I guess I’m hung up on research and opinion polls when it comes to dating. I was one of those nerds who liked school and raised her hand enthusiastically in class. For me, education was sacred…every question had an answer. Every problem had a solution. But then I graduated and went out into the real world. Suddenly, the neat logic I trusted no longer seemed to apply. I kept waiting for dating to make sense the way school did. Instead, it felt like I had wandered into a subject with no answer key

Here folks is where things got bad. Maybe not exactly bad, but confusing. Many of my friends were getting married, but I wanted to stay single for a while. I had no intention to settle down before my thirties. There were too many people to meet, and I was sure there was somebody absolutely FANTASTIC in my future. Likely I’d stumble across him when I went traipsing through Europe with a backpack or when I met a friend in San Francisco to see an art exhibit.

But then I started dating, and I kept meeting more and more men, and getting into and out of relationships. Relationship books like “The Rules” flew off the shelves, telling women that they needed to play hard to get with men in order to trick them into marrying. A little later, Sex and the City came along, and informed us of female empowerment and how to “date like a guy,” and not settle for anything less than what we want.

I don’t really want to go back in time to the 1950’s when dating had a specific process, and it always led towards marriage. What I do want is a path with clear roadmarkers so we know where it is we’re going. It used to be simpler, with fewer mixed signals and more obvious steps forward. To quote Ms. Seligson, “singles looking to settle down today are part of the Wild West of dating history”. Maybe that is the real problem, because nobody knows the rules anymore. Yee-haw.