Dating Isn’t Natural — Which Is Probably Why It’s Brutal

It was one thing I made sure to ask about before she died.

My grandmother told the story like the back of her hand. She was only 17 years old when my grandfather, who lived upstairs, knocked on her door one day.

When she answered, he asked to take her out dancing.

Fast forward and they were celebrating 50 years of marriage before my grandfather would pass of Alzheimer’s. She was depressed and heartbroken for much of the time afterward, but they had truly spent their lives together.

Hearing this story usually elicits a type of reaction:

It was so good in those days. Now people are…

And, honestly fill in the blank: Crazy. Only into hookups. Unwilling to commit. The story seems to be that we cannot choose one person for decades, so therefore we are fundamentally broken.

I took some time recently to read about our early ancestors.

I was surprised to find out that early human societies had no concept of marriage. Children were raised by groups, not in 2 parent households. If we’re being real, humans have only been doing this monogamy thing very recently.

This usually pisses people off.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that only strict monogamy is good and everything else is bad. Be it religion. Societal expectations. Peer pressure. Just introducing the idea that humans may not have always been monogamous is taboo.

But for me, I think it’s a bit of a relief.

I enjoy going on dates, meeting people, and (despite my ancestors) I probably will get married one day. While it may be unnatural for my species, so is ice cream.

And I f*cking love ice cream (plus, marriage benefits).

Understanding my early ancestry tells me that it’s okay if I’m not good at dating. It’s okay if I don’t get married by 30. It’s gonna be just fine if I die alone. Because it’s not written in my DNA that I was supposed to find “the one” and live with them for 50 years.

Our mating habits are driven by our culture. Back in the 50’s it was very normal what my grandparents did. That’s not normal now. And that’s okay because 50 years with the same person sounds exhausting as hell.

My problem is this: we define our lives by dating and marriage.

There are whole groups of people out there feeling inadequate because they haven’t hit relationship milestones. Or maybe they *gasp* got a divorce.

And it’s sad because there is nothing wrong with being single. Or getting a divorce. What we’re responding to is social pressure, not fulfilling a biological purpose.

So I lightened up about dating.

I think we could all lighten up about dating.

Because what we really want is love with another human being. We want to bond. Those are instinctual human things. Endless texting, counting the number of dates until we have sex and having a big wedding with the perfect appetizers are all pretty unnatural things.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad for anything of these things to happen: It just means that you’re not behind. You’re not lost. And if you don’t meet ridiculous cultural expectations for dating you are not broken.

I look at life now for what it is: Human beings doing very non-human things. Sitting in chairs all day. Driving cars. Packing into subway stations. All of it is normal, but that doesn’t mean we were designed to do it.