Friday 6th November 2009
by CarolineTa-Nehisi Coates offered interesting thoughts on courtship and relationships this week. In the post, TNC politely scoffs at a David Brooks piece lamenting the shift from family-selected, slower-paced matches to a more frenetic, presumably less-committed environment.
Do people mostly meet through texting today? Are schools, friends and work largely irrelevant? Is it true that there are no social scripts for young people? Or is Brooks merely unfamiliar with them? Did people not meet at jazz clubs back in the 50s, at the Drifters show, or at the beach? And taking Brooks’ point, has the actual essence of dating changed that much? Are young people better or worse of for it?
I never dated in high school and didn’t really go on “dates” in college — since we were all in such close proximity, things were very fluid and undefined, for better or worse. The germane point in Brooks’ piece is this:
People are thus thrown back on themselves. They are free agents in a competitive arena marked by ambiguous relationships.
He makes it sound very commodified and crass, whereas I’d say the ambiguity does way more emotional harm than anything else — It’s always been considered bad behavior for people to date around without being honest about it, but as relationships are less and less defined, those lines blur and allow each person to interpret as he or she wishes. And you know what they say about assuming.
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