Magee 1

Kaelin Magee

Tim Greenup

English 102

2 February 2023

Loving, Then and Now

First heartbreaks can be absolutely devastating,

and mine was exactly that.

I can remember the exact day, May second, my sophomore year. Unfortunately that

particular day, I had ended up deciding to ignore the alarm clock chirping in my ear, which in

turn left me with approximately 10 minutes to get ready. I had frantically jumped out of bed, and

determined by looking out my window, it was going to be a gray rainy day. So I picked out a pair

of gray sweatpants and a lavender shaded hoodie, brushed my teeth, slapped on a little mascara,

and called yesterday's curls good enough. I had always loved the rain, found it to calm me. I

managed to scurry into my seat with less than 2 minutes to spare, and knew from the second I

landed in the faded blue seat in my first period Spanish class, I could tell it was going to be a

rather dreary day.

My first and second periods that day I found to be rather unremarkable. I ended up

staring off at the windows, seeing the hundreds of little droplets run down the window, slowly

joining together as they raced to make it to the bottom. For some odd reason, I felt as though I

was too tired to focus on anything other than the little droplets, though I had gotten a healthy

amount of sleep the night before. Those two periods were seeming to drag on and on, and my

anxiousness was at an all time high, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. I could only hear the thuds
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as the rain hit the roof, the comfortable sound of the water making its mark, there was nothing to

worry about.

Still puzzled why I felt anxious, I kept trudging through my classes. The rain was

managing to give me something to hyperfixate on. The second the bell filled my ears marking

the end of the science class I had paid no attention at all to, I perked up. I entered the halls

hopeful that this class was going to cheer up the dreary mood. All of my closest friends had been

placed into the very same third period english class. I had always loved english, so this was the

highlight of most of my days.

At the beginning of the year, I had met a boy in this english class. Quickly we had

become close and developed strong feelings. It was exciting for me to have a strong connection

with anyone, as I had never felt anything similar before. After a short period of keeping my

feelings to myself and my friends, I had decided to confess. Luckily for me, this teenage boy had

similar feelings, and we quickly started dating. We had been dating for 6 whole months, which

may not seem like an extensive amount of time, but for a 15 year old girl with her very first

boyfriend, it felt like years. It made my day a little better knowing that I got to talk to him, the

love of my life…

Though the second I entered the doors and looked into his eyes, all hopefulness drained out of

me. I could tell something was dreadfully wrong.

I took the seat next to his, and smiled at him, trying to get him to look me in the eyes, he was

absolutely refusing to make eye contact. I nudged him, and whispered

“Hey, is everything okay?”

He slowly made eye contact, and did the smallest, most unconvincing head nod I have ever seen

in my life. My anxiety was skyrocketing, and my heart sped up a few beats. I then proceeded to
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attempt to convince myself everything was fine. Maybe he was just having an off day, I’m sure

nothings wrong. If there was something wrong, I would’ve been able to tell by now. Plus, we had

talked about communication, and he had assured me he would tell me if anything was bothering

him. We could always talk it out.

Throughout the entire first 35 minutes of class that day, he had managed to say

approximately 3 words to be that entire time, which was quite the feat, and very awkward. Even

ella, sitting across from me, had managed to notice something was terribly wrong. I decided

against my better judgment to send a harmless playful text to him to make sure it wasn’t just my

severe anxiety blowing this out of proportion.

“Are you breaking up with me? Hahaha”

I then watched him slowly take out his phone, and look at it. He glanced at me, with hurt in his

eyes, and I saw him hesitate to put his phone away. He mouthed,

“We’ll talk about it later.”

I felt numb. It didn’t make any sense. Why all of the sudden? I thought he was happy. I thought

we were happy. I felt my throat start to close, my hands start shaking, and my brain was going

haywire. Why, why, why, why? I sat there, in another faded blue chair, waiting for the hour to be

over so he could just get it over with. Ella was attempting to cheer me up, texting me things like,

“I’m sure it’s nothing” and “He probably just wants to talk about something.” But I knew him. I

knew everything wasn’t okay.

