To think that online dating has changed the face of relationships?

[SummerGems]

When I started seeing eXH and before that in fact,it was just an assumed thing that if you were seeing someone then you were seeing them. If you didn’t want to keep seeing them you moved on and in time would start seeing someone else.

Now,and probably more with the introduction of dating apps it seems that these goalposts have changed.

So now you start seeing/dating several men/women for a few months until you decide which one you like best and then you bin off all the others? And more importantly, unless you’ve had the “exclusive” conversation you’re unreasonable if it turns out that the man/woman you have been seeing exclusively is still seeing several other people.

How does anyone ever actually find a relationship in this climate?

And more to the point, is it any wonder that fidelity seems to have gone out of the window given that it’s considered perfectly normal to be seeing several men or women at a time until you either have the conversation or decide you don’t want to see them any more?

My generation were similar, if you were "going with" someone, it was exclusive. However, my mother's generation "dated" and would date more than one man, so it's just the pendulum swinging.

Its called multi dating, and tbh ive always known it to be that way. On MN apparently you just know you’re in a relationship and you dont have to establish it, but I disagree, alot of men want the gf experience without the gf so I think its important to actually establish its a relationship and not just assume.

Online dating has been around 20 years at least and multi-dating (until you have the exclusivity conversation) has always been the expectation.

Agree with PPs - I don’t think this is new at all. People have always multi-dated. Some people have always preferred not to. It might seem like a new thing, because along with online dating is the internet generally and a myriad different ways to communicate, so I think we just talk a lot more about it. My parents and their friend were multi-dating in the ‘70s - a drunken evening with my 64-year-old mum recently led to the reveal that when she met my dad she was seeing two other men besides and waited several weeks to pick who she liked best!

my mother's generation "dated" and would date more than one man, so it's just the pendulum swinging.

Yes - it used to be a thing. There would be people that some saw casually, those that were steady and then mileposts like deciding to stop seeing other people, having one steady then getting engaged etc. Puts me in mind of even the Wodehouse short stories were people used to have an understanding which seemed a prequel to being engaged.

Met my bf on tinder. Neither of us multi dated and both came off after the 1st date independently and didn't know the other had done so.

We are old though.

Yeah I think the multi dating often happened at the very beginning before internet dating ( It has just come out when I met DO do becer tried) but before it got as serious as having sex.
I don’t think I could be intimate with 2 different men at the same time, but going to restaurants, having conversations while deciding if you like them or not seems a good idea.

Phone !!! ( It HAD just come out when I met DP so I have never tried it)

How does anyone ever actually find a relationship in this climate?

I feel compelled to admit that if anything happened to DH (or our marriage collapsed for whatever reason) I doubt I'd date/look for another relationship. I think I'd be rubbish at online dating and I'm probably over-exposed to incidents where it's gone horribly wrong. I know I'm being irrational because I probably know far more people involved in online dating than I even realise but there it is.

We were pioneers of online dating (met in 1998) and were exclusive immediately. We just knew.

DH and I met through online dating. Neither of us went out with anyone else at the same time. We are (moderately) old though.

I was dating before internet dating and no, it wasn't normal to be exclusive from the first date (!).

'seeing someone' was exclusive, but that's only when you had got to know them a bit. And you would have the 'so are we er... an item?' conversation.

I think "dating" and exclusivity ("going steady") have always been two different things. I was taught (1970's sex education) that seeing someone a handful of times was a precursor to agreeing exclusivity, so it was definitely implied that there would be nothing wrong with getting to know more than one person at the same time. (Though in real life if this had ever happened, it would have made me uncomfortable to do it, and I wouldn't have hidden that I was doing it.)

In this context, "dating" did not imply any sexual activity. as far as I remember.

Haven't Americans been doing that for years? Dating meaning casual and not exclusive. That's the impression I always got from films.

I lived for a while in New York. Technically OLD existed but it still wasn’t where most people met. Certainly years and years before Tinder. Dating was not an exclusive thing there, I don’t think anything to do with OLD.

I think it was always a thing in big cities where you could date a lot. Probably less of a thing in other places or amongst different demographics who simply wouldn’t have met a new person every week. Now people who wouldn’t have even known how to find the people to date three people at once now can and do.

As others said, non-exclusive dating has always been a thing and there has always been people who like it and those who don't like it.

I remember, many years ago when I was in high school, there was a bit of drama because a some people seemed to think you can only like one person at a time and admitting you 'liked' someone also meant you didn't 'like' anyone else, and others didn't and were open about 'liking' multiple people and not wanting to be exclusive without seeing someone for a longer period of time. As an adult, I've dealt with drama with friends who assumed someone asking for a date meant far more than that.

Personally, I'm in the don't make assumptions or jump into exclusivity camp and, in my experience, other relationships tend to fall away more naturally than 'binning'.

Guy here - wanted to add my two cents as this is a subject that bothers me.

Maybe I'm old fashioned (I'm 31) but I don't like the idea of dating more than one person at a time. I think it's disrespectful. I date one person at a time, for as many dates as it takes for us both to make up our minds about each other, and only after we're both clear that nothing's really happening would I consider dating another. No multiples, no overlaps.

I know a lot of guys obviously use OLD dating to play the field, so be it. But that's not for me. And the first time I realised someone I was dating was seeing other guys I was quite shocked. Not in a territorial way or because she owed me anything, more that I realised how naive I was and that it seemed to me quite a cold way to go about finding an emotional connection.

Good luck to those who do, or disagree, it's none of my buiness. I just don't like it.

I think if you both genuinely like each other it’s apparent early on, and you become exclusive quickly.
One of the pros of multi dating is you can get to know someone before making a commitment, and it’s easy to duck out if it’s goibg south.

I was always chatting to a few different guys when online dating and often had a few dates in a week. Very few made it to the second round though, 95% of the time it was one date then on to the next. Once there was someone I wanted to see again then I'd stop arranging dates with new guys.

Dating apps now (last 5 years in my experience) are a case of looking for a needle in a haystack. There are far more men than women on them but most of them are attached, looking for casual sex, or have good reasons why they are not in a relationship. There are a few lucky women who find a decent partner from them, but you just have to read the dating threads here to see how the majority don't.
I have tried OLD but have had far more success in meeting people IRL (30s/40s including my current partner.