The Demise of Dating

New York Times ^ | December 13, 2008 | Charles M. Blow

[reaganaut1]

Quite frankly, your sort of “good example” sounds little different from an Islamic “arranged marriage”.

Arranged marriages are OK if they are voluntary for the bride and groom (they are introduced by parents are relatives but decide themselves if they want to get married). The poster you replied was talking about voluntary arranged marriages. I had such a marriage myself (I'm Indian, nominally Hindu) and am happy. Historically, parents, even in the West where women have had more rights, have taken a keen interest in finding a spouse for their children, and children, especially girls, have often lived with their parents until marriage. Are "hookups" in dorms leading to heartbreak, STDs, and abortions (or a child without a caring father) better? I'm not against dating as a means of searching for a spouse, but the "hookups" make people unmarriageable.

[Betis70]

Ha, never has ‘hooking up’ meant just hanging out. It always means at the very least, heavy duty making out, usually it means a one-night stand.

I’ve lived on the easy coast, west coast, and southwest. The term was always used in this fashion.

[Betis70]

Easy coast -> east coast. Freudian slip there?

[familyop]

Moo!

[Beagle8U]

“it reminds me of my old airborne days.”

I assume you mean hooking up, as in, hooking up your chute line before a jump. Not the part about dogs...lol.

[Campion]

A heart to heart talk with a woman in her 30's or 40's who has ruined her life with this sort of behavior would be a good start.

Read this lady's book. She's been there and done that, and lived to tell about it.

[familyop]

Young men should take the advice from Eminem and Dr. Dre. Don’t try to stay with those kind of women.

[fwdude]

One of those seeds - at least in Texas - was the phenomenon of “no-fault divorce.”

Agreed. Or perhaps the fruit of the seed.

[Joan Kerrey]

For some reason the term “Hooking Up” reminds me of dogs. ________________________________ Something is still missing though. Reminds me of dogs doing it while text messaging a friend about a planned group hookup later in the day.

[Radix]

Amazing graphs, but somehow, not really.

[altura]

thanks for clearing it up about the fifty percent of marriages fail statistic.

It didn’t sound right to me, but we tend to believe statistics even thought we say we won’t.

[little jeremiah]

Bookmark.

[altura]

congrats, but I never met, or personally knew of, anyone with that kind of dating experience. Maybe Amish???

[fwdude]

I've been in finance and accounting long enough to know that raw data can be “massaged” to portray just about any outcome you want. There are too many considerations to make simple computations that cut and dry.

[MovementConservative]

Ha, never has ‘hooking up’ meant just hanging out. It always means at the very least, heavy duty making out, usually it means a one-night stand. I’ve lived on the easy coast, west coast, and southwest. The term was always used in this fashion.

Congratulations stud. You must be very proud of yourself.

[GreatOne]

I compare it to buying a book from your favorite author, then reading the last chapter before reading it from the beginning.

While that's not a bad adage, I think that the oldest is still the best - Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

[WOBBLY BOB]

yep. static line, not dogs.

[dbz77]

Why would a man marry a woman who "hooks-up" with him and who has a long history of hook-ups with other men in the past, with the sexual diseases (some leading to infertility) to go along with them?

He would not.

Those women are only good for passing the time.

[dbz77]

More than half of marriages fail... even those from the 70’s. It is what happens to society when they shun GOD.

I hear the divorce rate in Afghanistan while under Taliban rule was almost zero.

[dbz77]

And that may be the most disturbing part of all of this. Women - contrary to what the femininst cram down their necks - are the real losers in this yet they pursue this lifestyle with almost grim determination even though it makes them unhappy.

How are they losers?

Just because they do not find "the One" does not mean they did not have fun.