Hitch dating rules

Involvement: Dating, Pairing, & Courtship

Chapter 4

Meeting & Mating

A great deal of popular interest in dating, and seems to be quite a bit of frustration with the challenge of finding a suitable partner

Whitehead: “We are in the middle of a massive transition…a contemporary crisis in dating and mating.”

Historically, becoming involved with another person was understood in the context of courtship

Today, rules about dating are uncertain and confused.

“We’ve lost the ability to slow down the process of becoming intimate and choosing a partner”

Some changes:

Assertive females

Workplace romances

Speed dating/online meeting

Closed Courtship: Arranged Marriages

Arranged marriage – partners were determined not by the bride and groom, but by their families

Blind Marriage: neither partner saw each other until the wedding day

Bride price & Dowry:

Bride price – man must pay money or property to the future bride’s family for the right to marry her

Dowry – the money, property, or good a woman brings to the marriage

Elopement

Forced Marriage – one or both coerced to marry under either physical or emotional pressure

Open Courtship: Relationship Marketplace

In North America, and most Western nations, we have an open courtship system – most of us generally make our own decisions about choosing our partners.

Relationship market – (aka marriage market) Prospective partners compare the personal, social, and financial resources of eligible mates, then bargain for the best they can get

Fits with the social exchange perspective

People looking for a traditional partnership: typically men offer financial security & status, women offer domestic skills

People looking for an egalitarian partnership: men & women might play up similar assets

Functions of Dating

Recreation – is [ideally] fun

Companionship – way of maintaining a friendship and avoiding isolation

Intimacy & Sex

Mate Selection

Socialization – helps socialize us to get along with the opposite sex

Status Achievement – shows others that he/she is more acceptable/desirable/grown up

Dating as a Filter

Some scholars believe that dating is a process of filtering out possible partners for the purpose of achieving homogamy – marriage between partners of similar education and social class, ethnicity, race, religion and age

3 Filters:

Propinquity: may filter people based on their nearness to you in place and time

Endogamy: cultural expectation that a person marries within his/her social group in terms of race, religion and class

Exogamy: marrying outside family group (incest taboo)

Factors Affecting Eligibility & Availability

Race – Interracial dating has become more and more accepted

As of 2010, 93% of “Millenials” surveyed approve of interracial marriages

Age – particularly the case for women

“Marriage squeeze” – one sex has a more limited pool of eligible marriage candidates than the other

Since women tend to marry men that are somewhat older, there are more available women than men

Imbalance increases as people age, with many fewer unmarried men over 65. When you add together never-married, divorced, and widowed men, unmarried women outnumber them by the age of 35

Social class – people tend to date/marry within their own class

Religion – most people marry other with similar values; higher divorce rate for couple with different religions

Relationships & Personal Growth

Ruvolo & Brennan: One longitudinal study of 301 dating couples found that dating can contribute to personal growth

Researchers believe that the more the partner loves an individual, the more growth the individual will subsequently experience

The supportive assistance individuals received from their dating partners and the love the partners reported for them predict the growth that the individuals later experienced

Finding People

Open Fields (interaction unlikely): Settings where people do not normally interact, so potential partners aren’t likely to meet

Malls

Airports

Large universities

Closed fields (interaction likely): settings where people are likely to interact, so potential partners may meet

Parties

Church groups

Small workplace settings

Meeting People

Personal Introductions

Classified Ads: 2 main characteristics:

1. women as sex objects – describe themselves in terms of appearance and attractiveness

2. men as success objects – describe themselves in terms of intelligence and career success

Meeting Online

Dating websites

Social networking websites

Advantages: exposed to a wide variety of potential; time and energy investment relatively minimal

Disadvantages: can’t observe nonverbal communication; people exaggerate. Women subtract years and pounds, men add inches to height and dollars to income

Introduction Services

Variations in Dating

Traditional Courtship: Dating to Engagement

Research shows that a lot of dating as a teenager may develop social skills, but doesn’t teach deeper skills like effective communication and solving conflicts

On-Campus Dating: “Hanging out”, “hooking up”, and “joined at the hip”

Long-Distance Dating

About 1/3 of couples break up within 3 months of moving to the same town, possibly because of the loss of autonomy each once had

Dating in the Workplace

Second-Time Around Dating

4 Ways of Reacting to a Deteriorating Relationship

The Neglect Response – when a person doesn’t want to deal with problems

Is a destructive reaction that tends to occur when a person isn’t very invested in the relationship