. Like all teenagers in the throes of our first romantic discoveries, everything was absurdly heightened. As we went through all the firsts (first dates, first kisses, first use of concealer to hide those first hickeys inexperienced high school boys left on our necks), they all felt like issues of life and death. The stakes seemed unbelievably high as we struggled to understand that combination of aching and exhilaration that comes with it all. Jacs and I memorized each other’s schedules so we could debrief our dates, no detail being too minor not to discuss.
Where did you go?
What cologne was he wearing?
Were his parents at home or were you able to … have some privacy?
We had our hearts broken almost as often as we didn’t and yet, even with all the drama of young love, we had way more fun sneaking around and stealing moments together in the backseats of cars and behind the school gym than we frequently did as adults dating without chaperones or other restrictions. There was a sense of carpe diem (seize the day) that carried into our young adult romantic lives that had, somewhere along the line, been replaced by checklists of qualities and qualifications for date No. 2.
I missed seizing the date.
Another round of Manhattans was called for. Jacs and I wondered what it would take to get out of our first-date slump. We made a list of the things we missed the most about all the first dates past:
Date spot: Not spending an endless amount of time negotiating the venue or trying to impress each other by getting the most-coveted reservation — place was so much less important than person.
Touching: Not endless PDA, but flirty, PG touching while you got to know someone. When did we get so hands off?
Feeling free to make a slightly poor decision: Not a tattoo or an unplanned-pregnancy poor decision, we just missed that margin for error we had on first dates a few years before.
Stupid little details: All the most significant statistics of our lives now had to be disclosed ASAP upon meeting. How were we ever going to learn that our dates once dressed as She-Ra, Princess of Power, for Halloween three years in a row, or that in college they modeled for a graphic novel? The devil, and delight, were in these stupid little details.
Making out: Once upon a time, a successful first date was measured by the make-out session. Kissing remains far more intimate than half of the horizontal activities we get so consumed by.
What all the things we missed boiled down to was a sense of play. Yes, the stakes are higher now. But if we couldn’t enjoy ourselves at least a little on a first date, how would we have any clue whether the next however-many-years were going to be fun?
Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @TonyBravoSF
Word of the week: Adulty, adjective. Not just being an adult but behaving like one on a date to the degree that you drain all the youthful fun out of it.
Find the original article here: http://www.sfchronicle.com/style/article/Seizing-the-dating-game-like-in-our-youths-10938695.php
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