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FRIENDS AND BENEFITS

Why Dating Still Matters, Even If It Feels Like a Disaster

An adamant defense of romance, even in cynical times.

Tootsie Haine
Published
Updated
Illustration of a spiral notebook with doodles including hearts and two love birds sitting on a branch with hearts coming up

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

Welcome to Friends and Benefits. Follow our new sex and relationships columnist into the lives and psyches of men and women, young and old, gorgeous and tragic, divine and insane.

The dating game today isn’t so much a game as it is an ordeal, a trial, a punishment. At least, that’s the common narrative—that the landscape is bleak; that young people don’t have sex; that the apps are dismal; that having a boyfriend is embarrassing.

All of these things may be true, to an extent, but they’ve unfairly come to dominate the cultural conversation, cynically willing us to renounce our carnal desires. To which I say, screw that.

This column will try to make a case for sex, love, romance, and f--kery. The conditions aren’t so bad, and it’s no use thinking that they’re bad.

Sex and love are the great paradoxes—an addiction, and an antidote. I’m an intrigue addict, which means I’m always watching for a gesture, a look, or any indication whatsoever that someone might be interested in me. The “gaze” has to do with sex and attraction, of course, but more, it implies a love of life.

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Sex appeal is synonymous with charisma, and the acknowledgment of desire is a kind of optimism, the earnest and noble pursuit of human connection.

When you date, you get a pass into a world—private, intimate, absurd—where the full range of human emotion is on display. I’ve been in love, I’ve pined, I’ve yearned, I’ve cared, and I’ve hurt others.

It seems that good spokespeople of any kind—writers, artists, influencers—are champions of their field. I want to galvanize people into dating and change their minds about the pursuit, or simply have them read along, perhaps learning from my naiveté, and cracking up while doing it.

When you date, you get a pass into a world where the full range of human emotion is on display. I’ve been in love, I’ve pined, I’ve yearned, I’ve cared, and I’ve hurt others.

I hope we’ll build our own kind of relationship along the way. It’s not you, it’s me. But it’s you, too. It’s all of us. We’re all in this together.

P.S. Perhaps you’re thinking it’s insincere to be “baring all” while under the cloak of a pseudonym? (Yes, my real name is not Tootsie Haine.) But it’s this anonymity that allows me to be as painfully honest as I can, and it serves to protect the identities of my dates, even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. I’m nothing if not a gentleman.

Tootsie Haine
Tootsie Haine

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