Remember back in the day, a guy simply asked the girl out, she said yes with no questions asked, they went out, and if it worked it worked, and if not, then that was it.

When did dating become so complicated and come to involve so much work?

What changed?

Those were nice days.
I wish it was that easy these days.
Maybe if it were that easy a girl would take me seriously some day.

People like to over complicate the simple things in life.

When they all learned that you nooooooooooo longer had to settle for what ya got now there are vast ways for ones to meet someone..

Guess they learned they did not have to play second fiddle to anyone anymore.

People watch too much tv and movies and have flawed expectations of what a relationship is supposed to be about.

i gets harder after you've been through so much hurt and games.

The world. Technology allows us to stay apart and still maintain the illusion of closeness. People no longer feel a need to stay near each other 'cause well, hey, there's a phone, and a computer, and a plane. We move around too much. Forget who our neighbors were. Go off to college or the service, and never quite make it back "home." Get lost in the fray instead, looking to recapture some part of the closeness of a place that doesn't really exist anymore. Hope to find it somewhere, reflected in the hopeful face of some stranger who isn't really as strange as we think at first. Instead of dancing together, and getting to know one another, we dance separately-- apart-- and hope to run into someone who seems to be doing the same dance. By the time we realize we've been swallowed up by the system-- divided and conquered-- it's too late and nobody who matters can bear to remember anyway. And we wonder why there have been so many high school massacres. We've lost touch with the fundamentals of human nature.

Those gun shots are the ones we hear echoed in Harrison Bergeron...

I guess maybe it's a little of not wanting to relive past experiences mixed with our busy lifestyles.

People seem to be too picky nowadays....They want the perfect mate, but that doesn't exist so they will keep on searching

It's a shame, really...seems people are willing to invest more time in a stupid video game than they would in getting to know someone in all his or her dimensions.

On top of all these great responses for reasons, I think, too, with more media coverage and life experience, we realize just how many creeps, whack jobs, pediphiles, absurd sexual preferences, etc. are really walking around out there.

Sure -- I've never had a video game abandon me as soon as I solved all of its problems, and I've never had a video game try to turn me into a different person. Well, maybe a few have tried to turn me into a video game addict but that's understandable.

I agree. It's pretty sad that every guy or gal we find interest in, one of the first things we tend to wonder is if they are a psycho or not.

It's simple. Women changed. They just HAD to over-complicate things, you know?

Or if we need to buy a trapeze or have a twin to keep someone interested!!!

Oh yeah, it's all our fault!

True. We're not willing to invest the time because of all the potential for disaster that is attached to that time; a sort of shell-shock if you will. I just wish people could more often see the potential for success instead.

Maybe that wasn't ever real. I mean...that sounds sort of 'fairy tale' and I don't know many people who have lived out the story. Maybe it's always been complicated and we just refused to acknowledge how much work a relationship (or even an attempt at one) really is???

I have to acknowledge this point; look at the divorce rate that came out of the sock-hop and boomer generations.

It makes sense that subsequent generations might find themselves a bit leery of marriage and all its complications. Shell-shock may be the right term to use after all.

I totally agree with you -- as a hypothetical.

I mean, nothing would please me more than to be able to believe that there is actually someone out there who will appreciate me for who I am, without trying to "domesticate" me into someone diametrically the opposite of myself -- that I could meet someone who sees a relationship as something more than me fixing her problems --

But that's all I've ever seen, and that's all I've ever known. And I have no more reason to believe that anyone is any different from that, than I have to believe there's a 900-foot-long, invisible vibrating mosquito hovering 12 feet above me every minute of my life.

There comes a time when you have to accept that maybe the thing you want the most simply doesn't exist.