Shifty First Dates – The Her.ie Guide To Dating In Ireland: The Dating Spectrum

In this weekly feature, Her.ie goes behind enemy lines to see what it’s really like to be single in Ireland. From speed dating to making speedy escapes, our no-holds-barred blog will follow our attempts to venture into the dating jungle, play the field and share any wisdom that we finds along the way.

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The Dating Spectrum One of the most confusing things about dating is all the little milestones you hit before becoming an official 'couple'. You've been on a bunch of dates but does that mean you're exclusive? At what point does it become bad form to break up with someone by text? Does a fancy dinner mean things are getting serious? ALL the questions. Luckily, two very wise ladies have put pen to paper and came up with 'The Dating Spectrum', a handy guide to all those tricky parts of a relationship. Helena and Aisling are both in their mid-twenties and came up with the idea while discussing "the intricacies of modern dating in Ireland". As both are scientists with highly logical minds, they decided to create a graph to establish guidelines for relationship expectations. "Based on a scale of Casual vs Intense date activities, the spectrum incorporates exit clauses determined by the progression of the dates and the coinciding relationship. Each date activity is time/cost and effort dependent, with a linear relationship where an increase in time, cost and/or effort correlates to an increased date intensity score," they explained. "For clarity, ghosting is the term used to describe the act of disappearing off the face of the earth, without any explanation or acknowledgement.  It is permitted (but not encouraged!) in modern dating. Hopefully on a population based scale, it will prove to be a map to those lost in the maze of the Irish dating scene." We think this is absolute genius. No more 'what does he mean?' freak outs every time he texts, no unrealistic expectations from either party - we think everyone in Ireland needs to start following these rules pronto. And, woe betide the man who breaks up with us by text after a romantic picnic!