Millennial Match-Ups: The Modern Dating Guide

By Ed SJC Park

Never before in human history, or for that matter, nature has a species dated not for reproductive purposes but for recreation, pleasure, status, or economic reasons. Increasingly, especially with Millennials, dating has become more casual, complicated, and contrived. Instead of beating your head against a wall or giving up, learn the new rules, customs, etiquette, tactics, strategies, language, tricks, and pitfalls of modern dating. Adapt and play the game as it is played not the way you want it to be played. People from other generations will also benefit from this guide as the new dating rules are starting to apply to Gen X and Baby Boomers as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304661623

Book preview

Millennial Match-Ups: The Modern Dating Guide

Millennial Match-Ups: The Modern Dating Guide

The New Rules, Customs, Etiquette, Types of Relationships, Tactics, Strategies, Language, Expectations, Tricks, and Pitfalls of Modern Dating

by Ed SJC Park

Copyright © 2013 by Ed Park

All rights reserved.

No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover photo: © Everett Collection | shutterstock

First Edition: 2013

ISBN 978-1-304-66162-3

Acknowledgments:

My mentors and teachers: Judd A., Julio O., and Eric L.

Introduction

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The modern dating scene is something that has never existed in human history and for that matter nature.  People are still talking about dating, but they pretend that the rules and customs have been around since we had the choice of hooking up with Neanderthals.  Every new generation will complain that their parents don’t understand, that there are new norms and customs for dating.  However, the change in dating norms and customs between Millennials and any other previous generation of humans is larger than the difference between Boomers and Paleolithic humans.  This is no exaggeration.  The main purpose of dating for the entire history of our species has been to reproduce.  For the first time in history, the main purpose now is convenience, recreation, social status, economic, and pleasure.  This is not to say that humans will stop reproducing altogether.  Humanity will divide into two classes, those who create and raise the next generation of humans, and those who spend their lives endlessly amusing themselves with life’s pleasures and dating casually.  The purpose of this book is to familiarize yourself with the new rules, customs, etiquette, types of relationships, tactics, strategies, language, expectations, tricks, and pitfalls of modern dating.  It is designed for any intent, whether you want to be a sex addict, swinger, casual serial dater, or get married and have children. 

Increasingly, people are also opting out of romantic relationships altogether and finding fulfillment in friendships, paid sex, work, drugs, alcohol, food, traveling, or shopping.  We are at the infancy of this new casual relationship culture, so it should be no surprise the vast majority of people are confused and frustrated.  Even worse, we often think we know what we want without ever realizing how our true needs and fears undermine us.  Hopefully, this book will help people understand not only what is going on but how to get what you really want in this new culture.

The past was always a simpler time, they often say.  Things were tougher but simpler.  You had to walk eight miles to school, uphill, both ways!  I think this is mostly a fallacy, because life has never been simple.  Back in the day, it was not so simple traveling.  In fact, you needed a professional travel agent to pull it off.  Today, any idiot with a computer can plan a decent vacation.  Today, society benefits from mobility, hence, it’s simple and easy to travel.  Back in the day, society benefitted from homogeneity and stability, hence, travel was rife with hazards and complexity. 

Back in the day, it was more complex and challenging to be gay, to live a single life, to not want children, and if you were married and had kids, to act like you were happy.  Back in the day, the process for getting married was simple, because both people and society benefitted greatly from it.  In fact, in some societies, your spouse was prearranged, and you just had to show up to the wedding.

Today, the dating world is upside down although not necessarily in a bad way.  It is now much simpler to be gay, live a single life, not want children, and get divorced.  It is now much more complex getting into a long-term, committed monogamous relationship much less getting married.  This time around, people and society actually benefit more from single folk and single life.  So long as there are billions of poor people to reproduce and migrate to rich countries, the rich singles serve society by working hard and consuming obscenely. 

