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"PinterestFacebookDating, 1954: Guy picks up girl and takes her to the soda shop.\nDating, 1984: Guy picks up girl (at aerobics class), takes her to see John Cougar Mellencamp in concert.\nDating, 2014: Guy texts girl. Ambiguity ensues.\nSo much ambiguity that, in a new Glamour survey, 73 percent of single women said they often can&amp;#39;t even tell whether they&amp;#39;ve been on a date or not&amp;#8212;and, shockingly, 19 percent said they had never been on a &amp;quot;real date&amp;quot; at all. Women in relationships aren&amp;#39;t faring much better; just 12 percent of them have a regular date night with their significant other. There seem to be no dating rules anymore&amp;#8212;or even any expectations.\nHere&amp;#39;s what is happening instead: &amp;quot;My boyfriend won&amp;#39;t turn off his phone alerts when we&amp;#39;re out,&amp;quot; says Alexandra Einstein, 26, an account manager from Greenville, South Carolina. &amp;quot;The other night I grabbed it and read &amp;#39;Drunk fan falls asleep in front row during Blazers game.&amp;#39; Thank God we were alerted.&amp;quot; And everyone&amp;#39;s gotten lazy about planning time together, as evidenced by this, spotted recently on a Tinder profile: &amp;quot;No more Netflix on a first date.&amp;quot; No wonder we&amp;#39;re all complaining about our love lives. The bar for acceptable night-out behavior has dropped to the floor.\nSo let&amp;#39;s pick that bar up and reset it. Let&amp;#39;s bring back date night&amp;#8212;or date day, even. It doesn&amp;#39;t have to be a four-star dinner and a private Beyonc\u00E9 and Jay Z concert. But dating does require planning. &amp;quot;A date is someone asking another person out and arranging to do something fun together,&amp;quot; says Risa Sarachan, 30, an actress from Albany, New York. &amp;quot;It needs to involve getting to know each other and having a sense of romance. At least that&amp;#39;s how I wish it were.&amp;quot; Instead, date night has turned into a pitch meeting, according to Kim Wolfe, 26, a Web designer from Sarasota, Florida: &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s always just drinks or coffee instead of a real date, because no one wants to commit more than 20 minutes to get to know you. I would love to spend a day roaming the park or checking out a museum, instead of feeling like I&amp;#39;m on a timer.&amp;quot;\nSO HOW DID WE GET HERE?\nThere&amp;#39;s plenty of blame to go around. The apparently enormous number of available single people online threatens to make each individual date a little less special&amp;#8212;your next date is, after all, only a click away. Everyone is working longer hours and over-scheduling; even 35 percent of women in relationships say finding a time when both parties are free is a barrier to date night.\nIt wasn&amp;#39;t always like this. Dating is&amp;#8212;like rock &amp;#39;n&amp;#39; roll, blue jeans, and microwave popcorn&amp;#8212;an American invention. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s a practice that was developed and fine-tuned in the U.S. about a hundred years ago,&amp;quot; says Beth Bailey, the author of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. &amp;quot;The first time I found the word dating used in an American magazine was in a January 1914 issue of Ladies&amp;#39; Home Journal.&amp;quot; Previously, young couples could only flirt under the watchful supervision of their families. But as public spaces like amusement parks and dance halls opened, dating outside the home became a mainstream phenomenon.\nTo be fair, dating has always changed with the times. In the 1930s, things were competitive&amp;#8212;you had to jitterbug with as many people as possible on the dance floor; then, after the tumult of World War II, the goal was to settle down and &amp;quot;go steady.&amp;quot; During the rebellious 1960s, couples enjoyed a new sexual freedom that gave birth to 1970s singles bars, but by the 1980s neoconservatism led to a return of more formal dates (think Andie and Duckie in Pretty in Pink). Today dating is murky and confusing&amp;#8212;and no one seems very happy.\nTURNS OUT, DATING IS GOOD FOR YOU\nA formal get-together has practical payoffs. Going on actual dates and not just &amp;quot;hanging out,&amp;quot; texting, or hooking up means you are more likely to find better romantic choices, says Helen Fisher, Ph.D., match.com&amp;#39;s chief scientific adviser. &amp;quot;The test of a relationship is how your personalities mesh, and you can find that out only when you sit down and talk one-on-one. Sites like ours are not dating sites; they&amp;#39;re introducing sites. Go out on a real date!&amp;quot; That goes for established couples too, says Fisher: &amp;quot;Date night can renew your feelings of romance by taking you back to when you were first dating and madly in love.&amp;quot;\nTo sum up: Date night works, and it&amp;#39;s fun. It works for singles and for couples, gay or straight. &amp;quot;Early on, my now boyfriend and I went on real dates instead of just hanging out, and I feel like it made a real difference,&amp;quot; says Morgan Furst, 25, an inventory analyst in San Francisco. &amp;quot;I can still remember the butterflies I had after the first dinner. We shared stories about our lives and really got to know each other.&amp;quot;\nDating is a century-old American tradition&amp;#8212;let&amp;#39;s not let it die. Take a chance! Invite your crush to dinner. Go on a picnic. Meet someone new. Get nervous. Feel the butterflies. See a movie&amp;#8212;on a big screen. Create a memory (even if it&amp;#39;s a terrible one; the story will delight your friends!). And take your spouse or long-term partner out for a date night, so you both can focus on just each other. Dating is supposed to be fun, remember? So go out. Really, just go out. Maybe you&amp;#39;ll get lucky. Maybe you&amp;#39;ll fall in love. One night could change everything.\nLogan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to New York magazine, The New York Times, This American Life*, and others.*"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/story/date-night-what-happened-to-dating>