Dating 101

Recently, there has been an over indulgent saturation of motivational, “self help” books and articles geared toward the modern women's inability to find love. Most of these books boast the same premise: they alone hold the Holy Grail to love, relationships and the inner workings to the complicated male mind. Apparently, the way to keep a man enthralled is not by being the beautiful, confident, independent, complicated species that we are. Rather, we are told to view men as prey, and with the aid of the author’s instructions we become predators able to predict their behavior so that we may ensnare them in a cleverly disguised trap. We then must strategically pounce at the first opportunity but unlike other predators, we are not allowed to simply devour our meal to contentment. Instead, we must suddenly become aloof and demure yet captivating enough to enchant these oblivious men into long term committed relationships.

Not only do these self proclaimed guru’s educate the naïve woman about how to capture the attention of a man, they apparently have become experts on how to get your dream man to commit and marry you, and if he ever decides he wants to leave one day, how to get him to come back to you. In 2009 a movie based around the popular book He’s Just Not That Into You followed the lives of several helpless women who were so desperate they were willing to do anything for love. While this movie was a gross exaggeration, it causes me to ponder if at least in some ways we as women are this hapless dating catastrophe obsessed with marriage.

If you think about it realistically, as young girls we have been taught that without a long term relationship to sustain us, our lives are meaningless. The message of commitment, marriage and family has been ingrained into us to the point that even the most successful achieved career woman is deemed as unhappy or unfulfilled without the relationship attachment.

Now don’t misconstrue my rant. I am not anti-love, anti-commitment or even anti-marriage. In fact in many ways I am a romantic. But, in this era, relationships are now partially comprised of single parents, same sex domestic partnerships, polyamorous and open relationships. Therefore, is it inconceivable to assume that as we as a civilization evolve and become a more advanced species, that the way we view love and traditional relationships should also evolve?

And if we as women evolve since we hold the power, will men not also evolve the way they view us?