14 votes

Do you know any books, articles, videos, etc. about how relationships (friendships, dating, etc) worked in the past? If so, then why do they rarely appear when people talk about them?

Occasionally people here get into discussions about social relationships, namely dating, and what quickly comes up is how both of those seem to be less common and harder to 'get'. This more frequently happens in overtly dating and relationship subreddits and similar dedicated spaces, albeit, of course, this also pops up in more general communities, alongside any community where social relationships are an important topic, like communities about social ideologies like feminism or the manosphere or about genders because heterosexuality.

One thing I often find is missing is some historical context. A lot of talk about loneliness and lack of platonic or romantic relationships is basically limited to the recent past, if it even talks about the past at all. It seems like it would be helpful to look at what relationships and dating were like 10, 20, 30 years ago when it comes to talking about the problems or just general state of both today. So do you know of good sources of information concerning relationships in the past? If so, then why do you think they don't pop up in discussions about dating?

8 comments

  1. [4]
    joplin
    Link
    I don’t know of any such articles per se, though I’m sure someone is writing them. That said, I can remember things from the past that sound similar to what you’re asking about. For example, in...

    I don’t know of any such articles per se, though I’m sure someone is writing them. That said, I can remember things from the past that sound similar to what you’re asking about. For example, in the 1990s a couple of (women) authors released a book called The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. From the article:

    The book suggests rules that a woman should follow in order to attract and marry the man of her dreams; these rules include that a woman should be "easy to be with but hard to get".

    I think the mixed reactions at the time shows how little agreement there is on such things:

    Some audiences considered it useful and motivational, while others felt that it was outdated,[3] anti-men and antifeminist,[4] or a how-to guide that teaches women to play games that toy with men.[5] Psychology lecturer and therapist Meg-John Barker claims that the emergence of seduction communities happened "almost as a direct response to this hard-to-get femininity".[6]

    I was dating at the time and can tell you that most people I knew thought the concept was ridiculous and offensive. But it sold a lot of copies, so perhaps it was useful to other people at the time? This is an area that has very broad ranges of beliefs and actions that depend greatly on how the people involved were raised. For example, in my group of friends sex before marriage was considered a good idea as it helped you learn about your own desires and to learn whether a partner was a potential long term fit. But I had a few fairly religious friends for whom it was considered a sin and something sacred you saved for marriage. It literally ran the full gamut of possibilities.

    My point being that it’s a very broad topic with a wide range of observed actions. I’m not sure how useful any articles about the topic would be. If you’ve ever watched a TV show or read an article about a given era then talked to someone who lived it, you’ll probably find them saying something like, “All the things they said happened did happen, but it doesn’t really reflect what I experienced at the time.”

    8 votes
    1. [3]
      mrbig
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Books and articles can be useful as long as you understand this is not an exact science (or not science at all...), and you must put everything in the context of your own circumstances. Take...

      I’m not sure how useful any articles about the topic would be

      Books and articles can be useful as long as you understand this is not an exact science (or not science at all...), and you must put everything in the context of your own circumstances. Take everything with a grain of salt and don't make a gospel of it. With that in mind, those are often very helpful.

      That said, the dating manual genre is filled with ludicrous and abhorrent advice and it is not easy to find worthy titles.

      4 votes
      1. [2]
        joplin
        Link Parent
        Yeah, that's more what I was trying to say. The advice given in such articles is normally so bad, and the actual lived experiences so much more varied than other topics and data much harder to...

        That said, the dating manual genre is filled with ludicrous and abhorrent advice and it is not easy to find worthy titles.

        Yeah, that's more what I was trying to say. The advice given in such articles is normally so bad, and the actual lived experiences so much more varied than other topics and data much harder to collect since people are often very private about their relationships and often lie on surveys, that it's almost impossible to know whether any given source is reliable.

        4 votes
        1. mrbig
          (edited )
          Link Parent
          I vouch for Attract Women Through Honesty. It is also not science. Things that are not science can be useful nevertheless.

