What do Vietnam, letterman jackets, pagers and 50 Shades of Grey all have in common? They’re all the common denominator for cultural differences that defined each generations distinct dating styles. I sat down with two Baby Boomers, who were navigating dating in the 1960s; two Gen Xers who were dating in the 1980s and early 1990s; two Millennials who and were dating in the 1990s and 2000s; and two Gen Zers who are currently navigating the world of “Netflix and Chill,” “sliding into the DMs” and casual BDSM. Through these conversations it became clear to me that each generation has a unique perspective on what exactly defines sex, dating and romance.
Most people assume that dating has always worked exactly the same way, but I discovered that the people I spoke with from each generation told very different narratives. Throughout the conversations with each generation, I realized how much the deterioration of the family unit, the Sexual Revolution and the advent of technology have influenced dating and sex.
Question 1- What year were you born?
Respondent 1- 1949
Respondent 2- 1947, I’m 71.
Respondent 3- 1970
Respondent 4- 1974
Respondent 5- 1981
Respondent 6- 1981
Respondent 7- I was born in 2000.
Respondent 8- 2002
Question 2- What kind of technology influenced the way people in your generation dated?
Respondent 1- My family only had one phone line so my sisters and I would tie the line up all day and night. That was how we would get to know the boys we wanted to date or were dating, was by talking to them on the phone. I would also write a lot of handwritten letters, especially when my husband was in Vietnam for a year.
Respondent 2- My sister and I were lucky because our mom and dad paid for us to have our own phone line so we could talk to our boyfriends that way, without tying up the phone line. There wasn’t much technology aside from that. Sometimes a handwritten letter or two, especially when my husband was in Vietnam.
Respondent 3- Answering machines came out when I was in high school and it was the coolest thing ever. With answering machines you didn’t have to worry about leaving the house to run errands and missing a call from your boyfriend. He could just leave you a message.
Respondent 4- Leaving messages on the answering machine became the really cool thing. You could wait until you knew your girlfriend wasn’t home and then leave a flirty message for them to listen to when they got home.
Respondent 5- I got my first pager in high school so that was always how my boyfriend would reach me. Or if I was running late for something I could call him on the payphone and let him know.
Respondent 6- I never had a pager in high school but other people would page their boyfriends or girlfriends. But I got a cell phone my senior year of high school and email was also starting to become a bigger thing so I would call my boyfriend on my cell phone or email him.
Respondent 7- Right now the big thing is Tinder and dating apps like that. You can meet people from all over that you wouldn’t know otherwise. You can also use Snapchat or FaceTime to talk to people. It makes long distance relationships a lot easier.
Respondent 8- Most people will find girls they like on Instagram and message them or get their Snapchat to start talking to them. People will also FaceTime each other or use texting and stuff.
Question 3- What are some ways that people would flirt or what kinds of romantic gestures were there?
Respondent 1- Slam books were the thing at my high school. You would start a book to pass around where you would answer questions like “who has the best eyes in the class?” or “who has the nicest smile?” and then other people in the class answer the same questions. That’s how you flirt with each other and let people know that you liked them. Sometimes girls would also send nude polaroids to the boys in Vietnam, if we were married to them.
Respondent 2- Giving someone your senior ring or letterman jacket was the biggest one.
Respondent 3- When you passed notes in class you could fold them into little origami shapes to give to the guy you liked. Guys would also give their girlfriends their letterman jackets, that was a big one. Or if you really liked someone you would make them a mixtape.
Respondent 4- Mixtapes are the main one I can think of. Or giving a girl your letterman jacket.
Respondent 5- I can’t really think of any big grand gestures. It was just a lot of stuff in person, like touching a girl’s hand in a certain way that showed you were flirting.
Respondent 6- I can’t think of anything except just flirting in person like standing close to the guy you liked or touching his shoulder when you talked to him.
Respondent 7- Most flirting is just like Snapchatting someone a lot. Boys will tell you to hit them up if they want you to come over.