One problem with modern dating is not only finding someone who wants a long-term, committed monogamous relationship but deciding yourself if you want one.  On top of this, with so few people wanting a long-term, committed monogamous relationship, you will run into more and more people who are already married but want to fool around, people in long-term relationships who want to fool around, people who want to be just friends without sex, people who want to be friends with sex, people who are going between men and women alternately, people who just want sex for money, people who just want sex, people who want you only for three months, people who only want you on Fridays, people who want to date you concurrently with one to four other people to see which one is the better fit, people who want to date you concurrently with one to four other people indefinitely, people who only date for expensive dinners and companionship, or people who think they want a long-term, committed monogamous relationship but aren’t entirely sure either.  Even worse, most people will not come right out and tell you they do not want a long-term, monogamous, committed relationship, because at least these days, it is frowned upon to want something else.

The arrival of contraceptives along with the declining interest in raising a family has also extended the dating lifespan from several years to three decades.  It has changed the individual dating range from several prospective spouses in a town of a thousand to hundreds of prospective hook-ups and casual relationships in cities of millions.  The modern dating world is not just a different neighborhood; it is a different planet with entirely different customs, rules, language, and etiquette.  If you do not learn the new customs, you will flounder and fail miserably.  Never in human history has dating been so complicated.  We are at the doorstep to not only an entirely new way of dating but an entirely new way of social living never before witnessed in human history or for that matter in nature.

This is not one of your stupid, lame boy guides teaching you silly misogynistic tricks and games.  You can certainly go that route, but you always wind up getting what you deserve.  If you behave like a bad boy or asshole, you’ll do nothing but attract women with low self-esteem who will never truly respect you.  This book is about reasonably matching your interests and level of attractiveness and giving you the best shot at what you want or at least, what you think you want at the moment.

There are whole new levels of expertise and players, and if you do not know your way around, you can easily get tricked and exploited.  I am not only talking about guys exploiting young women.  Women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s have just as much experience dating as guys in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.  There is a whole new lexicon including words like cougar, puma, friends with benefits, casual dating, and polyamory. You are not in Kansas anymore.  With so much expertise, experience, exploitation, and failures going on, people are as cutthroat and jaded as ever.  Countless people have been overwhelmed by what is basically culture shock, and instead of adapting, they have opted out, resigning themselves to a solitary life mitigated by food, video games, avatars, and mindless pop culture.

Consider this book both as your language translator as well as travel guide through a whole new universe.  Whenever I travel, there is unavoidable culture shock as you are overwhelmed at how a simple gesture can be interpreted the wrong way or how you realize that the other person is saying one thing but means something completely else.  You can react with anger and frustration, perhaps a little bigotry, or you can try to learn the new sets of rules, language, and customs.  I feel there are too many positives at stake compared to the negatives.  It is frustrating and disappointing, but the answer is getting smarter not madder.  Both men and women are miscommunicating and the cause of the problem.  Hopefully by reading this book and understanding the interests and tactics of each side, we can all start to get along better.

While this book focuses on the male perspective as I am a male and that is my realm of expertise, there is ample advice and wisdom here for women as well.  Besides men’s overwhelming sex drive, the role of and rules for men and women in romantic relationships are becoming increasingly similar.  It is also undoubtedly a subject of interest for women to know what we’re thinking and how we intend to play.  And even if you’re married or in a committed relationship, this book may make you feel better about your decision to settle down.  It may even scare you from ever separating and getting thrown into the purgatory-like feeding frenzy.  The vast majority of men will undoubtedly discover that this book explains many things that appear confounding and confusing with the modern woman and dating.  (Women will also learn why men act odd too.)  Trust me, there’s a reason you’re frustrated and confused.  Some books blame guys for being wusses while other books blame women for being too masculine, but dating is a tango, and both men and women are responsible for creating this new culture.  Today, the oddball is the one attempting to find a spouse, get married, and have children.

