Dating is like IKEA

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend the other day and it spawned an idea about a blog post.  It’s not new, it’s not rocket science, but it was interesting…to me anyway, so you get to read about it too.  It seems to me, and I’ve had this corroborated by a number of female friends, that dating for women is much harder than dating for men.  And by harder, I mean more emotional, more difficult to process.  Why?  Because the way our society has set up dating, men are in control of initiating things.  So, women get to wait and hope to be asked out while the men look though all their options on Facebook, dating sites and at activities.  Not to be crass, but it’s like a dating IKEA out there for single men – more choices than you could possibly ever get through, even though some of us try – because the options are there.  And it seems to me the women (some of them anyway) deserve better, or at least a chance to kick things off a little more effectively than trying to hint their way into a guy’s mind, with their secret codes and body language.

Anyway, the conversation with my friend came around to a question I asked, “Have you ever asked out a guy you were interested in?”  The answer was, “No”.  I wasn’t surprised.  Our culture doesn’t allow for that.  The guy is supposed to ask out the girl, that’s just how it is.  I think that’s stupid, and I think girls should be allowed to ask out guys, but there is at least one issue with that:

If a girl has to make the first move to ask out a guy, what does that say about the guy?  Women tend to be attracted to men that take initiative.  And this seems, on the surface, to be a guy not taking initiative to ask out a woman on a date – a potentially unattractive non-move to the woman.

Another issue could be that the guy may feel emasculated having a woman “take his role” and ask him out.  I personally think this is also very dumb, and really just ego or pride.  But, I’m sure there are some guys out there who still think it’s a hard and fast rule that the guy does the asking and a woman that tries to ask out a guy is being overly-aggressive, and thus becomes unattractive to the guy.

I’ve had women ask me out – it’s usually to group activities, not just the two of us (though, that happened once) – and I’ve gone.  I didn’t think anything of it.  I enjoyed the date/outing, I evaluated the woman as a potential girlfriend the same way I would have evaluated a girl I asked out, and essentially went through the same process.  The one thing that really stands out among these women was one who had strongly developed into the male role and wasn’t going to relinquish it, after asking me out – even after we went out a few times.  That was obviously going to be a bad match for us, so we didn’t continue to date.  Perhaps where the gender roles are concerned, the woman should be able to ask out a guy and plan the FIRST date, but any subsequent date is up to the guy?  At that point interest on the part of the woman has been established and it’s then up to the guy to step up and take the man’s role from there on out?  I think that would work.  I don’t know if it has to be that defined, but attraction is not something that is “re-wireable” (yep, made up word) so the woman constantly doing the date planning will wear out quickly and attraction will wane.

We discussed the idea further and it would take some pretty significant change in the way we operate in the dating world.  But, I think the place we bottomed out on with this conversation was this – a guy has to date with purpose.  If the purpose is to go through as many women as possible in as little time as possible, that scenario is easily available.  Again, not trying to be calloused or anything but there are SO many available women that a guy could date and date and date and never have to settle down. (Seriously, have you ever gotten lost in IKEA because there is SO much stuff to look at in there?  It’s not a rare occurrence)  There is really nothing women can do about this.  However, if a guy truly wants to be in a meaningful relationship he’ll date to that end (not going to dances, not going to group activities, not going to parties – REALLY DATING).  There are a million adages out there to this end, but it’s true – whatever you set your mind to is what will happen.  So, if a guy is open to truly dating to find a relationship, he shouldn’t be closed off to the idea of a woman asking him out.  It really shouldn’t make any difference, and then neither side has to sit home and wonder if someone is ever going to ask them out.  That has to be maddening, and very emotionally unhealthy to boot.

So, chime in folks – you ok with the ladies initiating the dating scenario?  If so, what should be the next steps be?  If not, how do we get more guys to step up and properly DATE?  Post here or in Facebook, either way.