So after that class, I went to him. We walked. Not saying a word. In complete silence. We

walked and walked and walked. We ended up to the entire opposite end of the school before a

word was uttered out of either of our mouths. When we finally walked past all of the people
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sitting there enjoying their lunch, and all of the teachers talking with smiles on their faces, he

said it.

“I don’t think this is gonna work… I’m sorry Kaelin.”

Immediately I started sobbing. I was shaking, and he just stood there and hugged me.

“I’m so sorry Kaelin,” and “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” kept coming out of his mouth over

and over again. He was breaking parts of my heart off with every assurance that this wasn’t the

plan, this wasn’t what he wanted. But I knew, I had never really known the full story, never

would. He kept feeding me lies out of his mouth, about how he cared, how he was still there..

Eventually I just looked up at him, and choked out the words, “I’ll be okay.” I convinced

him that I was fine, even though evidently with the amount of tears coming out of my eyes, I was

very much not okay. I proceeded to walk into the hallway of the band room, and meet face to

face with my best friend. I started sobbing again. I sobbed all the way through my band class,

blubbering as I attempted to play music on the french horn, which isn’t very easy when you’re

struggling to breathe. I tried making notes come out, but playing music is fairly difficult when

your heart is breaking. It sounds funny now, but in the moment, and with the pitiful looks I was

getting, it was in fact not very funny. I cried in my fifth period math class, as I attempted to find

out if 4x-7=y-4x, and I walked into my history class with my tears finally dried for a few

minutes.However one, “What’s the matter?” from my history teacher, my favorite teacher, and I

was a mess again. He assured me that I would be okay, but I still felt like I was falling apart.

I sobbed all throughout that night. I sat on the couch in the basement, eating my giant

chocolate breakup cake that I was gifted by my best friend, wiping my tears away with the

almost empty box of tissues, crying as Maria found her true love in the sound of music. I kept

thinking back to my lost relationship, wondering, what went wrong?

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Eventually I ended up finding out that he had a girl best friend he was madly in love with

throughout our entire relationship, which made a lot more sense than “You’re too mature, I want

someone I can do stupid things with.” Though not important to this story, I came to the

conclusion that he wanted to date another teenage boy.

But looking back, the differences between my dating, and Maria's dating were quite

different. I wished with all my heart that I could have an old love. One where we went on dinner

dates, instead of being told to hang out at home. One where we had long phone calls, instead of

sending little words on a screen. One where I wasn’t wanted for just nudes, or sex, but for

holding my hand downtown chatting as we went. One where I could’ve been his love, instead of

me thinking it was normal how often he hung out with her, alone. What if I could’ve had a love

back in the 1950s?

Thinking I was in love and then quickly being snapped out of it was startling for me.

Those next few weeks I coped by watching dozens of old romance and love stories, and it really

got me thinking, what is so different about dating now and dating all the way back in, let’s say

the 1960s? Obviously the stereotypes on tv aren’t completely accurate, and are a bit

overdramatized, but I still felt there was some truth to the trend of things I was seeing in those

movies. Oftentimes, we can look at the media and entertainment that came out during those

times to get a close look at what was going on during that time period, so I thought it would be

easy to compare something that we hear in almost everyday of our lives-Music.

I was looking and happened to stumble upon a peer-reviewed article about music

progression in popular music titles from the 1960s-2008. While it may be a bit dated, music has

continued to progress in the way the article and data was suggesting. The article was looking at

things such as the presence of dating, the use of the word “love”, the amount of mentions of
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sexual innuendos, and objectification. The article goes on to confirm that over time the

“References to romantic relationships became less common over time, while references to sexual

behavior and objectified bodies became more common,” (Smiler 1). The authors found that there

is little or very camouflaged mention of sex in pre 1990’s songs, and the mention of sex in songs

in 2008, it was up almost 90%! They recognized that it’s far more common for male singers to

mention sex, however it does happen on both sides.

