This doesn’t mean you have to feel pressure! Senior dating should be fun, not stressful. The stakes of dating are not as high at this part of our life. We’re not necessarily trying to find someone to marry and live with for decades. Many of us are looking for a companion or a friend or even a no-strings-attached lover. The meaning of marriage has adapted alongside its purpose. And its purpose can be viewed through different prisms. The purpose of marriage can be romantically understood as an enduring and public statement of your love. It can be legally understood as a contract, and financially as a division and allocation of assets. Casual dating doesn’t make or keep promises. One of the main differences between relationships and simple dating is a lack of promises. When you date casually, you have a requirement to be respectful, of course, but you don’t owe the person anything. That means no promises of doing anything for the other person. A message that says ‘recently used dating’ is appearing on the Facebook app this week, but what does it mean? Gone are the days when Facebook was just a site where you can chat to your friends.

One of my biggest takeaways while exploring Western Europe for six months was a conversation I had with an Austrian couple. Within a few minutes of meeting in an Irish pub, the lady of the couple asked, 'So, is dating a construct of Hollywood? Do Americans really go on... dates? What is a 'date,' exactly?'

What struck me the most was that there isn't a word in many languages for what North Americans call 'dating,' and that, in fact, few cultures around the world actually 'date.'

So what does it mean, to date? And how do other people get to know one another before committing, having casual sex, or something else? These were the most pressing questions my friends back home wanted to know, so I went out in discovery of answers.

First, I had to come up with a way to describe what I do for a living. In North America, I say I'm a dating columnist. It's easy, pretty much every knows what that means, and if for some reason they're confused, I say, 'You know Carrie in Sex in the City? I'm like her, but she wrote for the Post and I wrote for the Times.' People nod, and then ask me whatever pressing dating questions they have.

In France however, there's no such thing as a dating columnist. I've been a semi-fluent French speaker since my youth, yet trying to share what I did perplexed most French, Belgian and Swiss folks I encountered. 'On sort ensemble' is something you'd say in Quebec (loosely translated: 'we go out together'), but no one said anything of the sort in France. 'I give advice to people who go out together,' kind of worked, but most people didn't understand how or why I had a job. This in turn confused me—I get thousands of emails every week with questions, wanting to know how to get a guy to call them back, whether or not a woman is interested, or if they should break up. I can rarely keep up.

In Paris, a man I considered to have dated a few weeks (he was adamant we were in a relationship), told me, 'Either you're having casual sex, or you're in a relationship. That's it'. My next question, 'Well, then how did you know you wanted a relationship with me?' He laughed. 'From the second I saw your picture online and sent you a message, we were in a relationship. I stopped talked to other girls. I stopped messaging them. And I asked you to meet me on the Seine'.

Friends back home couldn't get enough of this. My male friends scoffed, my female friends swooned. Yes, the guy really planned to have me serenaded, on our first date, along the Seine River. I lost my credit card and was two hours late, so instead we met for wine and cheese. We did, however, stroll hand-in-hand along a love lock bridge. It was like a fairytale. Or was it?

That relationship ended because the gent couldn't communicate clearly with me, and kissed another woman at a party repeatedly knowing that I'd never take him back if he did. I cried, I got mad, and then I left Paris. I'm still grateful for the experience, because it showed me just what dating was, and wasn't.

So What is a Date?

In (most places in) North America, a date consists of intention, like art. If your intention is to get to know the other person for a possible romantic partnership, you're on a date. The act of getting to know one another is called dating. Now, there's hooking up, friends with benefits, casual dating, and all manner of other things. Yet none of these are 'dating.' There's no courtship, there's zero determining if you're compatible romantically or long-term. You're just bumping the naughty bits, and that's why we North Americans have so many, varied terms for what is essentially a no strings attached sexual relationship.

There's a ridiculous amount of social pressure in North America to have sex, for men to have 'more' partners, and for women to detach emotionally and make it 'okay.' Almost everyone I met in Europe in their mid 20s to 30s had had one, maybe two, very long term partnerships, and perhaps one casual, one night stand. Everyone I know in North America? Um... I've lost count.

So let's call dating what it really is: a way to get to know a complete stranger to see if they're a possible romantic partner for the long haul. It isn't an excuse to 'test the merchandise,' or 'see how I feel in six months.'. It's really a method, and a pretty intelligent one at that, to get to know someone before you bond physically with another person.

Not that I have an issue with people who want to have casual sex, and are consciously choosing it as a way to release sexual energy and truly connect. I'm just saying let's call dating what it actually is, and then everything else, well, whatever it actually is.

Date Format in the United States

The United States is one of the fewcountries that use “mm-dd-yyyy” as their date format–which is very veryunique! The day is written first and the year last in most countries(dd-mm-yyyy) and some nations, such as Iran, Korea, and China, write the yearfirst and the day last (yyyy-mm-dd). But why did Americans choose to write themonth first? Oneof the hypotheses is that the United States borrowed the way it was writtenfrom the United Kingdom who used it before the 20th century and then laterchanged it to match Europe (dd-mm-yyyy). American colonists liked theiroriginal format and it’s been that way ever since.

What Does Dating Consist Of

The United States has a rather unique way of writing the date that is imitated in very few other countries (although Canada and Belize do also use the form). In America, the date is formally written in month/day/year form. Thus, “January 1, 2011” is widely considered to be correct. In formal usage, it is not appropriate to omit the year, or to use a purely numerical form of the date. For example, if you were to write a formal letter for business, you would write out the entire date, including the name of the month (January 1, 2011). Writing it out in full allows for the notation to be understood even by people for whom the month/day/year form is relatively uncommon.

Related links:

What Does Dating Mean To You

What Does Dating Mean In The Usa Definition

Dating Site For Free In Usa

• Americans and The Date Format and How That Relates to Data Storage, Holy Wars and Soft-Boiled Eggs
  todayifoundout.com
• Why do Americans write the month before the day?
  theguardian.com