Do gay men date in the traditional sense?

The whole dinner and a movie thing was certainly how I dated back when I dated and seems to be how my single friends still date. Yeah, there's some hooking up too (the friends not myself any more) but that sort of runs on a separate track from the dating. You might look at what you're doing to end up on the wrong track (if you find you are). There are some people who do one or the other but I find there are a fair number of guys who, when single, will sort of do both but with different sets of people. I remember a friend saying once "you know sometimes you look at a guy and think I bet he would make waffles and we'd have a dog... and then there are guys where you think well maybe we could fuck out behind the club." My recollection of the dynamic isn't quite as crude but it pretty well sums it up any way. I would look at where and how you're meeting people. I have certainly met guys that I dated in bars (hell, I met my husband twenty years ago in a bar), but I was generally pretty clear if I wanted it to evolve that way (because I didn't always want it to).

In fact as I recall it I remember that guys were a little too immediately relationship minded for me. I remember pretty regularly thinking "I thought we were going to the movies, why is this guy picking out china patterns?" My suggestion would be to really strike the balance and actually just date.

 

I'm not dating yet but if I was it would be a movie and a meal and get to know them first

 

It's important to go after what you want and feel comfortable with from a dating perspective. The reality is that trying to steer things into dating territory might not work with every guy you meet in a bar, so you should be prepared to walk away in that situation because it's not a match.

I think it's realistic that you can find a guy who wants to date and have a relationship. This approach involves more effort because the pool of guys who want the same thing is probably smaller than the number of guys who are looking for hookups. You may want to consider expanding your search to include ways of meeting guys where there is a higher percentage of guys who are open to a relationship, such as dating sites or meetups.

Overall it's important to go after what you want and try different approaches until you find what you are looking for. Don't be afraid to walk away from a situation where you don't feel the chemistry or don't have similar relationship goals. Eventually you'll find somebody you really click with and it will be worth the effort.

 

From what I have observed and read about in our current culture, gay or straight, it is clear that "traditional" dating has long ago disappeared, or more accurately, has been transformed into something else entirely.

The discourse on dating and relationships has radically changed over my lifetime. Quite remarkably, there is even uncertainty these days as to whether some meeting between potential partners was actually a date! Often, one of the two may think it's a "date" (in the traditional sense, whatever that means) while the other thinks it's just going out with someone to a movie...

I am old enough to have straddled two eras, beginning when social constructs around dating were fairly clear and followed a relatively formal sequence of events prior to calling what one has a "relationship", to the current culture of hooking up, or chilling, or getting to know someone over social media before even physically getting together.

One thing I can say about dating in its current form is that North Americans are quite bad at it. By that I mean, we have lost touch with the subtle art of seduction.

Most people today aren't familiar with the idea of "courting" someone. It sounds so quaint, but if you go abroad, where these traditions have endured, there is an entire language that surrounds the game of seduction. Poetry is one part of it, but there is the poetry of taking one's time with the person one is trying to seduce. Whether the seducer completely and deliberately sets up "accidental" meetings, or finds ways of transforming an ordinary moment in time into something sublime with the other, there is a whole set of things that we no longer do to get someone interested in being with us on a deeper level.

In general, when North Americans date, the first date (if they even call it that) is usually a "data dump", where, in the misguided name of some "authenticity" everything is laid out, nothing is held back, there is no room for mystery or for later discovery (probably out of some desperation that this could be the last time they meet). Hence both are mostly talking at each other, and not listening.

By the second date, one or the other is usually declaring their eternal love...sex then follows (if the other hasn't run away first), and before you know it, they both isolate themselves into the proverbial relationship cocoon, where it's them against the world...and suddenly where once a relationship was seen as a cure for loneliness, another kind of loneliness sets in, from the reduction of contact with friends and family.

Seduction requires patience. It is a risky and serious game, fraught with uncertainty but made sublime by a delicious kind of madness. If both are willing to play the game, all the while understanding that it is a game meant to elevate the experience of "dating" to something that transcends the ordinariness of "hooking up" (which is what the traditional dating constructs were trying to do), then one gains a greater appreciation of this wonderful and thrilling part of life, which is to discover someone who is worthy of our love.

