I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about dating difficulties. “Laura” is 30, single, heterosexual, and interested in — eventually — getting married and having children. It’s not, as she says a “ticking clock thing”; rather, she’s clear that at this age, she’s done having casual relationships with men that drift for months and years. She wants to, as my evangelical friends put it, date “intentionally” — that is, with the explicit intention of moving towards marriage. If a guy isn’t marriage material, or has no interest in getting married — or is planning on waiting indefinitely until he is “struck by certainty”, Laura wants to know sooner rather than later so that she can move on.
Laura asked yesterday: “When is it best to bring up what my goals are? If I say — on our first coffee date — that I’m looking to get married, I’m worried I’ll scare most men away. On the other hand, I don’t want to wait indefinitely. If a guy is very clear that marriage and children are off the table for the next few years, I want to move along before I get too invested. So when’s the best time to bring it up?”
Tom Leykis, a repugnant, misogynistic, and yet undeniably talented talk show host in Los Angeles, famously advocates his “three date rule” to his mostly male audience. “If a woman won’t have sex with you after three dates”, Leykis advises, “dump her. She’s not worth investing any more time in.” I think there’s a far more helpful version of the “three date rule”: by the third date with a prospective partner, one needs to initiate the “what are you looking for in a relationship” conversation. If the initial answer is a bit evasive, something along the lines of “let’s just go slow and see how things develop”, it’s not too soon for someone in Laura’s position to explain what it is that she wants. If the other person flinches at this point, that’s a fairly definitive sign that your goals are unlikely to be mutual.
The reason I bring this is up is because of still another corollary to the “myth of male weakness”. This is the notion that men are “easily scared off” by women who are too frank about their interest in enduring commitment or children. It repeats the old lie that even grown men in their late twenties and thirties are little more than overgrown, feckless adolescents desperate to remain single and avoid being “trapped” into a monogamous relationship with a woman. It suggests that all men need to be treated like brash young colts who will buck and kick should the saddle appear too soon. Above all, this particular corollary insists, as Jack Nicholson famously did in a film with men in its title, that most guys “can’t handle the truth”.
To be clear, no one is under any obligation to marry. I don’t think marriage is for everyone, nor do I think it to be the only vehicle for personal growth. But the ones whom the likes of Laura can weed out quickly are those who are adamant that they will never marry. The ones who are more problematic are those who, often while already well into their thirties or beyond are open to marriage somewhere in the very distant future, sometime after the end of Obama’s second term — and only after they are, as they naïvely imagine must surely happen, “struck by certainty.” It is these latter lads with whom one needs to have a serious conversation by the end of the third date.
I’ll say it again: the capacity for self-reflection and the ability to articulate one’s thoughts and fears was not given only to the be-uterused. Yes, most American men are raised in a culture that discouraged the development of a vocabulary for the inner emotional terrain — but lack of familiarity is not the same as genuine inability. (Pace, my friends whose loved ones suffer from autism or Asperger’s; there are exceptions.) Men are indeed under no particular obligation to commit to any one particular person, or to commit at all. But they are, like all of us, under the obligation not to shy away from serious conversation about one’s short-term and long-term goals. And any man old enough for a thirty year-old woman to sleep with without violating state law is old enough to handle a discussion about the possibility of a shared future by the end of the third date.
* Years ago, an ex-girlfriend of mine initiated just this sort of discussion with this line. I’ve never forgotten it.
I think it’s weird wanting to rush that conversation right in the beginning; while two people may agree on date #3 that they both are serious about wanting to get married, they may not (probably will not) know whether they want to marry EACH OTHER until much more times has passed. Myths of male weakness aside, as a woman, if a man brought up wanting to be on the marriage track on date #3, I’d probably be rather put off by not getting a chance to get to know them very deeply before having THAT on the table!!
