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Comment by Joeboy | Hacker News Reader

I'm an old British person and "dating" does sound kind of American to me. People would "go out" together, which I guess is similar but is more like "starting a relationship" than "trying people out with a view to maybe starting a relationship". Which I don't think we really had a term for. I think "dating" in that sense only started seeming commonplace with online dating.

Of course people would do things with people they were romantically interested in, but you'd ask if they wanted to go and watch a film, not whether they wanted to go on a date.

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Same here. I'm early 40s and the idea of dating in the American sense seems odd to me. I've met all my romantic partners at parties or through gatherings at friend's houses. Relationships start off as acquaintances and develop organically as we spend time together. It wouldn't occur to me to ask someone I barely know out on a date. Of course, once a mutual interest has been established, we go and do stuff together on our own, but I'd think of that as "going out for dinner with X" or "going hiking with X", but I wouldn't call it dating.

You’ve just described exactly what “dating” in the American sense means, so it seems the only thing you have a problem with is the word to describe the overall process.

It seems to me a different experience to what I've seen in American movies or observed with American friends. There's less formality and expectation. There's no progression from first date to second date and so on. You start the "dating" part once you're pretty sure you really want to spend time with someone, i.e. you're fairly confident it's a relationship that's going somewhere before you start "dating". It's less exploratory than US dating seems to me. The "doing stuff alone together" is more the culmination of a process of familiarizing yourself with each other than the beginning of something new.

American romantic comedies have nothing to do with reality. As realistic as the beautiful people playing the leading roles being romantically unwanted.

There really is no "dating" part in America. You either go on dates or you are in a relationship. If anything, if you are "dating" someone it means you are seeing other people on other dates as well.

We really use the word "dates" to differentiate from interactions of platonic friendships. Still though this tends to be unspoken. It is not uncommon for one person to think they are on a "date" and one person to think they are just meeting as platonic friends.

This article I would imagine is saying 40% have had no romantic interaction with another person.

Americans have both kinds of dating. The more formalized date progression is usually for older people and for people who don't know each other organically from social circles. But I'd guess most couples meet in social circles and sort of pair off when they decide its going somewhere.

Movies and TV focus on the formal stuff because its a better source of comedy/drama.

The one difference, to my mind, is this:

> Relationships start off as acquaintances and develop organically as we spend time together.

I would say that I have dated a lot in the past 10 years, and have been in some great long term (1 year or longer) relationships, but I've never dated someone I've met through my social circles, nor have I ever started off as an acquaintance and then transitioned over time into being romantically involved. I've always seen someone I was physically attracted to (at the airport, coffee shop, etc), strike up a conversation, and if their personality is as attractive as their appearance then I pursue that person romantically.

I don't even know how going from acquaintance to romantic partner would work. If someone isn't attractive to me at the start, they're not going to become attractive later (unless they can, what, become someone who they were not?). If they are attractive to me, then I don't see why I would want to artificially delay pursuit of something that could be great for both of us.

If that's not dating, I don't know what it's called.

> I would say that I have dated a lot in the past 10 years, and have been in some great long term (1 year or longer) relationships, but I've never dated someone I've met through my social circles, nor have I ever started off as an acquaintance and then transitioned over time into being romantically involved.

That's more common than it used to be, but still a very large minority of American couples meet through social circles. (Probably also stronger than it used to be though, is the divergence between different regional, class, ethnic, and other subcultural divides on how this works out; the idea that there is one specific pattern of “American” dating is as false as the idea that American romance movies paint an accurate picture of it.)

“Doing things with people you are romantically interested in” is what dating means, whether you use the term actively or not. More context can be found here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating

Does there not have to be some sort of overt mutual acknowledgement that it's that kind of date, in order for it to be "dating"?

The uncertainty over whether something is a date is a common trope in media.

Nope. It's possible to not even realize you were dating until after the fact.

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