Kiss / sober / kiss

The topic of dating came up in conversation this evening. Specifically, when can you say, officially, that you are dating? To make things interesting, the friends around the table engaged in this debate ranged from fourteen years old to somewhere in their fifties. Clearly our collective group had a broad and representative perspective on the issue.

I floated the theory that you can truly be said to be dating only when the following sequence has occurred: (i) You kiss (by “kiss”, I mean a real kiss – you know what I mean – not a social kiss). (ii) You become sober. (iii) Once in this newly sober state, you kiss again.

Step three marks the moment that begins your official entry into datingdom. My friends around the table generally agreed that this is as good a metric as any. I realize that we could all be wrong on this point.

But I defy anybody to do better.

6 thoughts on “Kiss / sober / kiss”

  1. Honestly I never understood the American ‘dating’-concept. It seems to be full of rules – no kiss – social kiss – kiss- sober- kiss – sex?!
    What if when minds and hearts a beating in the same rhythm? Do you need a flag that shows: “Now we have a date”?. What is that flag for? And what does having a date mean then?
    ‘Dating someone’ sounds more like a business deal – rules and contract given.
    I strongly believe that you can kiss someone with your heart and mind, without a physical touch and that you can have sex with someone with your heart and mind without even a touch, that you can have sex, an orgasm, with someone just through (non-explicit) words.
    And that -while using the dating flag- you betray each other, because you can’t enjoy the wonderful shyness, anxiety, going one step forward, two back, going forward again, you can’t enjoy uncharted territories.

  2. Wow, people are taking my little post so seriously! There are many paths to Mecca, and of course many of those paths do not pass by a bar. 😉

    In our conversation yesterday evening, we were thinking of it more the other way: How can you know whether a “drunken kiss” (ie: one that is party-situation-influenced) is less about the “kiss” than the “drunken”? Implicitly we were discussing the fact that people (and I suspect, Dagmar, that this includes some people who are not Americans) sometimes have difficulty revealing their emotions.

    Sometimes, under the influence of alcohol or in other party-related situations, deeper emotions are revealed. At other times, this “revelation” turns out to have been an illusion.

  3. Maybe I am just allergic against the word ‘dating’- the hidden or not hidden concept behind it. 😉
    Just listening to someone saying, I am dating XY, makes me aggressive I guess. What does this say now, you own XY, or you are, the next funny wording, “exclusive” with someone.
    Ken, this is all my fault. 😉
    Words, wording, interpretation, translation…
    By the way, I didn’t find a translation for ‘dating’, at least not into German. 🙂
    And better a drunken ‘revelation’ than no ‘relevation’at all.
    Cheers!

  4. Just how much experience DOES that 14-year-old have with drunken kissing?!

    (Perhaps this post needed a bit more set-up before getting to the candidate definition.)

  5. Oh gosh, no. She was quite amused by the adult conversation, and I’m sure she was enjoying this example of the childishness of us older folks.

    And she was drinking fruit juice.

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