by Jeff Tompkins

Created on: April 21, 2008   Last Updated: April 22, 2008

Relationship experts tell us that dating has never been easy, and in fact may be more complicated now than it ever was. I don't know how they come to that conclusion, but it is true that dating has always been tricky.

Take, for example, the Caveman Era. At the time there were no restaurants and movie theaters, so there was the problem of coming up with something to do. But they didn't even have language, just grunting. Therefore, the caveman didn't have to be concerned about being "shot down" by the cavewoman because they couldn't even talk. Dating basically consisted of one caveman clubbing another caveman over the head and taking his cavewoman. This process would go on and on, until football was invented and cavemen began finding ways to get rid of the cavewomen. That is why shopping was invented.

So things have always been complicated. Today, however, no one seems to have time to date. And if you're a single adult, it seems that everyone is married, so what's the point in even trying? Where are single people going to find the time and the other single people?

TV. That's where.

There have been dating shows on TV almost since the advent of TV, but today's shows are very different from the shows from decades past, and not just in terms of hair size.

The Dating Game, which first aired in 1965, consisted of a main contestant and three potential dating candidates. The candidates were seated behind a partition, out of the view of the main contestant, who would ask them a series of questions like, "Bachelor Number One, if you were stranded on the moon, what kind of food would you want to have with you?" And the suave bachelor would give a suave answer like, "Ice cream, because it's sweet, but not as sweet as you sound!" Of course this makes no sense because, let's face it, if you were stranded on the moon, the only thing you'd be thinking about is avoiding space monsters and suing somebody if you made it back to Earth.

After nearly three seconds of research, I was able to determine that there have been at least thirty dating shows on TV in various formats. Some of them involve monetary decisions designed to create more suspense. For example, on the show For Love or Money, the main contestant was a female who had to pick among a group of guys who would be her best match. But there was a twist. The guys knew that if they were picked, they would have to choose whether to date her or take home a million dollars. And if she picked a guy who picked her instead of the million

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