Romance is dead

Weighing the competition

The third issue is competing with other women for a good mate. This is where the issue of romance resurfaces. Yes, by using good clothes and a winning personality one is competing against potential rivals for a keeper of a man. However, that pales in comparison to the competition women are in when it comes to sex. One of the most significant issue that I’m hearing these days is how men are not really displaying any romance, and women are feeling increasingly pressured to have sex earlier in the relationship. When I ask them why, I often hear something like, “if I don’t have sex with him, he’ll find someone else who can.” These women don’t necessarily want to have sex, they just don’t want to be single again or they want to have a little more time to see if he’s a keeper. And these days, it seems that the ‘sex’ date is number two or three – a far cry from the courting days of 1900 when one used only a finely tuned wit to woo. I should mention that most of my research is based on young women, between 18-28 years of age. Perhaps the situation is different among older crowds.

Related to this issue of competition is that many women try to determine what potential rivals are doing so that they can be unique, but not too unique as to become freakish. Friends who are active daters have reported to me some of the backstabbing things they have done to each other, like saying “you look super” when they think their friend doesn’t looks that great, or telling a friend that a guy they both like is unavailable, just to deter the friend from competing. The majority of women I’ve talked to undertake considerable effort to think about their rivals, and what they will be facing in terms of competition. Sugar and spice, and everything nice, that’s what girls are made of? I think not.

What does this all mean? Well, basically, in today’s dating scene, romance has been pushed to the side. Women tend not to display it, and they tell me it’s because the men they are meeting don’t care about romance at all. Men aren’t displaying it because women don’t expect them to – or at least that’s how it seems. For the men reading this, I’d advise you to use romance (as so long as it’s not paired with a tan line from where your wedding ring should be) because you might seem like a very good catch to prospective mates, and you’ll stand out as being different, but in a good way. I can hear critics saying “nice guys finish last” and equating romance with nice guys, so it’s important to note that the research is really not well supportive of this idiom.

Future of romance

If romance is dead, what comes next? I really don’t know, but it’s looking like the routine is to have sex and then hope that there is some emotional connection afterwards. This pattern is not true for everyone, of course, but it is becoming more prevalent among the women I’m talking with these days. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but it seems to me that as our society has streamlined everything imaginable (even social relationships are now efficient thanks to facebook), there’s just no room left for romance. The only solution I can see, at least on theoretical grounds, is that women need to start demanding it from potential mates, and males who want to seem like good catches should start offering it. Maybe, just maybe, we can start to resuscitate romance.

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Maryanne Fisher, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, and a member of the Women and Gender Studies Program, at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada.

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