What was dating/sex like in the 1980s?

Atlas_B_Shruggin · 2019-05-13T19:44:46+00:00

I was in a major US city, I was a teenager in the eighties and I was in college and in my early twenties in the nineties it was full on Sexual revolution , among every group of people I knew. The weird Christian revival of the nineties had not happened yet, everybody got abortions when they got pregnant unless they were black. There was none of the kind of discussions that happen here every day about promiscuity and sluts and n count

If you want a really good snapshot of what it was like watch the movie fast times at Ridgemont high. It is based on the true experience of a young reporter for rolling stone who went back to high school and wrote the stories of the people he hung out with there in a book. It is very realistic especially the scene where the girl tells The guy who knocked her up that she is pregnant and tries to get him to help with the abortion

It is become very obvious to me that the sexual revolution started to be rolled back after the combination of safe sex hysteria and the Christian revival in the nineties, combined with a big influx of non Western foreigners who did not go through the sexual revolution. Obviously it couldn't last forever

Barneysparky · 2019-05-13T19:21:33+00:00

People that went to clubs tended to have a lot of casual sex. Much like today with the use of tinder.

Outside of that you dated within your friend group in high school. I think the big difference is today it seems like once you've chosen to be exclusive people treat relationships like marriages. It was a given that your first relationship shouldn't be your last.

Atlas_B_Shruggin · 2019-05-13T19:51:06+00:00

Another important point is that teenagers had a lot of freedom in the eighties, and we were always running around in big packs with each other not sitting around in people's houses. Almost everybody had cars as soon as they got old enough or if you lived in the city people routinely took public transportation by themselves to go into the city or whatever. People hung out in big packs in the mall you could go hang out with people that you didn't even know. This facilitated a lot more dating and sex, mostly through just hanging out partying and hooking up

Suck-Less · 2019-05-13T22:58:26+00:00

The second paragraph was spot on, the rest? Three of my one night stands were the result of drinking either at a bar or a house party and me just saying “want to fk?” I lost my virginity by telling my gf if she didn’t stop grabbing me, I was going to tie her up and take her. She said yes.

Women were not as subdued as you might think. I saw far more women catcalling menback then, than men catcalling women. It’s probably because we were in much better shape as a whole. Thigh gaps and six packs from all that walking.

We had dam near zero parental supervision. For GenX this isn’t even close to an exaggeration. Often we were walking ourselves home to an empty house starting in second grade. Not one or two per class, I mean the whole class. House parties were almost daily. We had to learn to grow up from a very early age, and part of that was a hacked attempt at social skills. Screw up and get punched in the nose, while surrounded by kids cheering it on. You couldn’t hide behind a keyboard. If you talked crap to someone, man or women, friend or date, it was to their face. Maybe because of that we learned how to better interact between the genders.

You could usually buy beer without getting carded, or at least knew someone that could, by the age of 17. Weed, and all kinds of drugs were just part of high school so maybe that made people more relaxed.

Don’t romanticize it. The difference is that we had better social skills because there wasn’t an internet to mess us all up. A young man wasn’t competing with 600 guys on Tinder, just those in his graduating year. A young woman wasn’t addicted to that much attention. We didn’t have to worry about flirting getting us fired or kicked out of school because of social media. We didn’t have gobs of screwed up people looking like they know what they are talking about, and giving advice via YouTube. We didn’t have a bunch of SJWs feeding a gender war.

With the exception of being able to google everything you didn’t know, I think the best thing everyone could do for this society is crash the internet.

That all being said, I’ll say one thing about the newest generations (millennials and Z), two hundred years from now, the thing they will be most famous for is this: they are the very first generations raised to not see honor in sacrificing for a random woman. And for the first time, women are now almost as disposable as men. If the titanic sunk today, she would have to physically fight for her place on a lifeboat instead of having some dumb ass man give up his place out of “honor.”

Things are going to get interesting...

Orange_Paisley · 2019-05-13T20:31:18+00:00

I was in my teens in the 80s and AIDS was fresh on everybody’s minds. Abstinence was popular since I lived in a Bible Belt state but condoms were pushed in sex Ed classes. In high school you picked a classmate and dated them pretty much either the entire 4 years or at least the school year. I have no idea what it was like for the over 21 crowd.

