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John Howard is a couples therapist, spiritual teacher and educator who teaches on the new science of relationship. He has a fun and irreverent way of helping people deepen their lives together.Class Overview21st Century dating comes with its own quirks and challenges, there’s also the efficient part and the passive part. In this talk, John breaks down the good and the bad of dating in the 21st Century.Introduction21st Century technology has made dating both more efficient and more passive. The efficient part is good, but the passive part can get in the way of connection. 21st Century dating comes with its own quirks and challenges, from social media, to dating apps, to hook-up culture and navigating how independent we all are. From Tinder to online dating to old-fashioned courtship, John breaks down the good and bad of dating in the 21st Century.The Top 10 Big Ideas    1    Efficiency in Dating is Good    Dating benefits from efficiency. We can survey more choices faster and communicate quickly, all of which serve to speed up the process of locating what we’re looking for. There is a down-side to this speed and efficiency: We may not know the person we’re dating as well because we just met them on Tinder 2 minutes ago and they just moved from Seattle two weeks prior. Or maybe they still live in Seattle. Efficiency is great to pick potentials out of the crowd. But we must remember that making a good choice in a partner requires a certain time spent getting to know them (at least 6 months), including a significant in-person component.    2    Technology Can Really Help / Hurt    Technology in the right hands can positively amplify the process of finding a partner. What are the right hands? A person that has clarified what works for them and can be decisive when communicating through technology. What are the wrong hands? Someone who doesn’t know what they want and uses media to blast out vague, hopeful call signs that many types of people will respond to. The power of technology asks that we be clearer with our intentions, because our digital tools amplify whatever we input into them. Technology can backfire if it’s a hail-mary attempt to just fill the void.    3    Hooking Up is Not Relationship    Our busy 21st Century lives often make it easier to hook up randomly or with ‘friends’ rather than form more demanding committed relationships. But don’t mistake one for the other. The problem with hooking up as a way to meet a potential partner is that our hormones, emotions and chemistry are affected by intimate encounters, throwing off our ability to more accurately determine who is relationship material.    The more old-world concept of relationship formation where partners were vetted by family members and mundane compatibility factors were considered is outdated now, but it had valuable aspects that protected us from our own love-drunk chemical cocktails. Think about what you really want in a long-term partner, and keep hook-ups in separate and distinct bucket of experiences.    4    Tinder & Related Apps May Be More Accurate than You Think    The nice thing about Tinder, Firefly and related apps is that they ask the brain to make a quick visual determination on compatibility. Our brain picks up information from the faces of others very quickly. Although much of that information is unconscious to us, it contains important data about what that person is about and how they have lived. Have they been angry or sad a lot, or laughing and engaging their sense of humor? Is their immune system robust? Quick visual decisions also force us to determine attraction without overthinking things—which counts in favor of our more primal and instinctive wiring. Just balance that channel with real-world, higher-order thinking once you have some matches.    5    Passiveness is Bad in Dating    21st Century technology also allows us to be more passive when it comes to finding mates. We can put up a bio and wait for prospects to respond. We can upload a photo and respond to comments a week later. We can reach a thousand friends of friends with a single status update and see what reaction we get. The problem is, relationships aren’t formed from passivity. They are born out of real need, desire, energy and dedicated attention. They are nurtured by passion, bonding during shared experiences and distinct, intense moments.    We all know folks with a thousand Facebook friends and a few friends-with-benefits who never seem to have a deep relationship. Passiveness is one way to be vague and let life come to you, which is a bad recipe for finding love. Identify what you want and be specific as you go out and get it. Make something happen, something memorable with others, and watch the magic of deeper bonding occur.    6    Digital Communication Misses Key Information    As great as it is to be able to survey large numbers of prospects and send one message to a single group of six-foot-two, 32 year old with blue hair who makes at least 100k, there is something terribly important missing in digital communication.    As animals, we are still wired to pick up a great deal of valuable information in person—through chemical signals, visual pathways that work better in person, body cues, smell, etc. We don’t know how compatible we are with someone until we spend some time together in person.    Anyone who has online dated knows how different the person who shows up can be from how their profile made them seem. And if we’ve developed quite a connection online before the first meeting, we may override our instinctive filters that help us choose mates. In addition to our own thoughts, the filter of vetting prospects through your family and friends is still a very helpful tool.    7    We Still Need In-Person Skills    One problem with interacting so much through technology, being so career focused, and then partying on the weekends is that as a culture we seem to be losing some of our in-person relationship skills. We still need those once online communication, social media connections and hook-ups move into real relationship territory. And if we don’t have in-person and real-world relationship skills because we haven’t practiced much, we could lose a relationship that really means something to us once it gets going. I recommend my online program www.readysetlove.com as a way to learn about and stay sharp with your ability to create and sustain connection, communication and intimacy.    8    Watch for Mutuality or its Absence    In the technological age, rates of avoidance are going up and rates of empathy are going down. These trends result from kids playing alone more, higher engagement in passive activities like watching TV as opposed to playing with kids in the neighborhood, more two-parent working households, and a greater focus on analytical skills and having information over emotional and social bonding. It’s convenient to just text with prospective dates rather than meet in person and use the internet for sexual stimulation rather than negotiate in-person satisfaction for two people.    Sexual norms among teenagers are often void of mutuality, which is keeping track of what’s good for me and you. Greater avoidance and less empathy make us less aware of the importance of mutuality and its role in creating a feeling of real connection. Do the people you tend to date understand the importance of creating win-win situations, keep track of sexual fulfillment for both of you, and know how to attend to your feelings and provide emotional care?    9    Authenticity is Critical in 21st Century Dating    With all this technology and ability to leverage communication to hundreds or thousands of people with a single click, we need to harness the power of reverse filtering. Being your truest self online and writing bios that are unique and specific allows others to better determine their suitability for you. That saves you time and work fending off bad matches. Research shows that being your true, authentic self also makes you better at assessing other’s real selves. In other words, to the extent that you hide behind an image you present to the online world, it compromises your ability to see others clearly. Just imagine an online dating profile so specific that it is written to attract one unique person. Now use technology to get that profile in front of everyone with a computer. That’s a nice combination.    10    Relationships are Changing    And so are we. What is new about 21st century dating? Well, for one, as individuals we are more independent in the way we define our identity than previous generations. The old standard of your family/tribe/town/community defining your identity is gone. Second, more equality between the genders means that more of us are career focused, causing the average age of marriage to go up. Third, divorce when a marriage no longer feels good or is no longer convenient is much more accepted than it was in the 1950’s and even the 1980’s. Finally, the greater cultural acceptance of same-sex relationship helps us better learn how to negotiate sexual norms and communicate more honestly, two traits of same sex couples that all couples can benefit from. The bottom line is we need more support for connecting our greatly independent selves and we need better communication skills to negotiate new sexual boundaries.    Dating in the 21st century can be great or horrible. Some of the clients I work with are having an awesome time, and others are experiencing dating as a painful process. Having helped many singles over the years with my 3-month process for finding a partner, I have come to notice patterns that make it fun vs. awful and successful vs. a waste of time. What is difficult about dating today is the extra need for clarity and authenticity, because we have access to so many people through technology and we begin many dates online rather than in person. But if you know yourself and what you’re looking for, the ease and convenience of today’s dating technology can make the process more fun and efficient than ever before.