          I vouch for Attract Women Through Honesty. It is also not science. Things that are not science can be useful nevertheless.

          3 votes
  2. [2]
    TemulentTeatotaler
    Link
    Good intro anthropology/sociology books would probably be the places to start? You can get a broad overview on the sort of relations that have existed. There are cultures where if a brother dies...

    So do you know of good sources of information concerning relationships in the past?

    Good intro anthropology/sociology books would probably be the places to start? You can get a broad overview on the sort of relations that have existed.

    There are cultures where if a brother dies his next-eldest brother would inherit his wife, Greek pederasty, the polyamorous Trobriand Island people, and all variety of cultures with arranged marriages where a "love marriage" is a bad thing.

    It can be really tricky to capture all of society. Often--especially with early ethnographies-- you have someone external to a culture incentivized to hunt out the novel. Nacirema tries to highlight that difficulty/tendency to be ethnocentric.

    Works of fiction from the time (e.g., books by Jane Austen) or set in that period (e.g., Fingersmith) might be good time capsules, but it's probably even harder to know if it's representative of what was really going on.

    If Americans were asked about the late 60's-70's they might talk about hippies and free love and ignore just what a small percent (~0.2%) of the population that was. If people were asked about the 50s they might overstate how sexually conservative it was, but that (iirc) isn't really supported by evidence.

    Tribe is what comes to mind as a bit of a middle ground between academic and accessible. It looks at PTSD in veterans and links that to the tribal society of Native Americans:

    ...English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians -- but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may help explain the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today. Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, TRIBE explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning.


    If so, then why do you think they don't pop up in discussions about dating?

    A simple answer would be that people don't know history and have short memories.

    A different answer is that society as it exists today really doesn't have any good reference point. Giving advice on relationships from the perspective of the 70s may be as out-of-touch as telling someone to get a job by calling the CEO to show gumption.

    The ability to easily travel around the globe, video chat, use algorithms to try to match you against a large population, and many other rapidly shifting factors have forced us to rethink things that previous generations could take for granted. In many ways that is necessary and valuable, but it is going to be disorienting and include a lot of bad takes before something better congeals.

    7 votes
    1. Kuromantis
      Link Parent
      I agree, but going to the past for advice isn't really what I think this would be useful for, albeit it might help if we could cut out the stuff dependent on social conservatism, homphobia, etc....

      Giving advice on relationships from the perspective of the 70s may be as out-of-touch as telling someone to get a job by calling the CEO to show gumption.

      I agree, but going to the past for advice isn't really what I think this would be useful for, albeit it might help if we could cut out the stuff dependent on social conservatism, homphobia, etc. from the advice if the assumption that dating was easier in the past for more individual reasons like people having better socialization skills is true. My use for this would be mainly to get some idea of what's changed about dating to see what assumptions and narratives about dating are correct or not.

      There are competing narratives ranging from "women have higher standards than they had because of sex positivity, feminism, consent, etc. and men aren't used to that" to "women only date the top men of society because they can" to "our ever worsening material conditions have made all of us less attractive, but has harmed men more because we are expected to be successful and to initiate" to "maybe we just expect more from our partners than we did 30 years ago because of social media and less puritanical cultural influence" to "tinder and other dating apps are deliberately making it hard to get matches so you stay in their platforms for longer because it's profitable". (OK, I admit I've only heard that one a few times.) It won't be just one of them of course, but I feel looking at what has changed might be helpful to sort out how valid any one of these narratives are.

      2 votes
  3. mrbig
    (edited )
    Link
    Try Modern Love: An Investigation, by Azis Ansari. For a worthy dating manual (maybe the only one), I recommend Attract Women Through Honesty.

    Try Modern Love: An Investigation, by Azis Ansari.

    For a worthy dating manual (maybe the only one), I recommend Attract Women Through Honesty.

    1 vote