Willow-girl · 2019-05-14T03:52:02+00:00

The 80's were ... kinda awesome! Most of the descriptions here square with my experience in the working-class Rust Belt. I was part of a big social circle; we hung out together, drank a lot and did whatever drugs we could get our hands on. Occasionally I went to school ... just often enough to graduate, lol. Oh those were some good times! The drawbacks were that we had a lot of unprotected sex, pre-AIDS, so there were lots of pregnancy scares and occasional actual pregnancies. (One of my close friends had an abortion; another got knocked up and married at 17.) Also, no one was openly gay.

wotsittoyou · 2019-05-13T19:39:22+00:00

i picture getting out of school and riding my bike over to my buddies place on a friday afternoon.

Nah. In that era young adults mostly got themselves to and from school. You'd go straight from school to your friends' place with your friend then call your parents from there to tell them you'd be late home. Most people didn't have a huge number of friends outside their school... no social media.

We smoke a joint and listen to the radio

Maybe on the joint although most people didn't smoke in the 'rents house if there was a perfectly fine park down the street. The radio? I guess possibly if there was nothing better but mostly you'd be concerned with checking through his music collection, maybe his parents' or siblings music collection too and then pirating off a few tapes of it for yourself.

He knows about a party in town that night because someones parents are out of town.

Possibly. More likely there's some grown up share house he's welcome at and can take you to. Chances are you're walking or taking the bus. Also if it is a party it will be nothing like the teen parties you see in 80s movies. Two dozen people at most, a dozen is more common, and mostly they'll be sitting around doing the same things you do when you visit your friend, just with a bit more alcohol and drugs and some large bags of crisps.

We show up to the party and get drunk off beers amd then smoke some weed and get on a nice level.

Not where I'm from. Cask wine. Also the weed people bring out to share at parties is leaf and rough as guts, you're more likely to puke from weed than from alcohol at an 80s party. . Someone might have trips or know where to get them... little bits of paper soaked with gawd alone knows what... but they won't bring them out in front of everyone if they are selling you trips they will pull you aside and scope you out.

Theres this girl who you know from school and you heard from her friends that she likes you.

Yeah that could happen.

Youre average and shes average.

And you both wear acid wash jeans.

You flirt with her that night and make out.

Don't recall much flirting until proper adulthood. Mostly you'd sit together and just get more drunk and more... gropey, is that a word?

Later on at school you ask her out and you become a couple.

Possibly not. Everyone would know what you'd been up to and there's about a 80% chance she'd feel shamed out of ever having anything to do with you again and a 60% chance you'd be the one feeling too shamed to go ahead.

Then a few weeks down the road you end up having sex with her.

Probably not, unless she's kind of messed up or you're very high value. There was lots of sex in the 80s but most of it started after high school ended. You might be getting your dick tugged after a few weeks, your dick sucked by about three months into the relationship.

I think a lot of the sexual freedom of young adults who had finished high school in the 80s was down to it being completely possible to make it through your education living out of home with government assistance and a job stacking supermarket shelves. You could afford to take a small risk of pissing the grownups off real bad. Not so good at high school where the community was pretty tight and if you were fucking around it would make its way back to your parents eventually. At uni though? Freeeeeeeeedom.

ifelsedowhile · 2019-05-13T20:23:32+00:00

teens and young adults all had crazy hair, the use of hairspray caused the ozone layer to deplete generating worldwide concern. gay dudes were having unprotected butt secks all the time and that explains why so many of them got aids. Duran Duran were all over the place, they were like the Beatles of the 80s. their concerts were attended by thousands of horny fangirls and the air was literally moisted with... well you get the idea.

synth pop and hair metal were dominating the airwaves while the cool kids were listening to Husker Du and The Replacements. then Nirvana came along and the alt-rock scene suddenly became mainstream and the hipsters were all pissed.

SeasonedRP · 2019-05-13T20:52:28+00:00

Casual sex was fairly common. There were lots of parties. Someone's parents were always out of town. When I was in high school in the early and mid 80s, there was a big push against driving while intoxicated, but underage drinking itself wasn't the huge deal it is now. So the drinking combined with frequent parties led to hook ups. People smoked pot too, but those who did it a lot tended to be in their own discrete groups. At parties, they would slip away to do it rather than do it in the open. They were the kids into new wave music and alternative things. The athletes and popular kids didn't smoke pot as much as they drank. It wasn't only popular people hooking up and dating, though. There were other crowds not as popular and both boys and girls were in those crowds, so they'd hook up with and date each other.