It’s something I see in profiles on online dating sites quite often: men (I never perused women’s profiles, so they could be saying the same thing for all I know) writing in their “about me” section, “I’m looking to date seriously. I’m so tired of going out with women who aren’t serious about this. They go out with me once or twice and get a free dinner and then never go out with me again. I don’t want someone who just wants to date around!” And I always wondered, why did these men assume that the women WEREN’T serious? Maybe they just didn’t want him. For every really successful date I have, there are tons of others where the guy and I think things were nice, but that there was no chemistry to explore further. It’s not a matter of seriousness or lack of.
I didn’t say have the talk about wanting to marry that particular person by the third date — but if marriage is a relatively short term goal, then it’s a bad idea to disguise that indefinitely out of fear of making the skittish flee.
I wasn’t talking about discussing wanting to marry that particular person by the third date either - just that both people having the intention to “date intentionally” is by no means a guarantee of anything. They can date for 6 months both seriously being of the mind that they’re evaluating it for marriage, and at the end of 6 months decide, “Woah, this is not the person to tie myself to.” Is that really any different than months-long “drifting” your friend objects to?
I guess you’re just losing me at the idea of marriage being a short term goal. Getting to know people takes time, and seeing them in many different situations. Unless you’re just planning on taking the next nice thing that comes along and settling for the sake of being married, how exactly does that work? I’m close to your friend’s age, mind you, and face a lot of self-imposed pressure to find someone due to all my peers being married already…but the idea of rushing it as a short-term goal just reeks of yikes.
I don’t know B, I think spending 6 months getting to know someone who would be interested in marriage if he/she felt you were the right person is different than spending 6 months getting to know someone who either doesn’t want to get married at all or to whom it’s not important or not a priority such that they don’t even really want to think about whether you’re the right person for 2 or 3 or 5 or 7 years. I think it’s reasonable to want to know that the person you’re spending months getting attached to is a possibile marriage partner within the time frame that you’re looking for.
The trick is to find that out without coming accross as someone who wants to be married ASAP regardless of the quality of the match. Because that would reasonably put off dates, male or female I would think.
I think avoiding the marriage talk early isn’t about men being weak or scared. I think both genders would probably find that overt spouse shopping is creepy. It’s because we want to be loved for a whole, unique selves, and going out with a spouse shopper feels like being interviewed for a job. If the goal is just finding someone to fill that slot, why don’t you just go with an arranged marriage?
what amanda said. i understand that it is a waste of time to invest in someone who is not seriously interested in marriage in the foreseeable future, but i think it’s hard to bring that up without creeping people of either gender out, simply because i think the answer that comes to many people’s minds upon being asked abstractly if they ever want to get married is “sure, when the right person comes along” and that must sound like nothing but uncertainty to someone looking to get married soon. if it sounds like the person is mostly concerned with checking something off a list rather than in finding an individual, that can be pretty off-putting.
Here’s the problem. Lots of folks are, to use a familiar phrase Amanda has used before, if/then thinkers in approach to marriage. (If I meet the right person, they I might consider it, but not before.) But there’s surely no requirement to adopt that position. Marriage isn’t the default, or shouldn’t be — but it can be a worthwhile goal to have even without a particular potential spouse already lined up. For those for whom marriage and children are key desires, it makes sense to check — early on — if one’s new interest has similar values. That’s not creepy, simply candid.
I’m still not really agreeing here…love and relationships are unpredictable and sometimes come out of nowhere. They’re really not something that fit into a specific timetable, or something that you can force or conjure. You hear of people who had no intention to get married anytime soon who suddenly meet someone who just knocks their socks off, so while on date #3 they might say, “Oh, I might get married someday if I meet someone,” on date #30 they could be envisioning themselves with that person forever.
I’ll cosign with the list/shopping aspects Amanda and chareth brought up; I’ve heard it put this way before: when you have marriage as an end goal, you go on dates looking for reasons why it won’t work out, when what you should really be looking for is reasons why it would.
