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You're forgetting about the "less desirable" part of your statement.
Why are you nitpicking?
"Less desirable" was based upon my summary of her comment in her post.
Her original post is below...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
If you're living in the same house together, it's easy enough to create alone time by hanging out in your room with your SO. You can also have alone time if everyone has different work schedules, so sometimes the house is empty except for the couple. Or if you're hanging out at another house with a group, your SO invites you into his/her room. Or as posted earlier, you might break away from the group at dinner time to go check out a restaurant together, on the spur the moment. Is that a date, if there's no formal invitation, no advance arrangement penciled into the calendar? There's a grey area between "date" and "hanging out at the local pizza place".
And to answer your first questions, many of the people in these groups never dated in HS or college. The guys were too shy, the women never got asked, or couldn't get a reaction from the guys they might have been interested in. HS and even college dating are not the universal experiences the media would have us believe they are.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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It certainly that case in many subcultures. I don't know about geek in general, but the SCA and/or LARP communities (and Firefly/Burning Man (of yesteryear)), and of course the FetLife community, that certainly has been the case in most parts of the country I've lived in. Not my thing, but I know a fair number of those people.
No, this is a regional thing, not a socially awkward thing. Nobody dates here.
(Or maybe we just don't use the term 'dating' -- I can't tell.)
Although, come to think of it, it may be a pattern in geek culture in all parts of the US? More sex and romance, less dating?
Please Nila, where is "here"?
Just give us a country and region if you aren't comfortable with exact location okay? It could help explain so much for us about the threads you post and your unusual view on some things you've said here
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Moderator cut: post removed
There are regional, and even more importantly, different subcultural differences in relationship forming.
Though, even when I've moved/lived in places where they occur, or fancied a woman in that was in one of them, they rarely disliked the straightforward being asked out. It did happen a few times though where I met woman that hated formal dating all together, but not often.
I have a stalker, so I won't say. And I don't think it would help the people desperate to think I am lying, anyway .
As several folks here have said, the non-dating thing occurs in many regions of the world, and many subcultures.
I understand about stalkers and the need to be careful
I don't at all think you are "lying", I just think you have had some VERY uncommon life experiences by middle American standards. So I am sincerely curious about what part of the world you hail from
No, this is a regional thing, not a socially awkward thing. Nobody dates here.
That's not so unusual, is it? Especially among teens and 20-somethings. I think dating among certain age groups has been fading probably since sometime in the 60's. And the new trends that have roots also in the 2nd half of the 20th Century are hooking up (which used to just be called sex on the first date), and group activities, group living, and "hanging out".
That's one reason some people have no formal dating experience. Everything's become very informal. Some guys these days (as we've seen on threads here in the past, aside from real-life observations) are loathe to label anything a "date". They want activities to be ambiguous "hanging out", until they're ready to make even a modest commitment to a woman, IF they ever manage even that (bf/gf). I think we're seeing HUGE shifts in how pairing up happens, and these shifts began decades ago.
I think the communal living, once it evolved past the hippie stage, became an adaptation to high rents in high-demand cities, like San Francisco, Seattle, and maybe LA. In NYC that morphed into cooperative apartments and the like. The US has taken individualism to the extreme.
So the OP was riding that wave as it evolved, perhaps on the cutting edge, you might call it, while others living in more conventional parts of the country or outside the relevant demographic groups might not have been aware of the trends. In the places I've lived on the West Coast, none of the above-mentioned was unusual. I wouldn't say it was the norm, but it wasn't uncommon or unheard of.
Besides, folks, living in a big houseful of your friends is a lot of fun. It sure beats the extreme isolation that's become common in American life today, of everyone holed up in their apartment or home, watching TV, playing video games, or glued to the internet.
So it may be that where I lived was just ahead of its time?
I don't understand all this talk about communal living, though. There's a lot of that here, but it has nothing to do with the not dating thing. I have never hooked up with OR dated OR had a relationship with someone I lived with.
So it may be that where I lived was just ahead of its time?
I don't understand all this talk about communal living, though. There's a lot of that here, but it has nothing to do with the not dating thing. I have never hooked up with OR dated OR had a relationship with someone I lived with.
Well, the communal living was my experience with falling in love and having sex without formally dating. It sounds like your experience was more centered around what the Aussies call "mateship", where everyone hangs out with a group of friends ("mates", in Aussie-speak), and that's how couples formed--through the group, and friends of group members. That's how it works in northern Europe, too. It's a much lower-key and organic way of meeting a partner, I think. But sometimes it doesn't work, if there's not enough new blood joining the group from time to time.
Where is cinderslipper when we need her? She's our Oz contributor.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 12-18-2013 at 08:53 PM..
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