There were people who got in relationships early and stayed together through high school, but it was more common to date a number of different people. Many times, dating relationships would develop in the way you imagine. You talk at a party and later ask her out.

I stumbled on this sub and find it fascinating how different things are now with young people. Just getting a date is treated like a monumentally difficult task. And do young couples or would-be couples really sit down and go over in detail each other's sexual history and number of partners? That seems crazy to me. That has only happened to me once, and it was a few years ago with a considerably younger woman (I brushed it off and didn't answer). I don't ever remember having those kind of discussions in the 80s. If it became known that a girl had sex with someone, other guys got interested hoping they too could get with that girl. Now being known as overly slutty wasn't a good thing for girls, and they tried to keep that stuff somewhat private, though the main ones judging were other girls.

[deleted] · 2019-05-13T23:30:07+00:00

Aaaaaah, those were the days. Hanging out in abandoned houses and dead end streets, just talking shit and drinking cheap swill, smoking stemmy brown blunts. Yuck on the blunts haha. No one had a cell phone or internet, just drove to the regular hang out at the moment. If no one is there, drive to the mall or the community golf course next to the movie theatre, or to the kid's house whose parents were always out of town to find trouble.

NicholasLeo · 2019-05-14T16:02:29+00:00

The sexual revolution had happened, but it was prior to Anita Hill, so there were no barriers to sex between coworkers or in cases of power differences or age differences. And no idea of explicit consent. If you were escalating towards sex, and no one said no, then you were good. One night stands were common. Every STD had a simple cure (except HIV, which then was only amongst gays), and abortion was legal, so there was little reason to not have as much sex as you wished. Men with vasectomies wore special necklaces indicating their sterility, which made them attractive targets for women. A kind of sexual utopia.

Porn was widely available, even in mainstream cinemas. Playboy, Penthouse, Playgirl, and other nudie magazines were at their height, and there was little backlash against them.

Couples went out on actual dates, typically dinner and a movie, followed by sex within the first 3 dates, usually the 3rd. City magazines (e.g. Washingtonian), and alternative newsweeklies had lots of personal ads of people looking for romance or hookups; meeting someone this way involved writing a brief letter. But most people met initially in person, particularly through pick-ups, in bars and in public, or through friends.

Homosexuality almost became acceptable in the early 80s, but the HIV crisis sparked an anti-gay backlash.

[deleted] · 2019-05-15T05:39:57+00:00

I'm 32 and that's pretty much how dating went when I was in school in the early 00s

Electra_Cute · 2019-05-13T22:44:12+00:00

There was no text messaging, so I imagine women/men would wait at their phones(I believe atlas_b_shruggin as mentioned this before), no online dating, romance probably seemed more simple, certain date options were less expensive and I also imagine there was less people making their relationship a spectacle because there no social media.

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[deleted] · 2019-05-13T19:06:29+00:00

I had my first girlfriend in the 80's when I was at Junior School.

It was great I was like 9 and we just played tonsil tennis all lunch time.

diffdedbed · 2019-05-13T19:39:39+00:00

what was it like?

Harrier

Was casual sex common?

Yep.

Was it kept secret?

Not really.

Is this anything like the 80s?

Exactly, only you probably txted we didn't.

I was in highschool, just out as the 80's ended though so I can't speak for 20+ year olds. Most people became a couple and sex was a given mostly. I was in a Frat by the early 90's and we would have at least 4-5 girls staying over about every night.

unorthodoxcowboy · 2019-05-13T21:41:58+00:00

Pretty much what you experienced minus social media, thank god.

Wulfwinterr · 2019-05-14T02:28:44+00:00

High school 80's was tough for casual sex - unless you were really good looking or a football player. Most girls were extremely wary of getting a "slut" reputation, so the only way to get laid was to date someone for a long period of time.

College 80's was a free-for-all of first-time-away-from-home girls fucking as many guys as they could. At least that was my experience. I was a virgin all through high school - then when I went to college I blossomed and the flood-gates opened.

Man, I'd love to go back and relive those days...

reluctantly_red · 2019-05-14T03:57:15+00:00

Did teenagers and young adults "hook up" at parties and have one night stands?