Not only in music, but in things we all use in our everyday lives, the same article sattes

that, “Content analyses have revealed a substantial amount of sexual content in television

programs, magazines, romance novels, music videos, and video games (Downs and Smith 2010;

Hust et al. 2008; Kunkel et al. 2005; Romance Writers of America 2011; Taylor 2005; Turner

2011), including those products marketed towards and preferred by adolescents (Carpenter 1998;

Jhally 1994, 2007; Joshi et al. 2011; Wallis 2011; Ward 1995),” (Smith 2). Even our children are

having sex show up more, and that would explain the quickly growing amount of people having

sex before marriage.

While looking for statistics on the numbers of sex before marriage, I stumbled on “The

science of sex”, which is an article written by Dr. Andrew Magers in 2020. He is a Licensed

Clinical Psychologist, and in this article goes through what happens to the brain, and how having

sex can actually make seeing a future with that person so much harder. The chemicals in your

brain can make you think you know a person much better than you actually do which could have

a connection to why dating and breaking up is so much more common now. In his article he

states that “Researchers found that those who wait to have sex until marriage, compared to those

who don’t, report significantly higher relationship satisfaction (20%), better communication

patterns (12%), less consideration of divorce (22%), and BETTER sexual quality (15%),”
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(Magers). As I was trying to find more evidence on what Dr. Magers was saying, I found IFS, or

the institute for family studies. They say on their page that they are “dedicated to strengthening

marriage and family life.” As I scoured their resources, I found their article on sex before

marriage. They stated that, “Early sex creates a sort of counterfeit intimacy that makes two

people think they are closer to each other than they really are,” which happens to align exactly

with that Dr. Magers said (Caroll).

It is interesting how as a society today, we tend to put more pressure on the sexual sides

of a relationship rather than the romantic, or “love” side of our relationships. Culture norms have

a lot to do with it, a set of expectations that everyone agrees on. Now, it’s acceptable to have

premarital sex, however in the 1960s this is often unheard of. Back then, it would be a scandal to

do so, and often you would be disowned or shamed. It’s like if you walk into a black and white

party in all red, it would be out of the ordinary and most people would probably give you a funny

look. Now, if you don’t want to have sex before marriage, you’re often seen as out of the

ordinary. The perspectives have switched.

I wanted to find an exact statistic of the number of people having sex before marriage, so

I turned to the National Library of Medicine. They took results from the National Survey of

Family growth, and found that “Data from the 2002 survey indicat(ed) that by age 20, 77% of

respondents had had sex,” (Finer). 77 percent is quite a bit considering that that would mean over

¾ of the population has had sex, which is quite an increase. Compared to the 1960s, when “The

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (i.e., welfare reform) enacted

in 1996 contained a provision authorizing $50 million annually in federal funding for abstinence-

until-marriage education,” (Finer) Obviously, with funding to discourage premarital sex, the

trends in it weren’t as common.

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My next step to researching was interviewing my grandma, Donna Shaw. I Immediately

knew when I started this research, my grandmother was the perfect person to interview. She’s a

rather tall old lady, with dark gray hair that she gets colored every so often. She works hard to

always be cheery, but due to her arthritis can be a bit temperamental at times. Since she mostly

stays at home during the day since she can’t drive due to medication, and begs me to FaceTime

her constantly, the only solution was to FaceTime her and get her insight on dating now and

then.

She dated in the late 1960s, which is the start of my area of research. Many people I

know have dated in the 1960s, so you might ask why not choose anyone else?

Well, what makes this more perfect is that her situation is unique. She got married in

1979 to her first husband. She then realized she made quite the mistake after money was

gambled away and spent on alcohol. So she started dating again around 1985, which I feel makes

this more perfect since she can attest to the differentiation in those few years.

To start off our interview, I plainly asked what she felt was different about dating now

versus when she started to date. She replied that she felt that when she “was dating there was

way more freedom, because there weren’t as many dangers and repercussions as compared to all

the things that are going on now. Plus, not everything you did was put on the World Wide Web

for everyone and their friend to see.” She also replied that all the gender norms now tended to

make things more complicated as well, since she had seen several straight friends of hers fancy

gay men. Which wasn’t necessarily bad, just made the whole prospect of dating a tad bit more

confusing.

