How do you fix a date? Well, you make the date go well.
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Dates almost always mean extra work though, because there are so many different formats, no one seems to care for any of any more than they care for any of the others, yet we all just use all several hundred of them. Some people like formal dinner + interview, some people like boat rides; some people have to stare in each others’ eyes, others want to act like brother and sister until just the last minute. It’s a pain trying to get them all to line up.
It doesn’t make sense anyway: dates can’t be real but they shouldn’t be fake. Interview isn’t the best way to get to know someone; neither is testing.
Actually the perfect date is watching the television together while snacking, and not just because this is what you will be doing together for the rest of your lives anyway, if it works out. It just is the perfect one. You can repeat it any number of times.No one has to feel uncomfortable or pressured in any way, and the couch is right there. It requires no demonstrations of spending ability, and removes the pressure to constantly speak.
I’d advocate this be the universal and only date: spending time in each other’s houses watching the television and snacking.
But of course we can’t have this, because there are people who won’t behave. So the entire human population suffers all the awkwardness, pain, and expense of the current ‘set up,’ because of some rapists (whom you shouldn’t let in your house).
Could we do it thought, maybe with a public awareness campaign, restaurants and the like might go out of business, at least in their current form. The idea of beginning in the stranger’s home has some especially nice side effects as well**, making the whole business less hysterical, removing any reason to even try to lie about some particularly salient things, and just getting people in one another’s houses more–a good goal in itself.
This is of course not to say that indoor rock climbing, out to the movies, wheelbarrow races, and all-day missions to taste every kind of baklava available in the city of Boston are to be avoided. But those are things one does with friends. One might certainly include people that one has dated or is dating, but on such an outing, everyone comports themselves as if dating did not exist, and therefore enjoys themselves much more. A date is going to another person’s house, watching television, and snacking. End of story.
It’s a good bet for the younger crowd as well.
(Though one wonders if sufficient information could be obtained this way: it is quite easy to fall in love with a person you watch television and snack with, the situation being an intimate one, where it is it almost impossible to do wrong. Neither of these attributes could be said to detract from any situation to which they apply… One’s unemployed household members, however, could be a far different story. Should dating become serious, other mechanisms, like spying, or whatever it takes to observe the dated in a variety of situations, could be employed to obtain the information necessary. These, however, are of course not dates.)
photo credits
http://www.thesaucysoutherner.com/spicy-snack-mix/
http://www.winnerdinners.com/cheez-it-chicken/
(I like the part where Every single leftover piece is devoured .)