Article: Who's on First (part 1 of 2)

This article highlights the current problem of the vague definitions of relationships types and boundaries. The first question here is about the definition of a date. Is it a date only if the two people both consider it one, or is it always a date if two people of the opposite sex go and do something together?

"And then she said some other stuff, I don't remember what; you can't listen to everything a girl says or it would wear you out." That gave me a good laugh, probably because I can see some guys being like that. Kind of "sad but true" perhaps.

A second issue touched on here is that people may not want to call dates dates. In this story the girl says that they are just friends, even though it seems that she is thinking of them as dating. Whatever the reasons might be, I don't think it's good to be deceptive about how you feel. What do you think about the idea that girls don't want to say they're dating because of the fear of being pressured for sex or getting more physical than they want to?

After this the author talks about some reasons he believes guys don't want to call dates dates. The first one he mentions is that guys are afraid of commitment. This is of course an old complaint women seem to have. I have to say that I don't totally see this, or at least I see it somewhat differently. I think one reason I've seen for this is that it seems that often in a relationship the woman is ready to commit before the guy is. Another place this complaint comes up I think is when a girl likes a guy more than the guy likes the girl. She may complain that he is afraid to commit when in fact he just doesn't feel the same way she does. It's true that guys feel a certain kind of pressure in relationship area. It's like one friend put it, "I realized this was a really big decision and I didn't want to mess it up."

Personally I know that I tend to be pretty cautious. So I will be careful about proceeding too far until I feel more confident. I can also understand the fear of rejection thing. I know that I'll try to get a feel for a girl's amount of interest in me, and take that into consideration in making a decision about trying to get to know her better. So what do you think about all of this?

Overall the article is saying that the lack of definition in relationship causes trouble and confusion. Any other thoughts?