I then asked her what her least favorite part and favorite part were about how dating has

changed. After a moment of thought, she replied that she did love all the social media from a
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creative aspect, she thought that with dating it was “a huge con, Instagram Twitter and

everything going on, Facebook where you gauge chances to explore the dating field, but things

you post could be thrown at your face later.” She did admit texting was a pro, but social media

made technology ultimately a huge disadvantage, since she’s seen it cause so many issues in

relationships.

She then said another huge change she’s noticed is that the number of religious people

dating has caused a change in the dating scene now. Likewise, she said that she’s seen “many

more of the teenagers fondoodling around,” which I take to mean she’s noticed the levels of

intimacy go higher and wonders if the decrease in religious people might have something to do

with it, which I thought was a fairly interesting viewpoint, and would definitely have to look

into.

I then asked her to share a little bit more about her experience with dating. She explained

to me that she felt that she had too much freedom. Back in her day, she said “more people would

go out on dates”, instead of just seeing each other in school, and she said that even though they

had more freedom, the things they did in their dating relationships weren’t monitored at all. You

didn’t post it on social media, chances are you could go out on 20 dates and your friends would

only know about 1 or 2. She felt that “Kids nowadays just date, and don’t actually go out on

dates until they decide they like each other, which doesn’t make sense.” She expressed that she

wished her parents would have been more involved in her dating life then, and she almost wished

she would have had TikTok to tell her all the “red flags” in her first husband.

I continued to ask for her thoughts on how things had changed, and asked what she

wished would change now back to how it was. It seemed like she had thought about this before,

and she immediately launched into a list of things she would change if she could. Staring with if
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she could, “make the rules for dating now you would never meet on the Internet. You wouldn’t

get to know each other on the Internet, and there would be no photographs taken during the day.

You would have to meet the person in real life, face-to-face and that’s how you’d have to get to

know them. That's how it was when we were dating… oh, and everyone should have to take their

grandmother along as a chaperone for the first six months.” I assumed that the last part was a

joke, and after a laugh, concluded that she stressed heavily on the lack of technology and

appearance of chaperoning. Which is pretty much the opposite of what happens in dating now,

from my own experience.

I asked her to elaborate on specific things that should stay the same as it was, and things

that are better off now, and have been updated, in her opinion. “In my opinion things that should

stay the same are that the young man should pick you up at your house, with your grandmother

of course, and he should open all doors. He should open all building doors. He should pay for

dinner, and he should bring you home safely and walk you and your grandmother up to the front

door.” I found it humorous that she was heavily stressing about being a grandmother chaperone,

but wondered if there was a sort of truth to her idea that men aren’t really as much of gentlemen

as they used to be. She thought for a minute and continued to share her thoughts, “the only thing

I can think of that’s better off now is if you do use the Internet use it to research them through

and through find out what they like their likes are and their dislikes if they’re involved in church

or not, and you can take your phone, like I said, and get out of there if you want to.” She

explained that she had had numerous occasions of failed dates with non escape. That benefit of

technology is something that I hadn’t thought about before,

I went back to the thought she had earlier about gentlemen not being as much of

gentlemen as they were before. I asked her whether she had her meals paid for often when she
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was dating, and what similar practices had fallen out of favor that shouldn’t have. She seemed

shocked I had even asked about the meals, “Excuse me! That was not even a question back then,

I would never even have thought to pay for anything or open doors. That’s just the way it is. Men

should honor you, and that’s just one of the ways that you allow them to respect you.” Which

isn’t exactly what happens today, and I got to thinking what the statistics were on the things men

did on dates. It did seem that there were a couple key things that were fairly different now. I felt I

had gathered enough information, and thanked her for her time, and hung up the call.

After conducting my interview, I thought about what Donna had said about technology,

and decided to look into that. Finding technological differences wasn’t too hard, since there have

been quite a few since 1960. I found the article “Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age.”

from the Pew Research center. They stated that they do randomly select the people that

participate, and the data is weighted based on the “gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation,

[and] education” All of their data is from their research they did between October 18-28 of 2020.

