The "Hanging Out" phenomenon

The Dateless Generation: Forgetting how courtship works doesn't help anyone

Marianne Brennan Issue date: 3/29/07

Whatever happened to the date?

You know, guy meets girl, guy asks girl to dinner and a movie. I've heard stories about such things from old people: stories about getting picked up at your front door and taken to a restaurant that specializes in something other than hot wings and the $2 domestic brews. Stories about men who offered to pay for your movie ticket. Stories about men who don't screw around with vague invitations to "hang out sometime."

So the question is, where have these men gone? Any college girl can tell you that the rules have changed since our parents were in school. The concept of a mature dating relationship seems beyond the grasp of our generation. We either attach ourselves to a single person in a comfortable pseudo-marriage that lasts all four years of college, or wander aimlessly from bar to bar and keg party to keg party, where we hook up for the night and go our separate ways in the morning.

The lack of dating on college campuses isn't an isolated phenomenon. Rather, it's a symptom of a generational flaw that has us growing up and taking responsibility later than our parents did.

The non-committal "do you want to hang out sometime" is really the dating equivalent of how we approach our lives. The media have recently taken great delight in pointing out that college students are moving back in with their parents after graduation, receiving more financial assistance and delaying everything from choosing a major to getting married.

We've grown up with the expectation that we will go to college; for most of us, there was no doubt that our post-high school plans would include college. And our sense of expectation and entitlement has turned college into an extension of childhood, rather than a path to adulthood.

But why does it even matter that we don't date anymore? Who cares that we aren't following the same rules our parents and grandparents did?

In our eagerness to leave old norms and rules behind us, we've forgotten that these rules had purposes. Courtship in the sense of traditional dating meant that women didn't have to spend so much time wondering what exactly that guy meant when he asked if she wanted to hang out sometime. Social rules create greater clarity of intent.

Likewise, we've ignored the conventional wisdom that graduating from college means becoming an independent adult. Increasingly, graduates are moving back in with their parents and clinging to their semi-dependent lifestyles.

College dating is practice for adult relationships. So, if we forgo dating in favor of a few drunken hook-ups and stalking our crushes on Facebook, how are we going to fare once we are forced out of the baby pool that is college and make our delayed entry into the real world?

Asking someone to go out with you is incredibly nerve-wracking. You risk rejection and possible humiliation. But part of growing up is learning to do the things you're afraid of. Remember when you went to the library as a little kid and were afraid to ask the librarian a question, but your mother made you do it anyway? Eventually, you got used to asking questions and taking your books to the counter yourself. By forcing you to take initiative, your mom taught you to be a little more independent.

Every time you ask someone if he or she wants to "hang out sometime," or try to convince him or her to go out with you without using the word date and without making it clear that your intentions are romantic, you are doing the dating equivalent of handing your books to you mom and making her talk to the librarian.

The anxiety that comes with asking someone out is nothing new, nor is the fact that we miss opportunities due to our own fear. What is new is the fact that we have created watered-down alternatives that we convince ourselves are just as good as what our parents and grandparents had.

We are content to just drift along in an easy pattern, demanding nothing from ourselves. We accept mediocrity and inertia with the same ease that we accept hanging out sometime as a substitute for dating.
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I thought this article was interesting & so true. In Elder Oaks CES fireside talk (May 2005) he talked about the same thing. Nothing new, but this "worldly" phenomenon of not dating sure sounds like "somebody" doesn't wan us getting married, having children...etc...anything to go against God's plan...and "hanging out" makes it seem like so much fun. Oh how easily the truth/ eternal principles get twisted just enough that it seems ok & yet it's not.