Who Taught Us How to Date?

Our Family and Friends

We all know some of the unspoken rules of dating: “don’t double text,” “if they like you, they’ll make an effort,” “you’ll just know when you meet the right person.” Except, these rules really weren’t “unspoken” at all. We didn’t come out of the womb knowing that liking someone’s Instagram story multiple times in a row is a signal that you’re into them.

There is no “Introduction to Dating” class we take, either. And yet, by the time people enter their first relationships—whether they’re 15 or 35—they’re already carrying an enormous set of “instructions” on how they’re supposed to behave.

Nowadays, it’s easy to point to social media—and this is true to a certain extent. But there’s more nuance as to where we all first heard it all. Here’s who exactly is influencing our dating and relationship habits.

First, we watched the people around us. As someone who grew up in a Pakistani, Muslim household, my parents didn’t talk to me about dating or sex at all (except of course to say “don’t do it”). But this doesn’t mean I didn’t first learn about love and relationships from them—because your first relationship lesson is typically rooted in observation not conversation.

In a 2017 study of 246 families, researchers looked at the effects of a parental relationship on childrens’ beliefs about romantic relationships. When young people viewed their parents as a positive model (based on perceived marital satisfaction, conflict, and parent-child relationship quality), they were more likely to model their own romantic relationships after them. But when they experienced more conflict or dissatisfaction, they were more likely to differentiate their relationships from their parents’.

And of course, pretty soon in our life we make some friends who eventually help us form these dating scripts, too. A 2015 study of adolescents found that kids really care about what other kids think when it comes to their romantic and sexual relationships (I know. Shocker). This includes “pressuring friends into relationships, establishing relationships as currency for popularity and social status, and creating relationship norm and expectations.”

Media and Culture

TV, movies, books, pop culture in general, and pornography all give us narratives not only on how to date and have sex but also what romance is supposed to feel like. Think about the idea of soulmates, “love at first sight,” the “spark,” or “happily ever after”—they didn’t magically pop into your head.

“Kissing on the mouth wasn't common until Americans saw their first kiss on screen in the cinema,” relationship therapist Sarah Sloan says.

Psychologists have actually studied these ideas as romantic beliefs. In 1989, researchers Susan Sprecher and Sandra Metts developed the Romantic Beliefs Scale, identifying four recurring ideas: Love Finds a Way, One and Only, Idealization, and Love at First Sight. In other words, the belief that true love can overcome obstacles, that there is one specifc right person for you, that your partner is better than they really are, or that you can know almost immediately that someone is “the one.”

In one study, researchers analyzed the 52 highest-grossing romantic comedies from the early 2000s and found either one or a combination of these romantic ideals were common throughout them. Then, they surveyed 335 college students and found that people who said they watched these romantic comedies to learn about relationships were bigger romantics (AKA they were more likely to push romantic ideals).

That doesn't mean watching The Notebook is going to permanently ruin your expectations of love—the research is definitely more nuanced than that. It just means the type of movies you grew up on probably informed what you look for in romance.

Social Media, Specifically

The same can be said of social media, of course. While the books, movies, and culture at large has informed some of our more sweeping romantic notions, social media has begun to sway some of those non written, super specific rules that family and friends used to have a monopoly on. Now that we can be more connected to each other on a global scale and find ourselves relating to people we’ve never met, they can have a major impact on our worldviews.

Now, everyone has their opinions on TikTok relationship gurus (my opinion is not favorable). But their influence over the idea of communication (whether on dating apps or FaceTime) on who should message first, how long you should wait to respond, whether the person you are with is putting in enough effort, whether you should move off the app, what counts as ghosting, how many dates before you're “dating,” and when exactly you're supposed to delete the app, is undeniable.

“Unfortunately, many people take guidance on how to date from online influencers,” certified sex therapist Sari Eckler says. She elaborates that it’s “unfortunate” because these influencers are more often than not untrained in relationships or dating—they promote power grabs that benefit their own social media growth.

Think about how you immediately know what “if he wanted to, he would” means. Whether or not you align yourself to the belief, it’s still floating around somewhere in your head.

This has darker implications with subgenres and niche’s on social media, like The Manosphere.

Dating App Interfaces

While dating apps themselves aren’t influencing our choices, the way they’ve changed how we meet has changed the dating landscape forever. They’ve turned dating into an interface—with swipes, matches, notifications and algorithms—that can shape how people see their potential partners.

According to a Pew Research Center’s 2022 survey of 6,034 U.S. adults, 30 percent had used a dating site or app. Among people who were already partnered, 10 percent said they met their current spouse or partner through a dating site or app. This rose to 20 percent among partnered adults ages 18 to 29.

The apps are on somewhat of a decline now, which only furthers the question of how our romantic ideas will shift in response.

Artificial Intelligence

The biggest recent curveball of what influences our dating and relationship perception and choices: AI. People are increasingly asking chatbots to interpret texts, decode dates, draft breakup messages, and tell them whether a person is actually interested—and researchers are only beginning to understand what happens when AI becomes another source of relationship advice.

One 2026 study collected 4,664 real conversations between users and AI companions, while another analyzed 964 speed dates and found that some models could detect “signals of romantic attraction.” Obviously, AI doesn’t have its own innate understanding of romance—it learns patterns from human-generated data. So as AI starts teaching us how to date, it’s worth asking: who—or what, exactly—teaching the AI?

We all have our own unique views of dating—but we probably don’t realize that the reason they’re so unique is because they’re the result of lifelong cultural, social, and familial cues we’ve been collecting since the moment we’ve been conscious. And yes, over the many centuries of human existence, we’ve found a few common themes, but the way we view dating is constantly changing. Who knows what dating rules might come forward in the future?