I was talking to a younger friend about his new girlfriend, including how they met. He laughed and said, “On the apps,” as if I had asked the most ridiculous question possible.
So I asked him if he’d ever met someone – a stranger in the real world – who he dated or might want to date.
“What are you mean?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.
“Let’s say you see the same person behind the counter at Starbucks. Day after day. Maybe you know their name. Maybe not. But you think they’re cute. You like their style. They strike you as funny and kind. Would you ever ask them out?”
“No one does that,” he said.
“Never?”
“A stranger? Someone I don’t know or my friend doesn’t know?” he said. “No. I can’t see when I would do something like that. I don’t know anyone who would do that.”
I explained that when I was dating, in a pre-phone, pre-app, analog world, you would meet someone you find attractive somewhere in the world, and if time permitted, you would try to talk to them. Attempt to get a sense of who they are. Figure out if you might want to ask them out on a date.
“Where would you meet these people?” he asked, making me feel like a damn historian.
“Anywhere,” I said.
I told him that I dated girls who I met at work. At parties. In dance clubs and bars. In stores and restaurants. I told him that I once waved to a girl as she drove by me along the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. She stopped, turned around, and asked if I wanted a ride.
We dated for six months.
I asked out a girl who was waiting tables in a restaurant in Mendon, Massachusetts. She wasn’t serving me, but I thought she was cute and was making the customers at the neighboring tables laugh, so I asked her out as I left. We went on one date before she and I concluded that I wasn’t even close to being cool enough to be dating her.
I once asked a girl in an adjacent car at a stoplight if she wanted to have breakfast with me, through our open windows, and she agreed. We didn’t see each other again after that meal, but it was a lovely breakfast.
I once told a girl at Disney World that she was beautiful and funny. We had spent the day coincidentally standing in many of the same lines, riding many of the same rides. She was with her family, and I was with friends. We had finally struck up a conversation while waiting for the last ride of the day, but I hadn’t found the courage to tell her how I felt.
Plus her parents were standing beside her the whole time.
As my friends and I were leaving the park, I said, “I need to tell that girl how I feel.” So we turned around and raced through the park until I finally found her, eating ice cream on a bench alongside her parents. I stood before them, screwed up my courage, and said, “I just wanted you to know that I spent a little time with you today, and I think you’re beautiful and funny. If I didn’t live in Massachusetts, I’d ask you out. I had to say that before I left, or I’d regret it forever.”
She smiled and thanked me. Then she rose and hugged me.
Then I turned to her parents and said, “Sorry. I had to it.”
Her father said, “Good job, kid.”
I’ll never forget it.
“You were a crazy person,” my friend said after listening to that story.
“No,” I said. “It was glorious.”
“How did you know if these girls were even available?” my friend asked.
“I didn’t. Unless someone was setting me up with a friend, I never knew.”
Sometimes, I explained, the girl would have a boyfriend. Sometimes, she didn’t have a boyfriend but told me so because she wanted nothing to do with me. And sometimes she just said no. Rejected me on the spot.
A girl once told me that she wasn’t into guys, which was a hell of a lot more daring thirty years ago than today.
“It all sounds awful,” my friend groaned.
I told him that it was far from awful. Admittedly, it required daring, courage, and self-confidence, but back then, I think we all had more of those things. If you were shy, you admittedly struggled, but shy people seemed to find each other, too. Or someone with confidence eventually made the first move.
It wasn’t a perfect time, of course. I kissed many girls on the first date, simply assuming consent, and at least once, I was wrong about that consent. The girl made it clear that she hadn’t wanted to be kissed.
And I’ve been kissed at least twice while dating (and once while married) without consent, too, so it certainly went both ways.
And some of those girls who didn’t complain about my kiss might have silently objected. I’m sure that happened a lot back then and probably still a lot today. But I wasn’t exactly the most aggressive guy. I often allowed the girl to make the first move.
Elysha, for example, kissed me first.
There was also a lot of rejection, right to your face, often in the company of the girl’s friends or yours. A lot of teasing and laughter at your expense after the fact, too. You’re friends never let you hear the end of an especially painful or public rejection.
But it was exciting, too. You see someone in a club who you think is cute. You ask her to dance. Later, you talk at the bar. By the end of the night, your friends find you making out with her in the corner.
“A lot better than swiping and texting,” I said.
My friend’s response:
“That doesn’t even sound real. And it sounds so stressful.”
Here’s the thing:
It wasn’t even that long ago. Dating apps in the way we know them today first appeared less than 15 years ago, and it wasn’t until 2017 that dating apps became the primary way for people to meet. Yet when I speak to my young friend, he looks at the idea of dating without the apps as ancient history.
Also crazy, stressful, and ridiculous.
But it really wasn’t that long ago.
I’ve never used a dating app in my life, so I don’t have firsthand experience with their effectiveness and usefulness. Maybe dating is one thousand times better today than when I was dating.
But here is what I know for sure:
My mind is filled with hundreds of memories from my dating life. Moments of disappointment and delight. Daring and disaster. Camaraderie amongst friends. Jokes at their and my expense. Intense, suspenseful, courageous moments when you opened your heart to someone you barely knew and waited for a response. Joyful, hilarious adventures in love and life that I wouldn’t trade away for the simplicity of swiping.
I don’t know if dating was harder or easier two decades years ago, but I suspect that it may have been more interesting.
Or at least more storyworthy.
