romanticism

how many people have you met recently who are romantic? certain visions of the past are slowly fading. in this day and age, when you’re dating someone, exclusively or not, it means you meet for drinks at least once a week, if you’re lucky you catch a movie sometimes, and you’re sleeping together. you have to be pretty serious about someone to go to dinner together. it makes no sense. how can you get to know someone without some one-on-one time that isn’t in a crowded/loud/dingy bar? also, guys seem reluctant to spend the time on dinner, even if they wont have to spend the money (e.g. offering to go dutch doesn’t help). we all have to eat, and if you’re dating someone, hopefully you have similar interests (like good food), so why is it so difficult for a girl to pin a man down for a meal? and why, and how, has the simple act of eating dinner together become romantic?

i postulate in this way, because i’ve been listening to friends’ stories of fledgling relationships, or summer flings, and been interested by how different their interactions are from the ones my beau and i have. before we lived together even, we often had dinner, either out or one of us would cook. on weekends, even if we hadn’t slept over at one or the other’s house the night before, we frequently met for brunch. when you’re dating someone, one of the perks is being able to sit at a good meal, with a glass of wine or beer, and bitch about your day/week, or whatever else, to a totally sympathetic ear (or, almost totally). obviously, the comfort to speak in this way comes with time, but how does one develop that comfort if you’re never in a situation where it might happen in the future?

why do men suck? and why do women let them?