David Brooks, writing in today’s Times, is right: the game has changed.

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.

But then he goes on, as he is wont to do:

But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today’s world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act that the choice of an erotic partner.

This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other’s commitment.

Today there are fewer norms that guide in that way. Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.

Yoiks! The dudgeon’s as high as an elephant’s eye. Who says everyone really followed those “scripts,” or that they were the best or most effective ones in the first place? Aren’t new scripts, if imperfect ones, evolving right now? And who says we — even typing with our thumbs — aren’t creating different kinds of poetry? Speaking of poetry, where’s the copy editor on that weird sentence about a “pattern of being?” Also, what about a Prius what?

This is very interesting territory. Territory already covered — very interestingly — in the New York magazine cover story that Brooks, in this column, puts through the Brooksinator, with predictably tut-tut results that add little to the conversation. Territory that might be better re-explored by someone, dare I say, less corrosive toward poetry and imagination.

MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you’ll find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn comes to the rescue of Waiting Gamer, who feels a strong connection with a gal that already has a man — yet still encourages him. Should he stay on the sidelines patiently or quit the game? Check out the letter, then tell us your thoughts.

Ask Lynn is the advice column at MSN.com (powered by Match.com), that Breakup Girl does in her mild-mannered secret identity. Same advice, less cape.

In this month’s letter All Confidence is Gone has been shaken by the discovery that her boyfriend has a profile up on an online dating site. Things were going really well, so what gives? But wait, what was she doing on an online dating site? Read the letter at MSN then comment below!

Repeating history on March 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been played in each and every one of my past five relationships. Now I have hooked up with this girl who seems nice, but I think that it is too good to be true. I want everything to go well but with my luck with relationships it will bomb. How can I be sure that she won’t play me like all the rest? Please get back to me.

— Been Played

Dear Played,

You can’t be sure she won’t play you “like all the rest.” In fact, she definitely will. Because that’s the way you look at relationships.

Listen up. In a strictly statistical sense (and in a world where people get married only once), all relationships but one come to an end. So what you are experiencing, Played, is life. What you are doing to make sense of it all — which is what humans do — is calling it “my luck with relationships.”

Look, people want more than anything in the whole world to be right, right? (Why do you think I write an advice column?) Anyway, you’ve issued the statement “I Am A Person Who Gets Played In Relationships.” And so, in each relationship you get into — whatever its demise — you say to yourself, “There you go. I got played.” Why? Because you (like any normal human) have to be right about the fact that you get played in relationships. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know what to do or , frankly, who you are. And otherwise, you’d have to take a little responsibility instead of blaming “all the rest.” See what I mean ?

So how about issuing this statement: “I Am A Person Who Does His Best to Make Relationships Work.” Now get in there and have a girlfriend instead of sitting around being a bullseye for the bomb.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Well, boil me in beer and ship me to Sheboygan — it’s an update from Chris the Lonely Bratwurst! When we first met Chris, he wondered how he could translate his confidence as an improv performer into smoothness with the laydees off stage, one on one. Later, he wrote back wondering how he could get his all-partnered-up friends to for God’s sake stop calling him The Single One or, at one fateful barbecue, “Chris the Lonely” … yeah.

Here’s what he has to say!

This is Chris, aka Chris The Lonely Bratwurst, aka Chris the Improvising Bratwurst… aka now Chris the Married Bratwurst.

After writing a few times in 2000, getting published in your column, and taking your advice to heart, I figured out a lot of things and actually started dating. In 2003, I met the girl I would eventually marry in 2006. We now live in the midwest and are absolutely loving life.

I can honestly tell you that in the long process I went through to overcome my shyness, you were a difference maker. And I wanted to make sure you know that you can add that tally to the board.

Thank you a million times over, and continue to pass on the good word!

Peace, Love, and Sausages,
Chris

Thank YOU, Chris!

Love,

BG

Again with the dating advice that just won’t die.

MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you’ll find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week’s letter is from a Weekday Dater that can’t wrangle her boy for some weekend lovin’. Is he truly “too busy” for this relationship? Lynn helps her sift through the clues. Read the letter at Happen, then come back here to comment!

Two ships passing on March 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am living overseas and I met a guy over the holidays who was just in town for two weeks. I met him one night and we just clicked. I didn’t want it to happen since I knew he would be leaving, but it did. I always believed that when you find that right guy you will know from the moment you meet him, and with him I got that feeling. It was amazing. Now he is gone but we do keep in touch with e-mail and when he can call he does. The problem is that I know there’s a 95% chance that I’ll never see him again. Now whenever I meet guys I just can’t get interested in them no matter how great they might be. Should I just forget my first love and move on, or should I let time take its toll. I feel so empty without him, though.

— Lonely Without Him

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