Single File: Dating game actually can be fun

DEAR SUSAN: Everyone talks about the dating game. What is it, and how should I play it if I want to get happiness and love from it?

From the "Single File" blog

DEAR BLOGGER: Funny thing about the dating game. The name just doesn't square with reality. Anyone who's been single for more than 10 minutes will agree with me that it doesn't qualify as a game, which implies fun and broad smiles and lightheartedness. Ha! It just ain't so -- and never will be.

As for the first date, well, the less said the better. Tension and tight lips are the order of the day -- for both sexes. In my book, dating is a necessary evil, somewhat like the old torture rack and stocks for Puritan baddies. Yet some women still see men as meal tickets, bodies to have alongside at social events but disposable.

But this game can be made much more enjoyable (by both genders) by easing up on the formal stuff and deliberately making dating life more casual. The truth is that you meet more people (and more interesting people) in your off time, when you're least expecting it -- say, when you're walking the dog, stopping to look in a store window, having a last-minute coffee at the corner deli. You're relaxed, friendly, casual, not primed with a ready wit or rehearsed opening line.

My best advice is to put dating -- the formal stuff -- on the back burner and go out and live your life in a way that brings the most enjoyment to you. Follow your interests; you're at your best when immersed in them. Find out what's going on in your community, at your house of worship, at your children's school. When the pressure of finding a date is lifted, what a wonderful world this turns out to be! Don't worry; you'll find and meet good people everywhere, in the most unrehearsed moments. Try it. You might like it.

DEAR SUSAN: You asked what kind of sex it can be on the first or second date. My answer? The kind that evolves into a relationship. From what I've seen, that's the way it's done nowadays. I guess that if the sex is good, feelings develop, and if not, you go elsewhere.

From the "Single File" blogDEAR BLOGGER: You've got it backward. Sex -- the good kind, which is a show of regard, love, affection, warmth and good humor -- needs nurturing time. The odds of having it burst out fully formed on the first or second date are infinitesimally tiny (so small, in fact, as to be nonexistent). There's no way those genuine feelings can be expressed on a first date -- because it takes time for them to take seed, to be nurtured by both partners. Not only that but the intimacy of knowing your partner's body -- her/his likes, dislikes, pet resting places and sensitive spots -- is impossible so early in the relationship. That is why I doubt that casual sex can be much more than rudimentary sexual release.

As for the idea that it's the way it's done these days, forget it. Your understanding is misunderstanding. Time is on lovers' side. Slow and easy, unhurried and gentle, patient and aware, thinking more of the other's desires than one's own -- that, friend, is the way it's being done by people in love.