When dating, it's best to take it slow
Sara Gregory
Issue date: 9/14/09 Section: Opinion
While lunching with a friend at Taco Bell, I realized something about dating these days. After receiving a text from a new phone number he picked up this weekend, he debated to the amount of time he should wait before responding.
Without much thought we decided three hours was adequate to delay a text response, then it hit me: three hours? It used to be three days.
Then the movie "Swingers" jumped into my head as the defining moment of the 'wait three days before calling' rule. If you haven't seen it, it's a classic comedy starring Vince Vaughn, which described the mentality of bachelors trying to date in the '90s.
In the movie, the character Mike finally gets a number from a girl and asks his guy friends how long to wait before calling. The thing is three days just doesn't cut it in today's speed dating trend.
I say trend, but it's really a result of convenient technology. It's just too easy to pursue a stranger these days. Texting and Facebook alone have allowed that new number you got from The Pace to pursue you even more quickly and analyze every last detail displayed about you.
If you wait three days to call someone now, you're either dirt-poor or old-fashioned. The ugly truth is that if you sit too long on a number today, you'll have to explain why tomorrow. If you wait three days, you better have a damn good explanation.
No wonder divorce is an increasing statistic. We are jumping into situations we know nothing about way too early and find all the red flags too late. We're an impatient generation; we want convenient fast results without wasting any of our precious time.
Good or bad, our speed of pursuing someone has no doubt sped up exponentially since the '90s. Are we approaching infinity? Where one day we'll wait moments instead of days?
I don't know, but I do know that if you hand out your number today, you may regret it as soon as tomorrow. Call me old-fashioned, but I'll stick with Vaughn and say three days is kind of money.
Without much thought we decided three hours was adequate to delay a text response, then it hit me: three hours? It used to be three days.
Then the movie "Swingers" jumped into my head as the defining moment of the 'wait three days before calling' rule. If you haven't seen it, it's a classic comedy starring Vince Vaughn, which described the mentality of bachelors trying to date in the '90s.
In the movie, the character Mike finally gets a number from a girl and asks his guy friends how long to wait before calling. The thing is three days just doesn't cut it in today's speed dating trend.
I say trend, but it's really a result of convenient technology. It's just too easy to pursue a stranger these days. Texting and Facebook alone have allowed that new number you got from The Pace to pursue you even more quickly and analyze every last detail displayed about you.
If you wait three days to call someone now, you're either dirt-poor or old-fashioned. The ugly truth is that if you sit too long on a number today, you'll have to explain why tomorrow. If you wait three days, you better have a damn good explanation.
No wonder divorce is an increasing statistic. We are jumping into situations we know nothing about way too early and find all the red flags too late. We're an impatient generation; we want convenient fast results without wasting any of our precious time.
Good or bad, our speed of pursuing someone has no doubt sped up exponentially since the '90s. Are we approaching infinity? Where one day we'll wait moments instead of days?
I don't know, but I do know that if you hand out your number today, you may regret it as soon as tomorrow. Call me old-fashioned, but I'll stick with Vaughn and say three days is kind of money.
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