Our present dating habits can feel like a
natural part of existence, but in reality,
they’ve only been around for a very short
time and, we predict, won’t continue for
too much longer in their current form. Dating
has a history, which it pays to try to understand
as we navigate the ritual’s paradoxical
and often confusing priorities. Let’s take
a selective look backwards – as well as
a peak forwards – at the history and future
of dating: 27 March 1489, Medina del Campo,
Spain In a treatise signed between England
and Spain, the two-year-old Tudor prince Arthur
is formally engaged to Catherine of Aragon
– who is at that point three years old.
It’s an extreme example of what is an entirely
normal practice all over the world in the
pre-modern era: relationships are strategic
transactions between families, where the feelings
of the couple themselves are of no importance
whatsoever. The idea that you might love,
let alone be physically attracted to, the
person you end up with would be deemed profoundly
irresponsible, if not plain peculiar. July
1761, Amsterdam, Netherlands The publication
of Julie, a novel by the French Romantic philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which becomes the fastest
selling book ever written. The novel tells
the story of Julie, a beautiful young woman
from an aristocratic family who is expected
to marry someone of her standing – but,
contrary to all the rules, falls in love with
her middle-class teacher, Saint-Preux. However,
they cannot get married because of the differences
in their social status. Rousseau is on the
side of the unhappy couple – and his novel
is the first major statement of the idea that
relationships should essentially be founded
on the feelings that exist between people,
and have nothing to do with class, lineage
or family concerns. But, as yet, Rousseau
and his novel see no way of upturning the
social order: you still marry who your parents
and society tell you, but now at least, with
Rousseau’s help, you can feel very sorry
that you have to. March 1855, Rome, Italy
In the major Italian novel of the 19th century,
I Viceré, by Federico di Roberto, two characters,
Lucrezia and Benedetto, are in love but can’t
marry because Lucrezia’s mother refuses
to give her permission on the grounds of social
propriety. Crucially, the mother is shown
to be old-fashioned and narrow-minded; couples
formed by ‘reason’ are, the novelist suggests,
a lot less happy than those guided by instinct.
The book works with the growing Romantic assumption
that relationships should be based on sentiment
and that the best chances of finding someone
we can get on well with over a lifetime is
not to find out what their job is or whether
they come from a good family, but whether
we experience an overwhelming physical and
emotional attraction in their presence. Marriage
must be a union consecrated by feeling. 1892,
London, England The most successful comic
play of the year – Charley’s Aunt – turns
on the fact that Charley has invited Kitty
to lunch on a date but, at the last minute,
learns that his aunt won’t be able to join
them. This creates a panic because a dating
couple should have a chaperone, an older woman
whose presence will ensure that nothing very
intimate can be said or done. Charley’s
solution is to get a male friend to put on
a dress and impersonate his relative. The
comedic atmosphere of the play suggests that
the old rules around dating are firmly on
their way out and are accepted as having some
of the fustiness of a maiden aunt. The audience
is meant to agree that dating is for the best
when couples are left on their own to discover
how they feel; there should even be a kiss
at the end if things go swimmingly. 1914, Eastbourne,
England The young George Orwell gets into
trouble at school when he is caught reading
Youth’s Encounter by Compton Mackenzie:
the first novel published in England that
describes unsupervised adolescent dating.
We’re starting to move beyond the odd chaste
kiss: dating starts to be about sex as well.
June 23, 1960, Washington DC, USA The US Food
and Drug Administration approves the first
oral female contraceptive pill. The idea that
a date can happily and uncomplicatedly lead
to sex becomes not only an emotional but now
also a practical possibility. Los Angeles,
1998 Speed dating is invented and the romantic
comedy You’ve Got Mail – the first major
film based around online dating – is released.
Both encourage the idea that it’s important
to search very widely before selecting a possible
partner. By now all the elements of modern
dating are finally in place: firstly, parents
have nothing to do with it; secondly, all
considerations of money and social status
are deemed ‘un-Romantic’ and unimportant;
thirdly, you are meant to be swiftly emotionally
drawn to someone in order for a relationship
to be deemed legitimate and viable in the
long term; fourthly, sex is interpreted as
a central part of getting to know someone
– and lastly, you’re meant to have a lot
of dates (and possibly meet quite a few horrors
on the way) before finally and happily settling
down with that archetypal figure of the modern
dating scene: The One. Brussels, March 2009
The European Union releases a report that
reveals that 50% of married couples in countries
across the union end up divorced after fifteen
years. Though entirely ignored by Europe’s
dating couples, the report quietly raises
the question of whether instinct is really
any better guide to a good conjugal life than
the old parental or societal rules used to
be – as well as hinting at how much more
miserable we can end up being when the sole
justification for relationships is understood
to be the intense emotional and sexual happiness
of the two participants.
Singapore, May, 2075 Artificial Intelligence has finally
arrived, human nature has at last accurately
been understood – and dating as we know
it dies.
Machines now swiftly find for us the optimal choice of
partner for a lifetime together. They know
who is available, what our quirks are, and
who out there can best compliment them. All
the rigmarole of dating in the Romantic era
is done away: we no longer have to wonder
whether we have found the ‘right’ person;
a machine that we trust as much as we now
trust doctors, tells us when we have located
our destiny. We no longer have to rely on
chance or random encounters. We no longer
have to keep asking our friends and hoping
to be introduced. We don’t have to listen
to our parents, we don’t have to take along
a maiden aunt, and nor do we have to listen
to those equally unreliable entities, our
subjective feelings. Couples are not always
deliriously happy, but they at least have
the satisfaction of knowing that they are
with the person they should, all things being
equal, be with.
Way back in 1489, there wasn’t any choice
for Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon;
now there is no choice either, but in 2075,
it is a psychological machine that has determined
the choice for us. Occasionally, people get a little
nostalgic and curious about the old-fashioned,
rather haphazard and sometimes thrilling Romantic
way of dating. Some of them might dress up
and recreate the ritual, like people who nowadays
have fun on weekends trying out what it was
like to row in a long-boat or live in a wigwam…
All of which should give us a humbling sense
of how particular and complicated contemporary
dating truly is. We shouldn’t blame ourselves
if, at the end of yet another barren or ambiguous
date, we feel in need of a little guidance.
If you want to learn more about love try our cards that help answer that essensial question, "who should i be with?"
