Courtship

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Courtship (sometimes called dating or going steady) is the process of selecting and attracting a mate for marriage or sexual intercourse.

Foriage

Youth conversing with suitors
Young men court Awrang of Jami, in the chapter A Father Advises his Son About Love. Freer and Sackler Galleries, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

In many traditional societies, courtship is a highly structured activity, with well-known rules. In many cultures, courtship is redum, or eliminated altogether, by the practice of arranged marriages, where partners are chosen for young people, typically by their parents. In some societies, the parents or community choose potential partners, and then allow limited dating to determine whether the parties are suited.

In Japan, there is a type of courtship called Omiai. It is a formal date with the intention of finding someone to marry.

Dating and alternative courtship customs

In Western societies, a date is an occasion when one socializes with a potential lover or spouse. In this sense, the purpose of a date is for the people dating to get to know each other and decide whether they want to have a relationship. However, the term is also used to mean a social evening between people who already have a long-term, established relationship or marriage. In such cases the goal of dating is no longer courtship, but instead an opportunity to relax away from day-to-day responsibilities, such as caring for children. Dating may be the term describing the relationship of two people attending a date, but other terms are often used. These terms can imply different degrees of commitment and monogamy, but with some ambiguity. In the mid-20th century, United States teenagers commonly dated or "went out" with multiple people before "going steady" with just one, but the term "going out" later came to imply an exclusive relationship. Other terms include "seeing" one another and "pseudo dating" where the time is spent together, but the prospect of actual romantic relationship may be understood by one or both parties but is never explicitly discussed.

Newer forms of dating

Commercial dating agencies emerged strongly, but discreetly, in the Western world after World War II, mostly catering for the 25-44 age group. Newspaper and magazine personal ads also became common.

For example, Brian and Eileen are going on date. They made plans in advance, Brian is paying for the tickets; therefore, it is a date. This sort of "going-out" is a date.

In the last five years, mate-finding and courtship have seen changes due to online dating services. Telecommunications and computer technologies have developed rapidly since around 1995, allowing daters the use of home telephones with answering machines- mobile phones- and web-based systems to find prospective partners. 'Pre-dates' can take place by telephone or online via instant messaging, e-mail, or even video communication. A disadvantage is that, with no initial personal interview by a traditional dating agency head, internet daters are free to exaggerate or lie about their characterisitics.

While the growing popularity of the Internet took some time, currently one in five singles is now said to look for love on the Web, which has led to a dramatic shift in dating patterns. Research in the UK suggests that at 2004 there were around 150 agencies there, and the market was growing at around 20 percent a year due to: 1) the very low entry barriers to setting up a dating site, and 2) the rising number of single people. However, even academic researchers find it impossible to find precise figures about crucial statistics, such as: 1) the ratio of active daters to the large rump of inactive members who the agency will often wrongly claim to still be potential partners, and 2) the overall ratio of men to women in an agency's membership. Academic research on traditional pre-internet agencies suggested most agencies may well have far more men than women in their membership.

Where traditionally, men were expected to fill the role of "the pursuer", the anonymity of the Internet (as well as other factors) has allowed women to take on that role online. A recent study indicated that "women pay to contact men as often as the reverse, which is quite different from behavior in telephone-based dating system" (from Wired magazine). In Dyersburg, Tennessee, U.S.A., it is illegal for a woman to contact a man by telephone to plan a date.

The trend of singles making a Web connection continues to increase, as the percentage of North American singles who have tried Internet dating has grown from 2% in 1999 to over 10% today (from Canadian Business, February 2002). More than half of online consumers (53%) know someone who has started a friendship or relationship online, and three fourths of 18-24 year old online consumers (74%) say they do. There is also some academic evidence that the 18-25 age group has significantly taken up online dating.

There is still plenty of room for traditional matchmakers to thrive, however, and only time will tell which industry wins out in the end.

Animal kingdom

Courtship activities are widely observed in the animal kingdom, where they play their part in the process of sexual selection. See: animal communication, courtship ritual.

See also

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