How I Think about Dating
Context:
I recently went on a date. It was an atypical date to say the least. When you go on a date from ‘hinge’, there’s an expected social decorum of dont’s to maintain the atmosphere of ‘casualness’. However, because both of us were ‘naive’ to Hinge, it was nothing similar to casual.
Rapid fire questions ranging from why we broke up with our exes, what our relationship with our parents were, it was nothing like I’d expected. She coined the experience, “Aren’t first dates always just a two sided interview lol”.
Body:
That phrase has since stuck with me for the past couple days, because honestly that’s probably the most ideal form of a first date for somebody who’s looking for in a serious relationship, given most relationships (need to cite statistics) are from online apps (hinge, coffee meets bagels) and you can’t exactly interview somebody over text (either they’re too busy to do it sync or the barrier to ghost is really low). In an ideal world, the ‘interviewing’ would be asnc, and the first date would happen afterwards.
So then, I wondered what is the goal of the second, third date & at what point do you decide it’s not just dating but you should be exclusive.
To the first question, the level 1 answer is to further the ‘two sided interview, potentially harder questions.’ the level 2 answer is most likely, all interview are a continuation of a binary tree that helps you to understand whether that person aligns with you on your core axis, where each split is a deeper dive of an existent notion.
Conclusion:
If so, it seems like before dating, people should introspect and decide what values are truly most important to them. And then use that as the guiding questions. Alebeit, the questions have to be guided. You can’t just ask them all in a row & wonder why the asnwers are lack luster.
I think the other caveat i would put is, no matter how sure you are there needs to be a waiting period of 2 to 3 months. It’s unrealistic for somebody to have truly covered all grounds, but also to be 100% sure the answers they received were are truly ‘truthful’ whether intentionally or not. Additionally, within a 3 month period it’s more likely neither parties lives were perfect. For example, maybe you can only date under conditions when both parties are in ‘optimal’ situations. You also need time to see how the relationship interacts under individual hardship.