 

Can I just say that if this is true, it makes me so very sad. I adored dating. Transitioning from dating women to dating men was a revelation to me. To be pursued and to pursue in kind. It was so different from dating women. And in my experience gay men are so much more romantic about dating (when they date) in both the good sense and the bad sense. I still look back fondly at all the gestures big and small. I had men write me poetry, send me flowers, show up at my work with a picnic lunch for my break, romantic home-cooked meals, some of the most horrible birthday cakes made by men who clearly did not bake. I remember once when I was sick at home a suitor who could not rush to my side because he couldn't get away from work took his lunch break to gather up chicken noodle soup, crackers, trashy magazines, orange juice, etc. into a care package and had it messengered to me. I remember plotting with friends how one of us could meet that guy that was always around but we never actually met. I remember a couple parties that basically existed as a pretense to get two people who knew of each other but did not know each other in a room together. For me my friends rallied to come up with five degrees of separation that would get me and this guy from the gym both to the same party. There were barbeques and ballgames, plays and concerts and so much dancing. The other thing I will say is that at least in my experience the whole pursuit thing tends to persist in a much stronger form in long-term gay relationships than in straight relationships. Most gay couples I know who have been together for a long time continue to woo each other--for decades, even. It happens with straight couples but when it does I feel honestly like it is fairly remarkable. I'd hate to think that it's all going to be over...

 

Based on the discussions I have with younger friends, I perceive the dating scene to be worse than this. It’s swipe left, swipe right - determining if a person may be a fit is based on a photo and a few sentences. And I am referring to dating site, not hookup sites (gay or straight).

However, I do think there is a silver lining, albeit not sure if the benefit outweighs the lost human emotion. People dating seem to be able to meet a greater number of people today than they have in the past. Leading to a higher likelihood of a better match.

To this, the success rate of a marriage for my parents generation was about 50/50. I will be interesting to see if the probability of long term relationship success, albeit in smaller numbers, actually increases over time as a result of people being able to throw a broader net and finding a better match.

Then again, maybe I am just searching for a silver lining?

 

Well, there IS hope; it appears online dating is indeed promoting better, more diverse and longer-lasting relationships...

It’s a brave new world...

 

I concur that it isn't over. I mean most of my single gay friends date--most on a model pretty close to the going out for a malted model. I think there may be a kind of divide though where we really don't see the other side. The fact of the matter is that people draw into their circle of influence other people with similar views of the world. So, no, I don't really see the difference in my day-to-day life, but then again most of my friends either don't use the apps or occasionally use them for their, ahem, intended purpose. Most of my gay friends have a supportive group of gay friends and have relatively stable lives--clearly there's a whole group that doesn't...

 

It is clear from the article I cited above, where 70% of LGBT couples have started their relationships online, that there is a benefit to the use of online dating sites for promoting better relationships, especially for a minority group that may have a hard time identifying LGBT people out of the crowd. I think it is more accurate to say that these apps are a double-edged sword; where their utility very much depends on the objectives of their users.

Relationship-oriented people will use the apps one way, and the hookup-oriented will use them another way; this is nothing new in the annals of dating, the technology only makes it more efficient to screen a larger number of people (which appears to promote better relationships). There's a song called Shop Around from Smoky Robinson and The Miracles (1961) that says as much:

When I became of age my mother called me to her side,
She said, "Son, you're growing up now pretty soon you'll take a bride.
And then she said, "Just because you've become a young man now,
There's still somethings that you don't understand now,
Before you ask some girl for her hand now
Keep your freedom for as long as you can now."

My mama told me, "You better shop around, (shop, shop)
Oh yeah, you better shop around." (shop, shop around)

I met my partner with one of those apps. Was my motivation purely to meet someone for a relationship? Was it his? To be honest, no, but we didn't exclude the possibility either. What was important to me was to get offline as soon as possible and to the let the dynamic of an interaction with a living, breathing human being lead me to where things could happen as they will.

Did we date in the traditional sense? Hell yeah! Because it is important to both of us that a sense of play forms part of how we interact. We took our time with each other, we formed beautiful memories that only we share, and we keep creating more as we work towards a life together. More importantly, we have chosen deliberately not to separate ourselves from our friends, or from the possibility of making more friends and acquaintances. We consider it very important to make friends with other gay and straight couples in order to build our own "family", as it were. I consider that to be foundational to the health of a long-term relationship.

 

In my experience for a lot of people being gay and coming out allows people to explore the other rules that society has for you and that you "must" follow. If I can be a man and like, marry and fall with other men, then what other society rules can I reformat to fit myself?

