"We're just talking": The etymology of Post-modern romance

Define Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia, my literature paper ordered. “Um…” I said turning to my friend, “how about, person he is not friends with, not dating, not hooking up with, but thinking about it?”

“So in other words, they’re ‘talking’,” she says as she raises two fingers to make little quotes in the air. Describing Shakespeare’s characters born centuries before our generation makes us realize that defining relationships have not gotten any less complicated. (Although occasionally it sounds like a valid solution, I hope none of us are planning on pulling an Ophelia and jumping off trees any time soon.)

Since Shakespeare’s cursed whatever-they-are’s do not reveal their ages, it makes you wonder when all this nonsense starts. Its easy to trace the confusion back to some disaster from our early teens, but at what age does the definition of “talking” become something other than talking?

I’ve heard the term used to describe everything from texting someone you may like to screwing around with someone you aren’t exactly committed to-quite the opposite of just talking. How did a phrase that simple become so ridiculously complicated?

The phrase “hooking-up” on the other hand does have a history. It originated in a book from the seventies about an open marriage and never received a strict definition. Seventeen magazine usually defines it as kissing, the more sophisticated use the term to describe a one-night stand, and others use it to characterize anything in-between.

Figuring out whether to call a situation a hook-up, “friends with benefits”, or dating is not an easy task, leaving many of us to wonder if we can call what’s-his-face a boyfriend.

“Hook-ups” are not even the beginning of the term-confusion that those of us born in the 80s and very early 90s are experiencing (God save the love lives of those born later). Boundaries or lack thereof are a whole other story. High school students aren’t even sure if they have boundaries and college students have trouble determining whether relationships involved coercion or not.

Those who are a little less thrilled with this whole “casual” thing have a myriad of reasons why they aren’t getting involved, ranging from “so not dealing with him right now” to “totally hung-up on this other loser.”

Then, there are all these transitional stages on the journey from friendship to that whole marriage deal (whatever you would like to define that as):

“Talking,” friends with benefits, hooking-up, broken-up but still seeing each other, broken up but still fooling around, on and off, may-be-on-and-off- but-I-don’t-know-because-we’re-on the-“off,” simply “seeing each other”, together, living together, engaged to be engaged, and the ever popular “I don’t even know” complete with exasperated sigh and hands thrown up, and all of these subjectively undefined terms make those who “don’t know “ greatly envy those who are simply “dating.”

Wouldn’t it have been easier in the Jane Austen days? You just had “courting,” “betrothed,” “married,” or simply nothing at all. And wouldn’t rules be nice? What happened to rules?

Don’t you just love the feeling of never knowing what is going on? It starts to make you wonder why any of us even attempt this whole love business in the first place. But then you’re back to square one with the “this being alone thing sucks” and the “hey’s” and the dancing and the “whatever we are doing” thing and you realize that maybe its kind of inevitable and for a good reason.

We simply weren’t designed to be alone and while the whole process is just a little overwhelming, it’s what gets us to whatever it is we define as “happy.” We just need to find someone who’s been reading the same dictionary.