Surely you should be looking both for reasons why it won’t work out and for reasons it will? And isn’t there a middle ground between a formal “here are my intentions and what are yours” discussion right away and spending six months in ignorance of the fact that, say, one of you loathes the thought of having children and the other can’t imagine life being complete without them, or, say, the fact that one of you thinks this is a fling where marriage is absolutely out of the question while the other thinks you’re on the road to getting engaged? Such as, for example, talking first about how you feel about your parents’ marriage, your friend’s new baby, what you want out of life, and your beliefs about marriage and relationships among other things?
Indeed, the lesson here seems to be that Amanda, B, and Chareth would simply not be good potential partners for “Laura”.
Otherwise we end up saying that what “Laura” wants from a relationship isn’t a legitimate desire, and she shouldn’t express it or seek it. Which is, of course, a recipe for disaster.
A thoughtful blog entry. Congrats. I found you because I sometimes look around the web to see what people are saying about Tom Leykis, who I’ve written about on my own blog. (I was a listener, NOT a “student”.)
Your three date rule sounds good. It IS okay to bring it up on the first date, but you have to do it the right way. Dr. Laura has some good advice in this regard. Phrase it as a question that isn’t “looking down” on anyone… ask, “So why are you dating? For fun? For companionship? To find a spouse?” Or something like that.
A lot of people say men are “afraid of commitment”. I would say that’s usually not true. These men they are referring to commit to all sorts of things… jobs, getting together regularly with the guys, watching a favorite sports team, a hobby, whatever. It is a matter of TO WHAT they are committing. Are they being asked to commit to a woman who has been conditioned to disrespect men? To a legal contract that apparently favors women as far as alimony, child support, child custody, and paternity fraud? Most of these men aren’t afraid of commitment. They don’t WANT to get married under the current cultural and legal constructs.
“And I always wondered, why did these men assume that the women WEREN’T serious? Maybe they just didn’t want him.”
Good question. That could very well be. But women aren’t the only creatures who have intution or can read body language, etc. Haven’t you known ANY women who you suspected were going out with a guy more for the “free” dinner/entertaiment, or who more or less admitted they had done such a thing? On the flip side, I could say that men who dump a women after getting her into bed weren’t looking at her as a cheap thrill… they dumped her because she was no good in the sack.
Anyway, this goes back to the original point. It is best if people who are looking for marriage/family don’t waste their time/money/emotions with people who are just looking for “a good time”, whether it is free dinner or causal sex - ande vice-versa.
I absolutely recommend developing a profile/list of when you need and want in a spouse, and not being araid to refine it as you learn more about yourself and how you get along with others. I did this, and it helped me to know when to end a dating relationship, and was critical in helping me find my wife. I’m now happily married and happily a father, and my wife says she’s happy too, and she also had a list. Compare your dates to the profile. Is there anything about them you couldn’t tolerate for the rest of your life without it interfering in your ability to be an enthusiastic spouse, then don’t marry them. It isn’t fair to THEM, let alone you… and it would be unfair to your children, too.
Finally… on our first date, I told the woman who would later be my bride that it seemed to me she really had her act together. She replied with a smile that all she needed now was a husband, then joked about not pressuring me. Did I run away? No, because I was too busy enjoying the date. To be fair, we knew some important things about each other before our first date, but still… it WAS the first date.
Hugo,
“I’ll say it again: the capacity for self-reflection and the ability to articulate one’s thoughts and fears was not given only to the be-uterused”
Whoever said so? Capacity and timing for having “talks” aren’t the same thing.
I *do* want to get married and have children *at some point*, and I know that that point will probably be in the next ten years. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind being asked about this in a *general* way by anyone within the first five minutes of having met.
But - as Amanda said above - the way you describe the issue at hand seems not to be about “do you ever want to get married” but about “can you imagine getting married and have kids *with me*”. And that’s quite a different thing after three dates.
“If the other person flinches at this point, that’s a fairly definitive sign that your goals are unlikely to be mutual.”
Why? I’m not a fan of number rules, but I think the the guy you mention is right that something’s not right in a relationship if there’s no physical intimacy after a reasonable amount of romantic interaction - be that three dates or two months or whatever someone deems reasonable. But the general point is correct. This one is different though: Having sex at that point is about getting to know the other person better, it’s moving the relationship forward in a very practical way.
