Q: What does dating mean? What does it accomplish?
A: Dating is free agency that is necessary to find a compatible partner. It also can lead to finding someone you love, or pickiness that ends up taking way too long (and sometimes not at all) in finding a partner. If someone has had several offers, they're 40-60+ years old and have never been in a relationship, I can guarantee that their standards are too high.
Q: What ways could dating be improved to be more effective?
A: This is a multi-layered question with a complicated answer. Ideally, if everyone in the world lived in a utopian society, people would probably fall in love quickly and be happy. But that’s not reality.
There‘s also a lot of legal obligations that comes just from being a male. After a marriage of 25 years, if she gets bored and decides to leave, he has to give up half of his money and possessions, pay alimony (which happens 100% of the time in traditional “Dad provides, mom stays at home” relationships) and child support for any child under the age of 18. In 1960, men and women above the age of 25, 62% of them were married. In 2025, that number has dropped drastically down to just under 50%. Roughly half of those relationships are bound to end im divorce. Men are beginning to see the risks of marriage outweighing the potential benefits. In Kentucky, they passed a law recently that if you choose to leave the marriage, there is shared custody of the children by default. Between 2018-2023, divorce rates dropped by 25%. So in short, making legal obligations more fair is going to keep people together.
And theres this cycle of fear that needs to be addressed. Men get with women, women get burned and bitter, that bitterness passes on to the next man who may be a good guy, then he becomes bitter, then that once nice but now bitter man passes his bitterness onto the next woman who is nice, and she turns bitter. Guys are scared of being rejected and being called creeps and even having false allegations against them which *will* ruin their lives, and women are afraid if they’re nice they're going to get hurt again. Or stalked. Or touched inappropriately. Etc.
We need to change the laws where they promote healthy relationships. Many think the grass is greener on the other side. My motto is “Water your own grass.” It’s so easy now for someone to just get bored and leave, vows meaning absolutely nothing to them. And that’s why at least half of the relationships don't last. We need to trust more. We need to heal before we jump into another relationship. We need more effort. A healthy relationship is not easy. Keeping a traditional man or woman takes a lot of sacrifice from both parties to work. Don’t be a lazy dater. Put your best foot forward right from the start.
