Whatever happened to the flowers?

One of my friends was venting to me about her relationship troubles and suggested I write about dating. Lord  knows I could vent on for pages about the frustrations a single 30 something has out in the dating world, a world fraught with danger, and intrigue. I've done so in the past on other blogs, and in a journal I keep. I wasn't sure though that dating was the experience I really wanted to put down on paper. One I wasn't entirely sure resonated with my particular mood. The more I thought about it however, the more I realized that dating is very much something that is on my mind. I think about it quite a bit actually, and it seems inevitable that I  talk about it now.

I'm not seeing anyone at the moment, though I have a couple of prospects I'm currently feeling out (I said out not up...perv), and who knows in the near future I could very well have someone in my life..or I could just have what I have now, friends who care about me, and a mother who keeps nagging me for grandchildren.

Dating has changed significantly in the last decade. It seems that traditional dating has gone by the wayside and our impatient, instant gratification society seem dead set on killing the whole concept of romantic encounters outside of the realm of sex.

What even happened to the days when a man would show up at a woman's doorstep with flowers, and take her out to a nice dinner, and a show? How did this get replaced by sexting and booty calls? (please tell me this is not rhetorical) Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic but I used to always bring flowers for a woman on a first date. I didn't stop until just a couple years ago. You see for a long time (some 7ish years) I was in a relationship, and when that crashed and burned, I was scarred and tossed back into the single life. For my first few "real" dates I brought flowers. Just like I did when I was a foolish young teen. Instead of being sweet and romantic, I somehow had transitioned into being creepy. I'm not sure how this happened, but by the second first date reacting negatively to flowers, I stopped bringing them altogether. This made me sad.

Single life, it seemed, had changed..

I had been 19 when my 7 year relationship had begun and by the time it ended I was in my mid 20s and completely confused about how things worked. I had skipped the whole bar scene, and had a fairly small social circle. To sum it up, meeting people was scary. I did the best I could, but had no long term success in my endeavors. 

Eventually I would stop putting effort into meeting someone in real life, and try my hand at online dating. I had a little success, a few miserable failures, and one gigantic mistake. Online dating can be a harsh and brutal landscape. You see a lot of people, just don't act like people. I think it has something to do with the relative level of anonymity that people online have. Despite having most of your personal information on public display (and photos) people still feel they have the right to treat you online worse than they would if you'd had met in person. This isn't exclusive to dating sites, and in my opinion is part of an internet epidemic of rudeness.

You see it's very easy to ignore someones message and simply delete it, thus flushing any and all  unwanted attention down the drain with it. You see online daters can be more selective. Individuals get literally a few seconds to make enough of an impression to get someone to reply or send you a message. It is swift, brutal, and generally speaking, it sucks.

Still they say romance is a marathon, not a sprint (I don't know who says that, if nobody does I'll take the credit) and I know that somewhere there is someone for me. I don't know who she is yet, but I think that I'll know her when I meet her, or at least I hope I do. In the meantime I'll keep looking for her and hope that she is looking for me.

Who knows when I find her, maybe I'll even bring her flowers.