This one is different though: Having such a talk after three dates is not about marriage and children in general, even in the nearer future, but about being able to imagine a life with the person asking such a question. And that’s something entirely different. And quite frankly, I would find it a bit creepy to be asked that kind of question after knowing someone for a week, maybe two.
This isn’t about clarity of communication, it’s about timing. There’s a woman I’ve been seeing on and off for a year now, and for the last couple of times we met, she used whatever possibility our conversation allowed to make references to kids. Could be something entirely different, but I don’t think so - she was asking the question your friend wants to ask but probably wasn’t even too sure about what she wants herself. So wiggle room was very welcome. That’s annoying, because it potentially changes the perpectives of a casual relationship without actually saying so, and in the end, no one really knows what happened.
So, I agree, candid is good. But candid still needs the right strategy to work, and *that* question after three days is bad strategy. I don’t it’s gonna help her weed out candidates that will never marry. I think it’s gonna weed out candidates that may not be certain they want to marry her after three dates… and that seems, to be honest, rather normal to me.
On the flip side, I could say that men who dump a women after getting her into bed weren’t looking at her as a cheap thrill… they dumped her because she was no good in the sack.
… or they were afraid they hadn’t been any good in the sack, and couldn’t face the woman again … or they weren’t, actually, ready for sex themselves, but for whatever reason went ahead anyway … or the “in the sack” part was fine for all concerned, but some other stuff came up, maybe in the post-sex conversation or something, that for whatever reason raised red flags for them. Or, probably, several other reasons that I haven’t thought of, with reasons varying depending on the man.
Having sex at that point is about getting to know the other person better, it’s moving the relationship forward in a very practical way.
I don’t know about that; not everyone wants to have sex way ahead of commitment (not even thinking marriage here, but stuff like preferring your sexual relationships monogamous and with people who are emotionally invested in you), and, depending on how much commitment you want with your sex, the first couple of dates may be way too early to expect it. Then again, Leykis, from what little I’ve read of him, seems to be about advising men on how to get the maximum amount of “no strings” sex, so he probably wants to screen out the women who don’t want “no strings.” Which in turn creates an incentive for the “Rules” type advisors to tell women to do the opposite, and on no account have sex as early as the Leykis’ of the world would prefer, because advice for women all assumes that women want strings just as much as advice for men assumes men want as few strings as possible. And it’s a good thing we aren’t quite as opposite as our advisors assume, or we’d be in a stand off, and never get together.
Personally, I did talk about marriage on the first date with my husband, but not about marriage to him, about another guy I’d dated before him, who died, that I had wanted to marry. Probably not on most people’s list of advisable first date topics, but it obviously didn’t kill the relationship.
brian, i don’t think it’s not a legitimate desire, i just think that in the beginning, asking “do you ever want to get married?” is going to result in mostly “sure, someday if i meet the right person”, which tells the person who wishes to marry soon mostly nothing and asking “do you see a future with me?” is going to result in a lot of red flag raising recoils and/or possibly untruths. i feel like the really necessary conversation (”do you see a future with ME?”) by virtue of the fact that it usually takes time to make such an assessment, must come later on in the relationship, at which point the person who does want to marry may have already invested significant time and energy and end up being disappointed.
i guess it’s not weird and entirely fair to ask early on if the person ever sees him/herself getting married or having kids in the abstract, but it’s just not going to weed out too many people, because most people would say “sure, someday if…” to both, especially the first question.
that said, i do think that if one person is explicitly not looking for a serious relationship, that s/he should make this clear early on, so that if the other person is, they are aware.
Lynn, sure, you’re right that this would not be true for everyone. Personally though, I would say that *committment* is not an ideal measure, as physical compatibility may well be an important element in a relationship. I’d say that emotional, intellectual, and physical *connection* is more important in that respect. It’s a different thing, and not even all committed relationships are really connected.
