Is it a date? Or are you just hanging out?
Sara Svendsen, 25, has asked herself that question when she’s been out with guys – and says she’s been wrong “on both sides of that.” So have her friends.
“A date is someone personally asking you out – that sometimes can get confused with a one-on-one hangout, depending on the way they mention it or which medium they use to ask you or if it happens to be a group hangout,” she says.
Svendsen, a marketing manager who lives in New Lenox, Ill., is among today’s singles trying to navigate dating with fewer rules. Courtship has become casual, with texts, hookups and hangouts. For Millennials in particular, who view a “date” as too much of a commitment – both in time and emotional connection – the vagaries of dating can be especially confounding.
New data, provided exclusively to USA TODAY, bear out just how muddy the landscape can be. An online survey of 2,647 singles, ages 18 to 59, illustrates that level of ambiguity: 69 percent are at least somewhat confused about whether an outing with someone they’re interested in is a date or not. Although 80 percent agree that a date is “a planned one-on-one hangout,” almost one-quarter (24 percent) also think it is “a planned evening with a group of friends,” and 22 percent agree that “if they ask me out, it’s a date.” The survey, conducted in September, was commissioned by dating websites ChristianMingle.com and JDate.com.
“It comes up often. ‘I hope she doesn’t think this is a date. I just want to have fun,’” says Tayo Rockson, 24, a first-year MBA student at Fordham University in New York. “If it’s someone that you just met recently and consistently have one-on-one hangout sessions, that’s sort of a date.”
New York City psychotherapist Rachel Sussman says getting past the notion that a date is a planned event between two people still leaves mixed signals.
“A planned evening with a group of friends or a 9 o’clock text – ‘I’m at this bar. Want to come?’ – that is now more considered a date or something romantic,” she says.
Clinical psychologist Sonya Rhodes, also of New York, says a date today “transcends this sort of ‘hanging out culture.’”
“A date shows some special interest in a special person. A date takes it to a new level,” says Rhodes, author of The Alpha Woman Meets Her Match, to be published in April.
Being asked out means it’s a date, but there is still uncertainty, says Emily Zurrow, 25, of Los Angeles, who works in retail.
“A lot of us date our friends, and that can be somewhat confusing. Anytime a friendship grows into something more, it’s not an on-and-off switch. It’s not so black and white. It’s a friend with potential,” she says.
For that first date, the survey found 69 percent of men believe the man should pay, while 55 percent of women agree.
Among the survey participants, 23 percent said who pays for a date “depends on who initiates” and another 18 percent said costs should be equally split.
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