A Feminist Apologist for Online Dating

In a recent New York Times article on the coercive forces of online dating, Just Saying No to the Dating Industry, single women (and men) decry the latest trend toward compelled coupledom. The response, at least from the women, has a feminist edge to it , though different from the reaction to The Rules from a few years back. According to Barbara Defoe Whitehead, who wrote Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman :

"People are making some kind of private agreement with themselves that they're not going to do this in a panicky, driven way that implicitly buys into the notion that if it doesn't happen to you, you'll be miserable," she said.

Oh sure, she says "people" but she really means women. Most men in the 20 and 30 something generation don't feel pressure of any kind (unless perhaps they have a Jewish grandmother compelling them to marry a "nice Jewish girl"). Having been what I like to call "viciously single" for a few years, I can personally attest to the great social forces at work on women, from the moment we graduate from college, to find an appropriate mate who will help support us and with whom to begin a shiny, happy family. Many of the men that I met during my dating period absconded, tout de suite, when encountering the needy, relationship pheremones I gave off. The vast majority of men who I met then and who I know now have no serious desire for a long-term relationship nor do they have the devouring, all-consuming drive to find the "one." They are often happy with the "friend with benefits" formula, particularly if it means they don't pay for dinner.

The disparity in social pressure between the sexes has a number of causes, some of them obvious. Gender equality in the work place and at home has not displaced the traditional reasons, like a woman's so-called "biological clock" or our socialization from a young age to form and maintain families of our own. Furthermore, new causes have sprung up in the last few decades, from the influence of romantic movies who herald "The One" mythology in a profoundly coercive manner to the glass ceiling and other workplace-related sexist problems that sometimes place women in a more fragile economic position relative to their male counterparts.

That being said, as unfair as I think the pressure is, one cannot deny its existence. Furthermore, there are real reasons to find a life partner, both for women and men. To rely on one's friends and co-workers throughout one's youth is a fundamental mistake our generation is making that has long-term personal and social ramifications. For one thing, friends are flaky - they have no real obligation to you. Tell a friend you have the flu, and don't expect to hear from him/her for at least two weeks. Inform your friends that you have just been laid off and will be bankrupt within a month, and anticipate a going away party (marking your departure from New York or San Fransisco to move back in with your parents in some remote locale). Have a serious argument with a friend about politics and feel perfectly fine about not speaking to them for six months - after all, you can just see movies and drink beer with other friends. A life partner is someone you can count on not just for assistance and support through crises, but essentially the only person who can truly diminish the profound sense of isolation and disconnectedness that the death of the extended family and community in modern life has created.

I believe that online dating is a response to, rather than the cause of, the above outlined pressures. While the proliferation of dating websites and services may contribute to an increased meta-presence of the mating game, they help people diffuse the pressure by offering them an outlet for those energies. Before I started meeting people through match.com, I acutely felt the sting of my singledom but I had only bars and the workplace as the setting for a resolution to my perceived "problem." Even though the endless string of dates, most of which were excruciatingly dull, rarely produced a suitable suitor, I was better entertained than if I had been watching television (which is what I probably would have been doing with my spare time had I not been dating), and I collected a slew of funny stories for retelling. More importantly, I created an opportunity to meet my husband, who is mostly perfect for me, that I would not have had otherwise. The more you date and the more avenues for meeting people you explore, the more likely you are to find the person with whom you are most compatible. At the very least, having contact with different people, whether online or offline, is good for the human psyche.

The biggest problem with online dating and all of these advice books that I can see is the tendency to reinforce existing gender stereotypes and chauvanism. The newest book on the matter, Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School, commodifies women to the point of absurdity, making us into brands with men as our market of consumers. The theory of the book is that a woman's "brand" significantly declines in value with each passing year and her market dwindles, so she must compensate with various self-abusing behaviors. Many online dating sites, even jdate, implicitly encourage competitiveness in the extreme but this seems unavoidable in a world where the stigma for staying single attaches more often to women and it is acceptable for men to date women half their age (while the reverse is not true).

To combat the social forces at work here, I say don't give up on online or any other form of dating. And don't commit to being okay with staying single - humans are programmed to couple. But do be very discriminating in who you date for any extended period. If someone has emotional baggage that will keep him/her from engaging in a meaningful relationship in the the long term, don't think that the situation will change or that you are "the one" who can make them love again. There is no such thing as "the one" - it's a Hollywood myth that ratchets up self-loathing and keeps people perpetually dissatisfied with others. Have a conscious set of criteria, that is relatively general and fluid, of traits that you believe are important to you. Use this criteria to limit the scope of the net you cast on online dating sites. If you love literature and the fine arts and hate spectator sports, don't bother dating a guy who's married to the television on Sunday afternoons. If you like tall men, perform a search only for tall men and narrow it down from there. There are thousands of people on these dating sites, so I see no reason not to be discriminating. Also, women should feel it is okay to be proactive on dating sites because you are much more likely to land a date with the right person if you look for him than if you let him find you (my experience is that most men do not like performing searches on dating sites but generally they respond positively to being selected from a search).

Surely most people can multi-task well enough to engage in online dating without letting it consume them entirely. If single people are allowing the process of dating to destroy their self-confidence or stand in the way of career advancement, I would say there is some projection going on there. However, if frequent poor choices or bad relationships keep materializing, I agree with the article about taking a dating "sabbatical." Again though, while people should be comfortable being alone, I believe that modern relationships are wrought through effort and that forging a good relationship for life is well worth that effort for most people. "Some Enchanted Evening," is just a song after all. But of course, so is "One (is the loneliest number)."