“And it’s a good thing we aren’t quite as opposite as our advisors assume, or we’d be in a stand off, and never get together.”
I’ve never heard of this guy before, and I haven’t read the “rules” although I’ve heard about it. But in my “personal growth phase” ;) I’ve probably read what felt like half of Amazon’s supply of dating self help books, psychological text books, etc, some for men, some for women, some for everyone. In my opinion, the advice given is usually better than I expected. The problem is the performative application of advice - there’s a huge disconnect for most people, certainly men. Being both yourself *and* perform according to assumed gendered expectations in a particular setup isn’t that easy to do for most people, certainly not for most men I know. But that’s a different topic entirely.
If the “marriage question” comes up in the abstract by date #3, that’s probably ok as a means to gauge people’s intentions. Asking it in the context of “do you see a future with me” at a third date is a big red flag, but the abstract hypothetical weeds out the “no marriage” or “not serious” types.
There is, of course, the intermediate focused approach, not necessarily on date #3, but as a relationship is ongoing. People should always be communicating in a relationship and reassessing where things are and where they are going, whether marriage is a goal of either party or not and completely independent of that. That’s just a healthy relationship practice in general. It also helps to serve the goal (assuming that marriage is a realistic possibility at all) of assessing whether it’s going to happen in that relationship or not.
Regarding “if/then” thinking vs. “worthwhile goal”, the problem with the “worthwhile goal” approach is that it treats, or at least tends to suggest, the marriage as a means to check one more life goal off the list, rather than being out of the intent to share one’s life with that particular person. That may have something to be said for it, but, if nothing else, I can see that as leading to settling with someone by default to fulfill that goal, rather than doing so because you were really into them. That may be okay for some people, again, if the motivations behind the “worthwhile goal” attitude, “marriage or bust”, are more important that being with the “right person”, even if that person comes along too late or not at all. Maybe we all settle, to some extent, for the best that we can get in a partner in the time we see ourselves having to find them.
Incidentally, on the issue of being “scared off”, from the man’s perspective, that isn’t necessarily an outgrowth of the “myth of male weakness” but also can arise from the fact that we make our own assessments about what constitutes “marriage material”. Many men, if not most, learn or assume that anything that’s not ideal in a prospective wife before the marriage isn’t going to be any better after the vows. Whatever is a red-flag during the dating phase could easily be a full-blown and irreconcilable issue later. This may not be a bad precautionary assumption to make for either sex, but I believe that women in this culture are more likely to buy into the belief that they are going to be able to “change” their future husband for the better. Marriage involves a complex series of trade-offs, as does any committed relationship, of freedom and independence for stability and predictability, over a long term. It’s unwise not to try to assess the cost-benefit balance before the fact as best one can.
Asking it in the context of “do you see a future with me” at a third date is a big red flag
Which, for “Laura”, is presumably not a bug, but a feature, since it allows her to weed you out as much as it allows you to weed her out.
On a personal level, I’ve taken a radically different approach from that; I realised when I was twenty-two I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with respect to dating/relationships, and decided to drop any pretense otherwise; I have entered relationships since then with no expectations whatsoever, just tried to figure things out empirically. But if you know what you’re trying to do, there’s no reason to deny it (and plenty of reason not to.) There’s no reason that wanting a marriage, family, whatnot can’t be central to what you want from your life, rather than peripheral/incidental, and no saying “if/then”, while still accepting that maybe it’s something you can’t accomplish, but having it as a goal. There’s really no reason to drift through life in this respect, letting the current take you where it may and being happy with wherever you end up.
Or, probably, several other reasons that I haven’t thought of, with reasons varying depending on the man.
Having sex with someone is often an excellent way to crystalise your emotions about them. I could certainly see it making clear “No, I don’t really like this person enough.”
I think that having children is a “worthwhile goal,” and that people who know that they care deeply about having children shouldn’t be expected to drift through life as if they were people who only might want children eventually if the right person and situation come along.
