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Dating – Conversation Lesson

AJ: Y’know, I don’t know why, but for some reason one of the most common topics I get asked about on social media is dating. I don’t know why they’re asking me dating questions since I’m teaching English, but…

Joe: Are they asking you out on a date or…

AJ: How to date, how to, well, there’s two different kinds, y’know. One is how to date, how to get a girlfriend or a boyfriend or something. And then the other was more just cultural curiosity, what’s dating like in America, I assume compared to other countries.

Kristin: Well, we can definitely talk about what it’s like here to date and how it’s changed over the years.

AJ: Yeah, for sure it’s changed a lot. I mean, of course, now…I was going to say younger people, but even myself, even you all, you two, have this history connected to online dating. I met my wife online.

And we weren’t specifically trying to date really. We were pen pals online. I was living in Thailand. She was living in Japan at the time. I was planning to go and live in Japan and work there so I wanted to make some connections, make some friends there. So I met her through some kind of pen pal, like cultural exchange, online thing. We started emailing each other back and forth, started realizing, oh, we’ve got a lot in common, really similar values, really was interested in her. We started exchanging pictures. I said, oh, she’s attractive, too. And then we started dating and, of course, now we’re married.

So I think, and of course, now I think that’s what…that’s probably the most common way, wouldn’t you say, for people now dating that it’s, that people meet online in some capacity?

Joe: Yeah, but, y’know what’s…I do agree with you. That is probably the most common way now. But it’s funny because you started out saying you met online but then the things that you did as follow up were not at all like what it’s like today, right?

AJ: Absolutely.

Joe: I mean, you said we were pen pals. We were writing back and forth. After a while we exchanged a picture, whereas I think if you’re doing online dating, the sending of the picture is almost the first part because it’s not even sending necessarily, right? Because you have a profile with a lot of these places, right? I don’t know, I never made a profile.

AJ: You’re exactly right. Actually, I did at one point try a little bit of online dating and I really actually hated it. I found it very, very shallow because, right, it’s exactly the opposite of how Tomoe and I did it because mostly people are reacting to a profile picture and there’s a lot of pressure to be clever or witty or profound or somehow to stand out. I mean really, it’s like online marketing for a business, right?

Because there’s…people are just going through profile after profile. They’re looking at hundreds of them probably. So the whole game then is to try to stand out and be different. And because of that, I kind of feel that most people are not being very sincere. So then you meet them in person and it’s like, oh, well, they’re not quite as exciting or interesting or great as…it’s like this whole putting on a show. So in that way, I do prefer the old style way, which was how it was done before social media or online dating, which was you would just meet people through friends or work or some activity… Kristin: School.

AJ: …clubs, school, yes.

Kristin: That just made me think…so what you were describing with online dating was joining a particular website, like eHarmony or something like that…

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: …and setting up a profile. I just remember though the way that Joe met the mutual friend that we had, which is how we connected, was actually on the want ads online. You remember? On Craigslist.

Joe: Yeah, yeah, it was Craigslist. They have a dating section and I just saw someone had posted an ad so I replied to it and it was the first time I had ever done anything like that. I’ve really only had an online dating time that was maybe not even a month long and it was just before I met Kristin, when I was just out of another relationship. Honestly, I haven’t even been, since I was about 24 years old, I haven’t really done much dating because I was with Kristin or I was with the girl I was with beforehand. But Kristin’s right. There’s no profile with Craigslist. All I did was just I answered an ad and then I don’t know if I sent a picture with it. I can’t remember. But it worked out really well. I mean, it didn’t work out with that girl and I but she kept telling me, you know what, I have a friend named Kristin that I think you’d really like, you’d get along with.

AJ: Hmmm.

Joe: And then she was telling Kristin, what’d she tell you?

Kristin: The same thing. Because she knew that we had a lot in common. And we did.

AJ: Right, right, right. Well, y’know, I was just thinking as you guys were talking that what the difference is maybe is that a lot of the online dating and the profiles and going through all that stuff, the dating sites specifically, I think of it as kind of the online equivalent of the bar scene. And really what that’s focused on is short-term hookups, right? I mean, I think that’s typically the case. So people are looking to have short-term hookups. They’re not necessarily looking for, y’know, their future spouse. Whereas I think if you’re looking for a future spouse, if you’re thinking serious, someone you’re going to possibly marry in the future, I think it’s much better to go slowly and meet people, feel them out first in some social setting.

Maybe have mutual friends who know both of you, things like that and kind of to go slowly which is, y’know, much more old-fashioned, the way it used to be done. But you’re trying to build something that will last a lifetime and for that, y’know, meeting in a bar or just doing some quick online hookup, I don’t think it usually works out very well.

Kristin: Yeah. Have either of you ever gone on a blind date before?

AJ: Hmm.

Joe: I haven’t.

AJ: Where someone arranged it?

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: I don’t think…I think one time I did when, again, it was my brief stint of trying online dating.

Joe: Yeah, so that is actually blind date, right?

AJ: It is kind of a blind date.

Joe: That’s what I was going to say, so I guess in that sense…

AJ: But not totally blind, because I did know what she looked like.

Joe: Good point. And you had sent some messages back and forth, so I guess… AJ: And read her profile.

Joe: Yeah, so technically it wasn’t blind.

AJ: But like a blind date where someone hooks you up or like a friend, oh, I know this person, and you’ve never seen them before.

Kristin: Yes.

AJ: You know nothing at all.

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: And then you meet. I don’t, there’s so much potential for that to be super awkward.

Kristin: Oh yeah, absolutely, I don’t think I’ve…

AJ: Have you done it?

Kristin: No, I don’t think I have.

AJ: But I just imagine you get there and you’re not attracted to each other or you have nothing in common and then you’re out at dinner and then you’re probably just thinking like, okay, so how do I get out of this politely? I don’t want to hurt their feelings but I don’t want to be here any longer.

Kristin: Right.

AJ: That’s delicate.

Joe: It’s funny, because online dating is like ubiquitous now, right?

AJ: Yeah.

Joe: Everybody has a story about either doing it or knowing someone very well who has done it, right?

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it in societal views, in society’s views, y’know? But when it first started, it wasn’t…I don’t know, it happened so quickly, I don’t think people really had a chance to judge it. But before online dating developed, it would have seemed very weird to hear that, oh, I put an ad in the paper or something like that, or I posted something on Craigslist, or something like that, right?

AJ: It really did change quite profoundly.

Joe: It changed quickly.

AJ: But, of course, y’know, the internet and phones and all of this technology has changed a lot of areas of our lives quite profoundly.

Joe: But there is something related to that that I was going to say and that’s my mom’s cousin, Joe, for whom I was named, married his wife who he met, he met her sometime in the late 1960s and they met through an ad in a magazine. And they, she was like…the situation was kind of a weird situation but she lived in Michigan. He lived in New York and, y’know, at the time that’s not anything that was normal, to meet like that.

AJ: Yeah, long distance.

Joe: They didn’t tell anybody in the family about it. In fact, they didn’t tell anyone in the family about it until my Uncle Joe passed away in 2008 or 2009. That was the first time that my Aunt Chris actually said, I think it’s okay to say this now. Your Uncle Joe never wanted me to tell it. But it’s a great story because it worked out and it seems now, back then it would have seemed really odd, but now it just seems like a great romantic story.