Hitch 365 - hitching through the ages
The [v.short] History of Matchmaking and Romance
We owe our prehistoric ancestors a considerable amount, but matchmaking and romance can’t be high up on this list. The traditional image of matchmaking BC is of the male of the species clubbing his female object of desire (i.e victim) round the head and dragging her to a cave as fast as his low-hanging knuckles will allow. Whilst the reality may not quite have been as harsh, we can surmise that our ancestor’s brains were too busy inventing fire and the wheel, rather than philosophising on what to wear on a first date.
The romance meter went up a notch slightly, with those pioneering Egyptians. Just over 5,000 years ago were our first records both of marriage and people (both men and women) wearing makeup to appear attractive to the opposite sex. However, there was still no hieroglyph for ‘love’ out there and marriages were universally of the arranged variety.
And so to the Greeks who, whilst seen by many as the founders of modern civilization, were about as useful in the advancement of romance as halitosis. Their relationships were almost solely based on dropping sprogs, and a woman’s place was firmly at home, preferably locked up.
For centuries, the heart was a much neglected organ. The Roman’s love was for conquest and building very straight roads. The Dark Ages saw little improvement; matchmaking took a backseat to raids and pillaging nubile females from rival territories when supplies were low at home.
The Mediaeval period was the development of courtship beyond a grunt and a swing of an axe. In fact, the origins of the word ‘courting’ stem from behaviour expected when in the court of your king or queen. Courting rituals such as offering to buy dinner or opening a door for a woman stem from this time. Parents remained key to the arrangement of marriages and setting dowries. However, romance fought back with a bang as a reaction to this. In many ways it was the first sexual revolution but men and women fought for the right to love with their hearts, not the size of the potential inheritance. The story of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ however, shows this was not an easy fight but at least women were being grudgingly acknowledged as [shock, horror!] more than baby-farms.
In the 1600s, as the first form of dating service, professional matchmakers sprang up across Europe to arrange suitable partners with each other and it became a well-respected profession although its focus was always for the well-to-do.
Gradually, over the next couple of centuries, parents relaxed their vice-like grip on ‘solving’ their children’s lonely hearts. Much of this came about in the new world, with Victorian values turning dating into a rigidly formal game. The colonies and conditions there saw many freedoms arise, championed by verbal intercourse (or ‘bundling’) where potentials couple spent the night in bed fully clothed to find out if they could get on. Parents verging on the suspicious would put a bundling board of solid oak between them to make sure ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ weren’t an issue.
Fast forward to the Twentieth century. Not perceived as the most romantic of souls, but Henry T Ford and the invention of the car meant dating could now become almost fun, not just to see if prospective partners could put up with each other. The freedom of the automobile meant dates did not mean full-blown commitment as soon as those first steps in courtship were taken.
This, and the popularity of modern[-ish] dancing allowed people to take a bit more time in finding a suitable partner. Matchmaking moved to individual choice. The swinging sixties and the ‘sexual revolution’ cranked this up to the extreme. The Pill and wider birth control empowered women and meant their lives were much more varied than the search for Mr.Right.
A result of this has been an explosion of singles compared to the traditional ‘nuclear family’ from an early age. Whilst the stigma of being single has been completely removed, most people still seek a cure to their lonely heart. The rub being that, with ever busier lives, many have little time to seek out Mr or Mrs ‘Right’ (or ‘Right Now’). As a consequence, we saw an implosion of dating and introduction agencies.
This has now been removed as an avenue by and large for the much more efficient functions of online dating. Matchmaking over the internet is now at record levels of popularity for people free to make their own decisions on whom, how and where to date. In fact, one in eight marriages in the US are now from couples that first met online- a figure set to grow. Lonely hearts- you’ve never had it so good.