Chapter 1 - Forget Everything You Learned Up Until Right Now

Forget everything anyone has ever told you about the dating world, including advice from parents, friends, men, women, especially women, and most importantly dating advice writers and gurus.  They either will lie to you to make you feel better or try to turn you into something you are not.  If you ever hear advice like, Bro, you gotta be the bad guy, tease her, take her down a notch, open that set with a dis, run, run like hell.  Think about this clearly.  Humans reproduced for 200,000 years without books and dating advice.  Even without civilization, they knew how to hook up and reproduce.  If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.  You have all the basic equipment to succeed, but what this book will explain is why you are not succeeding and how the modern dating world is much to blame.  You are your most valuable asset, your skills, experiences, values, interests, goals, feelings, and thoughts.  This book provides you with insights and a few tips to improve certain skills, but this book will never suggest that you change who you are.  There is nothing more damaging to your relationships and personal well-being than being and acting fake.  You certainly can get dates and sex with tricks and manipulation, but not only are you attracting a certain type of woman, you are also transforming yourself into something you may not enjoy living with the rest of your life.

Why are so many modern people overweight and unfit?  Modern food and society.  Why do so many people have cancer?  Modern food, toxins, pollution, and society.  Why are so many people depressed?  Modern toxins, schools, cities, jobs, and society.  Why are we poorer than our parents and have fewer liberties and opportunities?  Modern politics and economics.  There is nothing wrong with us.  Millions of years of evolution, or if you will God, has designed a pretty awesome machine with an amazing brain that can better decipher patterns and create innovation than the most advanced, billion-dollar computer in the world.  We have an amazing immune system that can defeat bacteria and viruses that have been evolving before plants and animals ever existed.  We truly are an incredibly awesome machine, yet we have only had a few thousand years to adapt to modern civilization and even worse, a few decades to adapt to modern dating.  But this is not a cop out.  It doesn’t mean you can throw up your hands, blame modern society and give up.  It means you have to change your thinking, change your expectations, change your tactics, and play a harder, tougher game.  Most importantly, you have to know what this new game is all about.

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Your Parents

First of all, your parents are old.  They don’t even know what an iPhone is or how to text.  They think WTF is the World Tennis Federation.  They have no idea what’s going on.  They may have grown up in the loose and wild 60’s or later, but their minds are still muddled with traditional dating conventions.  Plus, do you really want to listen to your dad tell you how to hit on women or your mother tell you what women want from a man?  Many parents are also only interested in getting grandkids, so they will give you old-fashioned advice that often won’t work today.

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Your Friends

Are your friends getting dates?  If you have a friend who is dating, I’d listen to him.  But even then, he’s probably a tall, handsome dude and women throw themselves at him anyway.  All he has to do is smile and women melt.  Or he’s a bottom-feeder with VD, and he’ll tell you the nasty tricks of the trade like targeting women with low self-esteem and getting them trashed.  Most likely, your friends sit around playing video games or huddle around each other at bars and night clubs guffawing and giggling at women like dorks.  They might give you advice like, Hey man, break open that set by teasing them and acting unavailable.  Go take a grenade for me.  Ask her if she likes baseball.  Yeah, whatever.  You’re better off listening to your grandmother. 

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Men

Most men who get dates are stud alphas or they’re celebrities and very rich.  What kind of advice are they going to give you?  Get tall dude, chicks will dig you more.  Get rich and famous dude.  Or worse, they’ll just say, hey, play it cool, don’t hit on women.  I get that a lot, but for a while I did play it cool and did not hit on women, and predictably I got nothing.  If you’re a stud alpha, you can play it cool and not hit on women, and women will hit on you.  Trust me, I’ve hung out with stud alphas and see it ALL the time.  If you are not, then you will get zilch.  Then you have the dudes who don’t get dates.  Taking advice from them is like taking golf advice from a guy who has never set foot on a golf course.  Sure he knows how to play with his golf club, but he’s never put anything in the hole. 

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Women

I used to ask my female friends and sister for advice.  While they may be helpful as far as grooming and fashion advice, their advice is otherwise worthless for getting dates.  Women aren’t even aware of what they want and like in a guy.  They think they know, and they’ll tell you what they think they know, thinking that’s what they’re supposed to think they know, but they have no idea.  Even Donald