Too Many Choices...

Apparently Time magazine has their finger on the heartbeat of the American single's scene. I found this article interesting and I'm giving you the most relevant bits. For the whole article go to: Advice for the New Dating Game By Belinda Luscombe Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879191,00.html

"Some of them are respected scientists. Some of them are psychologists. At least one of them is a briefly married former TV-morning-show host. A surprising number of them are stand-up comedians. And they all want to give you dating advice. If you're single and don't wish to be, have they got a TV show/book/scientific theory for you! As if you haven't suffered enough.

According to the most recent census figures, about 84 million Americans ages 20 to 75 are unmarried or separated. Even if only half of them want to find a spouse, that's a nice fat target for the media to aim at in a market where such uniformity of desire is rare. So while dating and mating instructions are probably as old as Australopithecus (Tip 1: "Stand up straighter"), right now the advice-o-meter is running hot. When a coupling manual turned movie--He's Just Not That Into You--is a box-office hit, something's up.

How bad is the dating scene? Bad enough that a production company believes it can find four adults willing to have spouses chosen for them by their friends and family, marry them and allow their subsequent domestic life to be broadcast on CBS. (Because what could possibly go wrong in your first year of wedlock to a stranger?) Other lonely hearts have already submitted to having their mate-finding woes aired on cable. Yes, there have been dating shows before, but none quite so DIY as three offered by FLN, the network formerly known for fancy cooking and curtain-choosing. Wingman, in which comedian Michael Somerville acts as a dating sidekick, premiered Feb. 10. How to Find a Husband, a British import, arrives in April. The network is also developing Love Taxi, in which a cab driver plays matchmaker. Dating, camera, New York City taxi--the discomfort trifecta."

(This next paragraph I find the most interesting)
"Has it come to this? Is dating really that hard? Sociologists have long agreed that the two key factors of mate choice are proximity and timing. We choose from those around us, generally two to five years after we finish our education. But at least one of those pillars is eroding. Online dating has meant that our pool of potential mates is much bigger. The opportunity cost of giving up on a potential suitor is lower. And it's more work to find the wheat in all that chaff.

This is made more complicated by our new living patterns, says New York University sociologist Dalton Conley, whose book Elsewhere, U.S.A. examines how our work and domestic realms collide. "Social proximity is more defining now," he says. "It's class- or occupation-based. Doctors marry doctors instead of nurses." Conley points out that in the past 30 years, the social norms for mate selection have completely flipped: there are fewer prohibitions on whom you can marry, most women work outside the home, and the digital dating landscape is a whole new terrain. "The last change of this significance was the introduction of the Pill," he says."

-Ok back to me, so I have long thought the dating pool is just too big. There are too many choices, it's overwhelming. People aren't willing to take the time to get to really get to know people, they just move on because there is a never ending stream of single people or as I like to joke, a never ending stream of 18 and 19 year old girls at institute or in the single's ward! But doesn't that really define our generation, the phrase "too much?"We are the "Too much Generation" and now it's coming to back to bite us in the butt.

For more single's statistics- see my topics side bar on the right.