This particular source gives really good statistics of how the population as a whole uses

technology as a major part of dating and sheds light on how things have changed. As an

example, on the first page it gives the statistics that 51% of the population has distracted partners

on their phone, 40% is bothered by the amount of time their partner spends on their phone, and

34% have looked through their partner's phone without their knowledge. Most of these things

never would have happened in the 1960s and what I can deter from that is the trust is

significantly lower than it was in the 1960s due to social media, and it can distract people from

their partner making people less likely to get to know each other.

As well as the obvious, like texting, and phones, things like dating apps are also a huge

contributor. They can cause people to not get to know each other as deeply, and can also
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encourage a chronically online relationship. Online relationships can be strange, since you’re

getting to know the person from another end of a screen, and not for their personality. Obviously,

back in the 1960s, none of the technology we regularly use now was being used back then. While

technology may cause some issues in modern relationships, it can be a pro sometimes for things

such as communicating while you’re not physically with each other. Apps like FaceTime and

Messenger are used almost daily in most relationships, and can, in certain situations, help with

communication.

Obviously there are other things that have changed since the 60s that are better too. The

first being obvious-LGBT+ members are no longer punished for who they choose to form

relationships with. History.com states that in “1961, Illinois became the first state to do away

with its anti-sodomy laws” (Editors 2022). Obviously states followed after that, but for much of

the 60s, many states had restrictions, or even full laws on or against LGBT relationships. This is

definitely more of a positive change compared to the dated 1960s dating practice that was used

then.

Another large change is the race laws that have changed since then. We no longer frown

upon interracial relationships. In the article Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Telegram, Sunday,

November 10, 1963, it walks through how interracial marriages had been outlawed. (Lee 1) The

first state to overturn laws was California in 1948, and after the 1967 Supreme Court decision,

Loving v. Virginia states were forced to follow suit.

In 2023, it is fairly common to see LGBT couples, and interracial couples walking the

streets. While some changes have been maybe not so great, and culture has certainly taken a turn,

we obviously have our blessings when it comes to relationships now. Though what we think of

as “dating” now isn’t much different than what any couples in the 1960s thought of, things have
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changed substantially when we look at our relationships. Whether it be our technology, levels of

intimacy, gender roles, or limitations, everything has changed as we continue to grow as a

society. Things will continue to change and adapt to our cultural norms. Whether it be for better

or for worse, there are differences littered in most crucial parts of our dating lives.

Loving then, is certainly different than loving now.

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Works Cited:

Carroll, J. S. (2014, August 14). Slow but sure: Does the timing of sex during dating matter?

Institute for Family Studies. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from

https://ifstudies.org/blog/slow-but-sure-does-the-timing-of-sex-during-dating-matter

Finer, L. B. (2007). Trends in premarital sex in the United States, 1954-2003. Public health

reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974). Retrieved March 1, 2023, from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/

History.com Editors. (2022). Gay rights - movement, Marriage & Flag - History. History.com.

Retrieved March 6, 2023, from https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/history-of-gay-

rights

Donna Shaw, Personal Interview, Feb 15, 2023

Magers, A. (2020). The science of sex before marriage. The Science of Sex Before Marriage -

The Well Clinic. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from

https://mywellclinic.com/blog/2020/02/20/science-sex-marriage/#:~:text=Researchers

%20found%20that%20those%20who,sexual%20quality%20(15%25)2.

Miscegenation Laws. sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com. (1963). Retrieved March 6, 2023, from

https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Miscegenation

%20laws.pdf

Smiler, A. P., Shewmaker, J. W., & Hearon, B. (2017, December). From "I Want To Hold

Your Hand" to "Promiscuous": Sexual Stereotypes in Popular Music Lyrics, 1960-2008.

Gale Academic Onefile. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://go-gale-

com.ezproxy.ccs.spokane.edu/ps/start.do?p=OVIC&u=spok23643
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Vogels, Emily A., and Monica Anderson. “Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age.”

Pewresearch.org, Pew Research Center, 8 May 2020,

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/05/08/dating-digital-age-methodology/.