The fine art of dating

Thanks to a particularly geeky teenage existence, I didn't get round to much dating when I was not-quite-twenty. And anyway, whatever dating meant as a nervous teenager, I'm pretty sure it isn't the same as dating at not-quite-thirty. How important is it to go through that agony of whether to put a kiss at the end of your text message? There's something quite delicious about waiting in hope for an email, something quite fun about debating how soon is too soon to reply, and that gutwrenching moment of saying goodbye and wondering whether he'll give you a kiss is pretty hard to replicate once you've found yourself in a relationship. Should we be seeing dating as a kind of 'vetting' process, a chance to find out about someone and decide whether you *really* like them. Maybe this dating period is even more important at our age, because most of us have been with people before and have (usually) enjoyed the easy intimacy of sharing a life with someone. It's maybe too tempting to slip back into old habits without thinking hard about whether its those habits or the new relationship that you really like. That plus the fact that more and more people seem to be coupled-up these days puts any new potential under lots of pressure.

But ok, if we accept that there might be some merits in dating, can someone please tell me what on earth it looks like in practice? Does it entail exclusivity? Does it include phone conversations? How often do dates happen? Should you meet each others friends? Platonic or not? Real me or CV-me? one guy I know said he thought you shouldn't be overly honest at the dating stage 'as no one else is, so if you are, you'll seem more crazy than everyone else out there'.

My girlfriends seem divided on this issue about the merits of dating. Some of them say that we're old enough to know what we want, and that this is nothing more than time-wasting game-playing to meet the needs of commitment-phobic gutless men. But then others are very positive about it and think that dating is a means of working out what you want. One thing they all believe: if someone just wants to date you, then you are still a free agent. Now where was the phone no for that cute guy?...