At some point in the past—or maybe it’s still in your future—you must have wondered, “Is it okay to play the field?” Here’s the short answer: Sure, as long as you’re honest about it and you practice safe sex. Or maybe you’ve run into this conundrum: You’ve met a woman online and you go to meet her, only to find she looks nothing like her photo. Is it okay to ditch her?* And while we’re talking about this stuff: You come home one night and you’re really frisky, but your partner’s sound asleep. Is there a polite way to wake him?†
Dating, mating, and sex are fraught with legions of nitpicky etiquette questions just like these, partly because dating and its consequences have become so complicated. Just a few decades ago, people would court, become engaged, and remain virgins till their wedding night. Nowadays many of us start dating in our mid-teens and go till our mid-thirties before finding The One. That’s two decades of dating—and probably less than two decades of sex. So we have lots of experience, and we end up dating a wide range of people (especially if we speed-date or online-date). And that means, of course, that there are more opportunities to be lied to, blogged about, stubble-burned, and cheated on.
We don’t mean to be negative. We are, in fact, happy to no longer have to abide by silly rules that forbid women from asking out men or that brand people immoral for sleeping together on the first date. We’re simply pointing out that it’s important to maintain some code of behavior in a dating world that often seems chaotic. Rules create comfort levels that, far from imposing limitations on us, actually make it easier to develop relationships.
Manners don’t need to be strict and Victorian. They simply should be acts of decency and consideration. Courtly gestures like disposing of a condom neatly or refusing to date your friend’s ex—these decent acts send a similar message: We are civilized human beings, and we’re in this together.
Navigating the worlds of dating and sex is bound to be a bumpy experience. People tend to behave badly when they’re worried about getting hurt, and nothing exposes a soft underbelly like asking someone on a date or declaring your love. There’s always the fear that you won’t measure up: Am I lovable? Is he into me? Is she faking it? What if he says no? We hope this book will help. It’s organized chronologically, beginning with the process of finding a date and ending with the by-no-means-inevitable breakup. Consider this a roadmap to the major twists and turns on the path to love.
If you’re still feeling a bit apprehensive about diving in to dating, we’ll leave you with Emily Post’s wise counsel: “It doesn’t matter which fork you use; it matters that you use a fork.” Go ahead. Dig in. And happy forking.