Respondent 8- There’s not really much flirting. You’ll just Snapchat the girls you like and hope they Snapchat you back.
Question 4- What was the actual structure of dating? How did you get from just knowing someone to being boyfriends/girlfriends?
Respondent 1- You would usually know someone from class and if they were interested in you they would try to talk to you more at school. Then they would ask for your phone number and you would continue to get to know each other over the phone. Eventually they’d ask you on a date and after a few dates they would ask you to go steady with them.
Respondent 2- Most people met someone from school and would start getting to know them more over the phone. Then they might start hanging out in groups, like at the movies every Saturday. After you’ve sat with them at the movies for a few weekends in a row people assume that you’re together now. Once a guy gives you his senior ring that’s how you know you’re practically engaged. It’s a big deal to get a guy’s senior ring.
Respondent 3- You’d usually know who you were interested in from school or hanging out in groups. If a guy started calling your house a lot you’d know he was interested and could start to get to know him better over the phone. After a while he’d ask you on a date or to a school dance. Eventually he might ask you to “go” with him, which means to be his girlfriend.
Respondent 4- I would get to know girls from school and figure out who I was interested in. My friends and I would invite all the girls we liked over to watch movies with us, but the movies were really just background noise so we could talk to each other more. Then we might start calling them and then we’d ask them out for a date. After several dates we would ask them to “go” with us, and maybe give them our letterman jacket if we were an athlete.
Respondent 5- Boys would flirt with you at school by buying you a soda in the lunch line or leaving a note in your locker. If he did that you’d probably start hanging out with him in groups at friends houses or at parties. Then you’d start going on dates with him and eventually it was just assumed that you were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Respondent 6- Boys would act flirty in school to show they were interested in you, then you’d hang out with their friend group until you started going on real dates, then after a few dates people knew you were dating.
Respondent 7- It kind of depends on how you meet. Sometimes you don’t know the person before the first date, if you meet on Tinder or something. So you can go on dates or just hook up with someone if you aren’t looking for a real relationship. If you do start going on dates with someone that’s considered a “thing” but most people don’t really label it.
Respondent 8- People will just start “talking” to each other, like texting or Snapchatting or whatever and then maybe if they like each other after talking they can go to each other’s house to watch Netflix, or they can go out somewhere like to Top Golf. After that you just kind of become a thing, people don’t really put labels on it.
Question 5- How did your generation handle sex in relationships?
Respondent 1- People didn’t have sex outside of marriage, and if they did they were labeled as a whore. People didn’t talk to their friends about sex either, everyone was very private. You dated to get married and have children, so sex and intimacy were saved for that.
Respondent 2- Nobody was having sex with anyone they weren’t married to. The girls who spread their legs were poor white trash. Women would occasionally talk to their friends about their sex lives but just brief mentionings of it, never any detail.
Respondent 3- Premarital sex was no longer something that would be considered taboo, but it was nothing like the culture surrounding sex today. You really only had sex with your boyfriend or someone you were in love with, not just any guy. If you did that you were considered a slut. Girls would talk to each other about sex but people never mentioned doing anything like threesomes or BDSM which seem to be common today. Maybe because of films like 50 Shades of Grey have influenced this?
Respondent 4- Almost everyone I know was having premarital sex but they weren’t floozies. It was like you’d have sex with someone you’d been dating for a long time, if you were sure you were going to get married. You didn’t just sleep around. Discussing sex with friends was a little more common but of course there are always going to be more private people, even if it’s culturally accepted.
Respondent 5- Pretty much everybody was having premarital sex. I lost my virginity at age 18 and told all my friends about it. Of course, I didn’t tell my parents until I was older but nobody made a big deal of it. If you’d been on a few dates it was pretty normal to have sex with them.
Respondent 6- As far as I know everyone had premarital sex. You’d go on two or three dates and then sleep with them, that was normal. You’d talk to your friends about what you did and that was how people learned more about sex.