Now, it seems to me, logically, that there are three approaches you can take, if you know for sure that you will want children in your life: 1) Start dating only semi-intentionally, as it were, early, perhaps even in your twenties. That is, know that, since you do want children, you’ll be willing to marry if you find the right person, keep an eye out for obvious red flags in the “could I have children with this person” department, but leave yourself plenty of time to possibly go through plenty of people, so that you don’t have to settle, and can hold out for the person who does knock your socks off. 2) Date not particularly intentionally at all when young, maybe actually meet someone you’d marry, but, if you don’t, get much more rushed as you run out of time when you could reasonably have kids, and therefore much more marriage focused in your dating approach. Or, 3) Be prepared to have children as a single parent if you don’t find the right person. (Simplifying some here, since I’m leaving out the possibility that people might have kids while living together and considering themselves committed partners, because I don’t think that fact figures too much into whether “Laura” should be marriage-minded in her dating.)
It seems to me that if you rule out 3) (or, at least, consider it reasonable for another person to be unwilling to do 3), it has to be OK to some degree to treat marriage as a “reasonable goal” in dating. And, though that can, if done in a sufficiently time pressured way, lead to “marriage or bust” and “settling,” it’s not clear to me that it has to, anymore than treating “I’d like to have some sort of sex life” as a reasonable goal inherently has to mean treating other people just as any old person to put into that slot and not caring about the person as a whole. Since 1) seems a more desirable approach than 2), people who are absolutely sure they want children would be wise to be open to getting married years ahead of whatever they’d consider their reasonable deadline for having children, but not to listen to Chicken Little “women, you’re dooming yourselves to childless unhappiness if you don’t marry in your early twenties” warnings. Which still might mean at some point, for some people, getting marriage-minded in dating in the way that “Laura” is.
Since the majority of people do marry, I think that it’s well understood that most people who are dating would like to marry the right person some day. Those of us who are not interested are the ones who have to speak up, and that’s fine with me. We’re not the norm. But a person who might be the one who gives you that ring you’re dying for might turn into not that person if you creep them out by appearing grabby.
I’ll repeat something Dan Savage said to a woman who was worried she was going to blurt out “I love you” too soon: Even if the guy is feeling it, too, it’s good to give it some time. Because one thing we look for in a mate is good judgment, and someone who has a tin ear for timing is a huge red flag.
But even more than “I love you”, the marriage thing is worrisome. It signals that you have the dress and church date set, and now you just need the other accessory.
The point where I’d cross from “OK to bring up the marriage thing if you feel strongly about it and are OK with screening out people who aren’t clear on their feelings yet” to “It’s really wiser to bring up marriage than leave it undiscussed” is the point where you’re moving in together. For some people, living together is something you do instead of getting married, and for others, something you do in preparation for getting married, and if the two of you aren’t on the same page about that and don’t know it, there can be hurt down the road for both people. Better, if you’re going to break up because you don’t have the same views of marriage, to do it before your finances are entangled.
Hugo, how come you address the loved ones of people with autism or Asperger’s but not the people themselves? It doesn’t necessarily stop you from reading blogs, you know.
I’m dating someone now whose company I really enjoy but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t see committing to permanently. If I knew that getting married soon was impotant to him, I think I’d feel ethically obliged to stop dating him. So it could be useful to know. I’m also not sure if I’ll feel obliged to stop dating him regardless, if I get to a point where I’m even more than pretty sure that it’s a for now thing and not a forever thing.
@Tara:
No in the latter case you are not obliged to stop dating him. But, you are obliged ethically not to lead him on if he makes it clear that he is thinking in terms of it being a “forever thing.”
I can’t imagine a conversation going well where you, out of some misguided sense of proactive fair play, tell him straight up that he’s Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Right. Unless you’ve told him different, he cannot justifiably assume the latter.
So relax, have fun, be honest and if your intentions seem to be diverging, then I guess the “what are you looking for in this relationship” talk would need to happen.
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
Quotation of Plato