Romance out in casual approach
Andrea Burns
November 04, 2007 12:00am
THE date is dead. Time of death? Some point between candlelit dinners and "you can come along if you want to".
I was pondering the eternal question the other day - not the meaning of life, but the one thing most singles would like to know: where do you meet a life partner?
It certainly isn't on a date any more.
Traditionally, Saturday night is date night.
It's the night when most gals bother to shave their legs and get out their good undies for the prospect of being taken out on the town.
But sadly the esteemed tradition of dating is a thing of the past.
It has been replaced with a mediocre substitute. We go out for a drink. A coffee. A cocktail. A 3am drunken catch-up at a bar with karaoke.
But we sure don't put the effort in any more.
There are a lot of very hungry gals out there who haven't been taken out for a good meal since scrunchies were in vogue.
Try to lock in the average bloke for a date and you might as well try to pin down a shadow.
In this age of casual interaction, something as serious as booking in a Saturday night function is just too much.
And unless you spend your days contriving meetings on RSVP.com, you might find your calendar empty of engagements.
It's a shame because the perfect date is something many women fantasise about.
He takes you somewhere fabulous, the conversation is scintillating, kiss at the doorstep -- sizzling.
Instead, women are settling for the formal date's cavalier cousin who blows into town via an SMS about 6pm asking if you want to meet for a drink in the city. Minimal effort, maximum reward. They show up, get you sufficiently drunk on vodka, lime and sodas and try for a home run.
To make matters worse, women often find the bloke's mates have crashed the rendezvous. Now you are an incidental on a boys' night out.
But instead of throwing our handbags up in protest, the girls are going along with it.
To us, the date has become a novelty. When a friend says she is going on a date, it is in mocking tones.
How did it come to this?
Are we so scared to sit across from each other in a quiet restaurant and just talk? Does effort on a first date equal too much commitment? Wouldn't it help us work out sooner who was actually compatible?
Newsflash - with seven drinks under our belt, almost everybody is attractive.
If we are not careful we'll have spent the entire courting process boozed and wake up at 35 with a baby and some dude we picked up in a bar.
When my partner first took an interest in me I asked - somewhat in jest - when he planned to take me on a date.
You should have seen the look on the poor boy's face. You'd have thought I had asked him to marry me.
"But what do I do?" he asked.
For too long fellas have been taking the easy way out and the girls have accepted it.
Perhaps it's the symptom of a non-committal culture.
But where are we headed?
Encounters of the casual kind may leave us all desperate and dateless.