...death to DATING RULES

Should you call? Should you kiss on a first date? Should you put two kiss-crosses on a text message or just one?

Wait. Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions.

Should you even CARE?

If you like someone, why not just go for it? Scaredy-cat.

Dating is rife with unwritten rules. Rules that daters should abide by in order to be tagged as NORMAL. Like the three-day calling rule. It’s the devised number of days that perfectly expresses interest without obsession. More than three days translates to “you’re just not that interested”. Less = steer clear of the STALKER. But who devised the rules?

There’s no referee in dating. There’s no Dating Police either (unless you are, in fact, a stalker). We’re on our own. And we’re not used to living without laws – we’ve lived by hundreds of ‘em since the day we were born.

Perhaps society needed a guidebook to know how to deal with the opposite sex. So we created ‘norms’ that allow us to measure our dating actions, and understand the status of our new relationships.

But if there’s no better explanation (and please feel free to theorise), then why not break the rules?

I lived in a society where no dating rules existed. It was in Istanbul, Turkey, and I learnt all about it for six years. You could call five minutes after the date finished if you liked. You could ask someone’s age/job/salary as a pick-up line if you fancied. It was refreshing. And yes, some of them ended up as stalkers, but at least you didn’t have to wait three days to find out.

So maybe we should go ‘rule free’. It’ll work. Eventually. In the meantime, it’ll quickly sort out the potential keepers from the non-interested. Those who freak probably have issues they need to deal with first anyway.