As far as dating rules, many of the rules that you guys mentioned can be nice, but are frankly just unnecessary in order to form a healthy long lasting relationship. You can create the same connection without sending flowers, without going out to dinner and without having a "date date".

For me, I enjoy tremendously getting to know people and sleeping with them the first night if things click. I feel closer to them after, we are able to become vulnerable with each other in ways that a dry conversation at an expensive restaurant will not accomplish. The deep conversations that can happen right after sex while you are cuddling can be life changing if you let them.

I'm also not the believer that short term relationships are useless. If I have an amazing bonding experience with a person for 3 months, a year or 5 years, why is that connection less transforming, healing and amazing because of its length? A lot of people will disagree with me on this, but very few people would say that a 25 year marriage is less useful or impactful than a 50 year marriage; you wouldn't walk away from an amazing 25 years with a person you love just because it won't make it to 50 years.

My husband and I met at a gay club with the only intention to hook up for one night. We had fun flirting through out the whole night, had an amazing time dancing, and then had amazing sex that night. Both of us were enjoying each other in that moment and not with the though of "its only worth enjoying if you marry me and stay with me forever". 6 years later and I can report that we are happily married AND we never went through the usual dating and "courting" stuff because it doesn't fit who we are as people.

So yeah, if you don't like hook ups before falling in love then thats fantastic, but I would be careful in putting judgement about character, morals, or how righteous a person is depending on what rules to dating their adhere to.

 

I think you should be honest with this guy about what you're looking for. Tell him you prefer to take things slow and don't want to rush into sex. Maybe even ask him out on a date

 

This statistic does not surprise me. Interestingly, now that I think about discussions with some of my single friends, even broad based social media sites are used to meet people online, so it’s not jut dating or hookup specific apps. I wonder what proportion are meeting on broad based social media of that 70 percent.

 

This is well said Smurf!

 

I think this was an important thing to be said. The fact of the matter is that I think too often we act like there are the two camps--those who are having sex and those who are in or will end up in long term relationships. In my experience this isn't at all how it actually breaks down. Sure there are unhealthy extremes on both sides: there are people having an awful lot of sex who never actually meet anyone and then there are those who won't even bother talking until the CVs have been compared and it's been determined that the relationship will last at least 7.3 years. But most people seem to fall somewhere in the middle and frankly, in my experience, the more doctrinaire you are about how all this is supposed to play out the less you are actually encountering people in the moment and the less likely you are to actually end up in a happy long term relationship.

As I mentioned I dated a lot. But as I also mentioned that was sort of one track. On the dating track I was a third or fourth date kind of guy. But I also had quite a bit of sex as a single guy too, and it wasn't all on the fourth date if you know what I mean. But it was wonderful too and frankly I have a lot of really fond memories of those guys too. I remember one guy brought out the play he had written after and asked what I thought about it. I remember laying around one guys apartment all the next day reading his comic book collection. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and trying not to giggle as we made omelets in an attempt not to wake up this guy's roommate. I once had a one-night-stand that literally went three days (I skipped a class and he called off work one day), probably not the most responsible thing, but as far as that goes I don't even know what the class was, but I remember just about every waking moment of those three days--no regrets here. The fact of the matter is that I don't remember any of my encounters as tawdry--we talked, we shared, we... did other things. Maybe it lasted a couple hours, maybe it lasted a few days. Sometimes we would become friends afterwards, sometimes we'd just become pleasant acquaintances. We'd greet each other warmly at parties and move on, sharing a knowing glance whenever we ran into each other at the gym. It was all quite lovely, to be honest, no dating involved. I would say "none of them ever sent me flowers" but one did actually. That was a little weird but it was sweet.

So in a way I think whatever gets you there... gets you there. If what you are doing works let it work and don't worry how many people say it can't work. If what you are doing isn't working, well, do something else. In light of that I should dial back my dismissal of the apps. The fact of the matter is I've never used them and have no idea what can and can't be found on them. I should remember how frustrating I find it that people on this board are so dismissive of the possibility of finding anything other than a hookup in a gay bar or club. The fact of the matter is that many of my closest friends, people who have stood by me for decades, I met in a bar or club. I've dated numerous people I met in clubs and I've even "dated" a few too.

Finally I met my husband in a gay bar. And, in the interest of full disclosure, he's the only guy I recall who sort of jumped the tracks. We had sex the night we met and then we dated and we've been dating for about twenty years at this point. He's a really good date...