Am I old fashioned in my thinking

[Rustymoo]

My 23 year old niece was telling me about a guy she’s been seeing and how happy she was that they’ve had the exclusivity chat.
Maybe I’m old fashioned in my thinking but to me if you’re seeing someone you don’t see (by that I mean date) anyone else and nowadays it seems until you have had that chat your free to what I’d call two time or having your cake and eat it. She seemed surprised when I said that and it got me thinking is it just me who thinks like that.

Horses for courses.

I think people are mostly exclusive anyway, before they have the chat, or they let their standards be known.

I think it’s the difference between ‘dating’ which was more of a US thing than British, years ago, and is now mainly done via Apps or online as opposed to years ago when you ‘went out with’ someone who you met in person and they asked you out. No idea when things changed. Although my DS and his partner have been pretty traditional in their relationship and they are mid-20s.

Yeah I think things are different now, the exclusivity chat is common, it's not just assumed people aren't still dating other people. I think it goes hand in hand with the way people meet now, more online.

I'm glad I was young when I was!

I should have said it’s been almost 40 years since I dated!

Have you heard of manners?

I'm with you OP. Many years ago when I was young, if you started going out with someone, the automatic assumption was that neither of you would see anyone else at the same time as they were going out with you. Two-timing was very much not the done thing.

When I read threads on here, it all seems to have changed, and that everyone carries on playing the field until such time (occasionally several months in) that you have the 'exclusivity' chat.

I actually think this way might be better than how it was when I was younger.

I know there were times when I was clearly on a different page to someone I was seeing and I wonder if being more intentional in defining things could be good.

The assumption that every relationship is exclusive and people want the same thing is pretty unrealistic.

Nope. It's not. You were rude. HTH

Did you mean to be so ageist rude?

The world has changed in the last 40 years as has dating. Yes your old fashioned in your thinking.

Yes, it's an old-fashioned way of thinking. I think it's more honest now and people aren't accusing people of "two-timing" as, until you've both agreed to be "exclusive" you can "have your vague and eat it" without repercussions.

@Rustymoo Sadly I think you are, as am I. I worked in the US some time ago (like a VERY long time ago) and this seemed very much the norm. It wasn't something I was comfortable with.

In my observation it's online dating which has changed this. Because it's hard to get a feel for whether or not you'll actually get on with (let alone fancy) someone through an app, and because you're faced with an overwhelming number of potential matches (anyone on the app of your preferred gender/age) it means there is a huge amount of sifting necessary that you have to do manually. Unlike when you meet someone through mutual friends, or at work, or at a place you go regularly and you have several casual meetings in order to ascertain whether there is any kind of spark, and you may well "fancy" more than one person at once and have to make a decision about who to pursue (if indeed either of them are single and interested!) you can't really do that online, so you want to get anyone with any potential at all off the app into a real life meeting place ASAP in order to work that part out. This kind of date is different to the dating you would do if you already know that you fancy someone and want to go out with them, it's more of a trial, and you both know that it works like that because that is the dating culture from online/app dating sites. The problem is that there are also a lot of duds. So if you were only pursuing one possibility at a time, it doesn't work to condense all the meetings into a short time period as you need space to process each meeting/date, and it could take a few weeks to really get a sense of whether it's someone you can see a future with. Hence, many people do this "trial dating phase" with overlapping candidates, though they might or might not sleep with the person until they are sure it's someone they want to start seeing properly.

I say observation, because I have also not ever done online/app dating.

I haven't online dated in just over a decade (now 40), but I expected then and I would expect now that if I had had a successful date with someone and we'd planned date 2, we wouldn't be dating anyone else.

This thinking is probably why I would never online date again. The horror stories you read are awful, people (men?) mainly using it for hook ups even if you stipulate you are looking for something long term.

Times have moved on apparently but I find it weird. There's dating, and there's having multiple sexual partners at once. I'm not sure what's acceptable!! I'm also not sure the non-exclusivity thing is prevalent amongst teens, who are more likely to meet in real life. Feels like a 20s and over OLD thing.

You only need to decide what’s ’acceptable’ for you though, it’s not for you to decide what others do.
This way of dating would hopefully mean there’s a bit more openness and honesty.

Yeah, sorry, OP, you're old fashioned. So am I. The exclusivity talk is very common now.

I guess it's probably a good thing - the number of times I had friends crying into their Bacardi and Cokes back in the 90s because she'd believed they were dating and he believed it was casual... Yeah, not fun.

Yes I have. I was referring to once you’ve met in real life.

We never had any such chat. We simply fell in love ...

How do you have a vague?

I'm referring to what is nowadays generally considered acceptable in this pre-exclusivity phase by others. Is it now considered ok to be having sex with multiple partners? I don't know.

I must be old fashioned, because in my day, in a far far distant timezone, I never slept with a man unless it was plain we were 'exclusive'.
I know that wasn't for everyone, but it suited me.