Respondent 7- Sex is kind of the reason people date now. There are some people who want to get married but most people approach marriage with the mindset that if it ends in divorce they can just start over. Everything is allowed nowadays. Orgies and BDSM and polyamory and things that never would have been considered moral before are shown openly on TV and everyone is talking about them.
Respondent 8- Not only is everyone having sex but everyone is having kinky sex. The kind that no one would have talked about with each other, let alone actually had, back when my grandparents were dating. It’s crazy.
Question 6- What are the pros and cons to how each generation dated?
Respondent 1- The Baby Boomers had a very limited dating pool so I guess that was a negative thing. I really think we had it right though, at least with the way boys and girls interacted. Boys still came to the door to meet the parents when they picked the girl up for a date, it was very sweet and innocent and much more intimate. I think Gen Z is lucky that they have access to social media to meet each other but many of them aren’t using it in the right way and it’s taking some of the personalization and intimacy out of dating for them.
Respondent 2- I don’t think any generation has had it totally “right” but I think that Baby Boomers and Gen X definitely did a better job at keeping romance in relationships and making dating feel more special. The social media the younger generations have access to certainly helps with connectivity and long distance dating but if it’s being abused to the point of having meaningless, emotionless relationships then what’s the point?
Respondent 3- I think my parents generation did a really good job of dating. I think we did a good job of dating too. My children are all Gen Z and I do worry about them. Dating is easier for them but marriage is harder and marriage is where it really counts. The divorce rates these days are crazy and of course I don’t want my children to get a divorce. Everyone wants happily ever after for their babies.
Respondent 4- Is it okay to say I think my own generation had the most pros? Gen Xers really had it right. Relationships weren’t solely focused on sex, which is good because sex is such a small percentage of the amount of time you spend with someone when you’re married to them. Sex is important but it shouldn’t be the focus. Dating for us was just about having fun together, going bowling, playing mini golf, drinking milkshakes or whatever and just getting to know everything about the person. I think my kids’ generation has created more cons than pros for themselves, especially when they start dating people and they only ever text. Where’s the personal relationship if you’re only sending emojis?
Respondent 5- I think my generation kind of ruined it for the younger generations. We wanted to get away from the idea of waiting until marriage but we took it too far and now it’s really hard for the younger generations to get back to the heart of the idea of waiting for someone you love. And Gen Z has it even harder than we did because they have all this technology. I like the way Baby Boomers dated because there was way more romance. Everyone kind of wants that John Hughes, Nicholas Sparks type thing and Baby Boomers had it.
Respondent 6- I think Millennials did well because they made things more socially acceptable, but what came with that was also making things less special. I think having sex outside of marriage should be socially acceptable but now it sucks because it’s kind of lost it’s value. I wish my generation had valued sex and dating a little bit more.
Respondent 7- It’s actually really sad because everyone acts like they love the freedom of having sex with whoever they want whenever they want but I think most of us hate it. It ends up leaving people confused and heartbroken and unfulfilled. Most people don’t want to admit it but I think the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers were onto something. Maybe we don’t need to only date for marriage and only have sex on the wedding night but there’s something really nice about writing handwritten letters to each other and going on real dates and not just focusing on when you’re going to get to smash. I think most people come from broken homes now too, so marriage just isn’t really valued. What’s so bad about having two parents and a couple of kids and eating dinner together every night and stuff? That seems nice to me.
Respondent 8- Well I think the idea of picking a girl up at the door and meeting her parents is really nice. I don’t know why we don’t do that anymore. It’s good that we have technology because you don’t have to wait around for a phone call in the evening but it also means that things are kind of less personal. I think the older generations had more intimacy and romance and my generation is kind of lacking in that.
The consensus? As technology has advanced, dating has become easier but the sacrifice made has been long-lasting, meaningful relationships. Even Gen Zs agree that as sex has slowly lost its value over time, dating has become less about intimacy and marriage, and more about personal freedom and exorbitant fleeting pleasure. As this year’s Valentine’s Day comes and goes, think hard about what you dislike about your dating life, and make an effort to bring intimacy, intentionality and romance back into your relationships.
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