dating

Courtship is the process of selecting and attracting another for an intimate relationship such as love, sex, commitment, living together, marriage, and having children, or any combination of these. Courtship may last days, months, or even years, but some lovers skip courting altogether as in cases of love at first sight or arranged marriage.

Dates

Literally, dating means the act of going out on dates. In Western societies, a date is an occasion when one socializes with a potential lover or spouse: it is a pre-scheduled, usually exclusive meeting of two people with mutual interest in one another, to communicate with and to understand each other better through joint participation in one or more social activities during time away from work or school. In this sense, the purpose of a date is for the people dating to become acquainted with each other and decide whether they want to have a relationship.

Dating often begins at the teenage age, but younger children may date as well. Double-dating, when two potential couples go out on a joint-date, is particularly popular with young people. There may be even larger "group dates" in some cases.

During dates, people often explore each other's personalities, to discover whether or not they would be compatible together in a relationship. Usually, if the two individuals discover that they have poor or low compatibility, it signals the end of the relationship and there will be no "second date," and often no further communication at all.

Personal information often sought on dates include:

For dates, a person usually tries to display his or her best qualities, and be on his or her best behavior, or do whatever they think is needed to attract the other person, like dress up and use perfume or cologne.

While a date is going out to do something together (like having dinner and then visiting the theatre, or having a picnic at a park or on the beach), courting may continue to take place between dates, such as meeting online (also known as virtual dating), chatting on-line, sending text messages or picture messages, conversing over the phone, writing each other letters, and sending each other flowers, poems, songs, and gifts, for instance.

Courtship traditions

While the date is fairly casual in most westernized cultures, in many traditional societies, courtship is a highly structured activity, with very specific formal rules.

In some societies, the parents or community propose potential partners, and then allow limited dating to determine whether the parties are suited.

In Japan, there is a type of courtship called Omiai. Parents will hire a matchmaker to provide pictures and résumés of potential mates, and if the couple agrees, there will be a formal meeting with the matchmaker and often parents in attendance. The matchmaker and parents will often exert pressure on the couple to decide whether they want to marry or not after only a few dates.

In some cultures, courtship is eliminated altogether by the practice of arranged marriages, where partners are chosen for young people, typically by their parents.

Conclusion of dating phase

Many couples stop courting or going out after they have chosen to remain together, or after they have married, or after they have children. But love can wane in a relationship without intimacy and romance. Couples who successfully court each other even after they've been together a long time keep their passions for each other alive. Some couples don't need courting for this to occur, with other aspects of their relationship keeping their love for each other strong.

Commercial dating services

Though most people meet their dates at social organizations, in their daily life, or are introduced through friends or relatives, commercial dating agencies emerged strongly, but discreetly, in the Western world after World War II, mostly catering for the 25–44 age group. Newspaper and magazine personal ads also became common.

In the last five years, mate-finding and courtship have seen changes due to online dating services. Telecommunications and computer technologies have developed rapidly since around 1995, allowing daters the use of home telephones with answering machines, mobile phones, and web-based systems to find prospective partners. "Pre-dates" can take place by telephone or online via instant messaging, e-mail, or even video communication. A disadvantage is that, with no initial personal interview by a traditional dating agency head, Internet daters are free to exaggerate or lie about their characteristics. While the growing popularity of the Internet took some time, now one in five singles is said to look for love on the Web^{citation needed]}, which has led to a dramatic shift in dating patterns. Research in the United Kingdom suggests that as of 2004 there were around 150 agencies there, and the market was growing at around 20 percent a year due to, first, the very low entry barriers to setting up a dating site, and secondly, the rising number of single people. However, even academic researchers find it impossible to find precise figures about crucial statistics, such as the ratio of active daters to the large number of inactive members whom the agency will often wrongly claim as potential partners, and the overall ratio of men to women in an agency's membership. Academic research on traditional pre-Internet agencies suggests that most agencies have far more men than women in their membership.

Traditionally, in many societies (including Western societies), men were expected to fill the role of the pursuer. However, the anonymity of the Internet (as well as other factors) has allowed women to take on that role online. A recent study indicated that "women pay to contact men as often as the reverse, which is quite different from behavior in telephone-based dating system[s]" (from Wired magazine).

The trend of singles making a Web connection continues to increase, as the percentage of North American singles who have tried Internet dating has grown from two percent in 1999 to over ten percent today (from Canadian Business, February 2002). More than half of online consumers (53%) know someone who has started a friendship or relationship online, and three-quarters of 18-to-24-year-old online consumers (74%) say they do. There is also some academic evidence that the 18–25 age group has significantly taken up online dating. This growing trend is reflected in the surging popularity of online communities such as Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, and Nexopia sites which are not directly geared toward dating, but many users nonetheless use to find potential dates or research a new acquaintance to check for availability and compatibility.

There is still plenty of room for traditional matchmakers to thrive, however, and only time will tell which industry wins out in the end.

Courtship in the animal kingdom

Many non-human animal species have mate-selection rituals also referred to as courtship. Animal courtship may involve complicated dances or touching; vocalizations; or displays of beauty or fighting prowess. Most animal courtship occurs out of sight of humans, so it is often the least documented of animal behaviors. Animals whose courtship rituals are well studied include the bowerbird, whose male builds a "bower" of collected objects, and the mantis, whose female has been observed to cannibalize her mate during mating.

An example of complex animal courtship is found in the Blue Wildebeest, where the male elaborately stakes out and defends a mating territory. Then by a series of body postures and displays of athleticism (such as using his horns to gore trees), he attracts the female to his territory for mating. In correspondence the female occasionally involves herself in some of the same horning rituals when meeting the male.

See also