I wonder sometimes what the point of serial dating is. As a stand-alone activity, like, say, attending spin class or taking archery lessons, I'm not sure why it's so popular because, frankly, it's painful. And you never really get anywhere. It's just one fresh body after another.
Serial dating - which I define as successive bouts of fewer than ten dates - gets old really quickly. Meeting and beginning the discovery process sounds and feels like a legal proceeding after a while. All the same stuff has to be asked ie;
+ where do you come from?
+ what do you do for a living?
+ dog person or cat person?
+ spit or swallow (when wine tasting)?
...ad infinitum like some kind of early-round beauty pageant from hell. That's not a bad metaphor as I think of it, because that's what we're doing here, hoping to uncover the one we find most attractive in swimwear, dinner wear, lounge wear and underwear.
Or are we? Are we really looking for someone we want to spend our time adoring and making happy? Or has the thrill of a new possibility every three weeks taken over?
Clearly, some people like the game of dating. They're the serial life re-decorators who enjoy squeezing facts out of the newbie and finding a few that resonate. (For a two week emotional blitz.) This is using people as ornament, an enterprise that probably works short-term, but will leave you with the equivalent of an emotional hangover untreatable in the long term. Sex might be involved, but it's the Cliffs notes of sex, not the awesome component of a great marriage.
I think this is a problem. Dating should be about finding someone for the long-term. Despite my flippancy, I believe that dating as a form of sport isn't good for either men or women. The emotional cost of the meeting/discovery/sex/break-up cycle can be controlled in the short term, but gradually wears you out. And the resulting danger is that when the right person does pop into your life, you might be too jaded to notice, too blind too see.
New is fun, but depth is better.
Bottoms Up, Serious Daters.
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