I’m not a morning person and I’m definitely not a before coffee person… but occasionally I will have very deep and indepth conversations before I have put any caffeine into my body.  Kinda like drunk texting, but a little less emotional or insane. That’s right folks,  I think it might be time to start a little section of the blog called, ‘Conversations before coffee’.

Today’s conversation brought to you by two single women, who have both lived on their own for way too long and also brought to you by the word ‘date’.

“Do people actually go on dates anymore?”

My friend, she asks very good questions, usually more on a why does the world work this way, what if we did this to change it level.  So I was a bit, thrown by what I thought was a very simple question.  Turns out, it might have been one of the most complicated ones to answer.  My quick go to was, sure, they must, people are still getting into relationships, right… right?  The thing is, do people really DATE, or court  or do any of that romantic 1940’s style made for movies only stuff or is it a two cups of coffee in a noisy coffee shop followed by a ‘we’re a couple now’ kinda deal these days?  I remember a time, when there was this thing called ‘courting’. No, I haven’t been transported here from the Victorian age or a Bronte sisters novel, it’s a real thing. Men and women would take you on many dates, say sweet nothings to you, and try to convince you they were ‘the one’. Nowadays I hear tales of, we had coffee, now we live together…. two weeks later. Am I too old school? Or just old? I thought dating was, well an event of some sort, were several of those events happened within a time frame before the ‘now we live together’ phase happened.  Is today’s dating like the new math?  Complicated and unnecessary?  Has dating become extinct like the Dodo bird?

The reason the topic came up was one of my friends, girlfriends went out on a ‘date’ last night. The kind of date I might have went on a million years ago.  Guy picks up girl at front door, guy takes girl for dinner, guy and girl go on romantic walk, guy drives girl home and the night ends with a kiss and a promise of another date. Even the friend of my friend who went on the date was confused as she hadn’t been on a date, date in a very long time either.  Hell, it’s been so long that if I was taken out on a real date or rather my interruption of what I remember being a real date, I’d be confused too.

As my friend and I continued to skype and chat and sip our coffee, even as the caffeine made it to our blood stream, we were still baffled by the initial question.  Do people still date, fall in love and have relationships that last more than 5 minutes or is romance really dead?  Is today’s romance, a cup of coffee or a drink and a toss in the sheets or is there more?

As the coffee slowly kicked in, our conversation quickly turned into ‘well, I know that a friend of a friends friend, had a friend of a friend who heard about a woman in England who actually went on a date that included a meal and possibly some hand holding.’ I even added a, ‘No, really I have two friends who dated and just got married.  Really, I do.’  She didn’t believe me and until I prove it through Facebook, it didn’t happen.  Our conversation seriously got to the point were we started to scare ourselves into thinking that maybe dating really was dead.  Could it be true?  Will we never go on another date again?  How can this myth be dispelled? How do we prove it isn’t a thing of history?  We even considered taking each other on a date (kinda defeating the whole purpose of our question) or one us actually go out on, well, an actual date in order to put this very confusing question to rest. And by date we don’t mean a coffee date, but an actual date.  Of course, we will have to try to remember what an actual date was like in order to have fair comparison.  Possibly in a future far, far away… there will be a conclusion to this post. Possibly…

So, ya.  That was my morning before coffee.  The question is still not answered and I’m putting on a second pot.