Hell yes! I graduated from high school in 1982. And then went to a very large public university (35,000 students). I was pretty pathetic in high school and only had sex once. I did quite a bit better when I moved away from home to go to university. I had several one night stands and short relationships my first year. Including a male #me too night my first semester when an older student got me drunk and I woke up naked in her dorm room.

I met my first wife at an end of the school year party in May 1983. We went to a house where one of her friends lived and fucked all night. I didn't learn her name until she wrote it on a scrape of paper with her number the next morning. We moved in together that fall and pretty much fucked non-stop all the way through university (with a couple of breakups, make-up sex, and ONS thrown in).

UEMcGill · 2019-05-15T00:44:36+00:00

A high school Dude in the late 80's for me, college in the early nineties. All in a southern boom town. What every body else is saying was my experience too. I was a pot head and then into grunge.

I'll add that reputation was also a big deal. I knew a few girls who everyone knew as 'sluts'. Fucking them could do one thing for your reputation, but dating them could do something entirely different. One girl was white, and dated a black guy; she was undatable after, but good for everything else. So called 'good girls' generally gave up their virginity by junior year, but never wanted to seem like it was easily taken. Yet, almost all of them would have some quick rebound hook up after breaking up with her first.

My 'type' was good girls (honors girls) who did really well in school. Seems like if you gave them a chance to cut loose, there was a lot of fun to be had.

Dating outside your clique was uncommon. Cheerleaders were considered top echelon girls, and then honors girls, then everyone else.

Hook ups were common but depending on the girl would be openly admitted or vehemently denied depending on your so called clique.

Being as it was still the south there was still some vestiges of religion and race hating. I'm catholic and learned to not tell Southern Baptist girls parents that. Black girls would receive a ton of shit for dating a white guy, especially from her own community.

I was a wierd in between kid. Honors classes, but a pot head. It served me well and I ended up hooking up with a few cheerleaders. Maybe I was their first 'bad boy'.

All in all things were done with a lot more discretion. Lots of fun for sure, but you didn't talk about it.

College? Now that was a whole different story. Man the 90's were awesome.

[deleted] · 2019-05-15T16:28:46+00:00

I was only 4 when they ended, but judging by my teenage babysitters and 20s family friends, it seemed pretty awesome and laid back. I feel like the fun music reflected that (i.e. hair bands were all about partying).

Could just be me looking through it with rose colored glasses, but I bet without social media or even the basic internet yet, since you were limited to people in your town or your own social circle, you were more prone to give people a chance if you even remotely clicked with them, whereas now anyone can be as picky as they want with Tinder.

When I was a kid I used to imagine (when I'd get older) that dating would be as simple as "Oh you're single? Hey, me too, wanna go out?" lol

Juniuspublicus12 · 2019-09-29T03:55:03+00:00

AIDS happened. The era of "Penicillin Cures Everything" was over. I saw the shift in attitude as I studied infectious diseases and archaeology during the GRID era. Testing for STDs became obligatory, as did condoms, dental dams and the like. Casual hookups changed forever.

poppy_blu · 2019-05-14T01:12:33+00:00

I was on the younger end of this (born in 75) but from what I remember, it wasn't as different as people here claim. here's what was different:

-No social media propping up people's egos and allowing people to construct a false representation of an ideal life. Your rep was all you had. And, thank God, your shit was not on digital display for the world. Leaked photos (polaroids) of you in compromising positions could be contained much easier.

-No HD internet porn. No internet porn at all. And in the 80s, porn was demonized. The Christian conversatives, who were enjoying revival thanks to Reagan, formed an unholy alliance with feminists to abolish porn. They were successful in getting it out of mainstream theatres and stores, and the only place you could buy it was a sleazy stores on the sketchy side of town with paper bags covering the windows. We were taught that only maladjusted deviant men consumed porn. As a male teen in the 80s, you were lucky if you got your hands on a few playboys and a bootleg VHS of "Debbie Does Dallas."

-Teenagers hung around in co-ed social groups and "dating" usually meant mostly hanging out with your group and going to parties, etc. "Going out" was a big thing, even if it was hanging out a restaurant, mall (remember those?), even a field or parking lot. We also had under 18 clubs back then. No one stayed home and played video games. No Netflix and chill for us.

-Dat hair

Barneysparky · 2019-05-13T19:34:37+00:00

Women were a lot more conservative in the 1980s. Especially since we just learned about this new "death plague" that you could get, even from deep kissing, an Ebola-like Curse From God stemming from the pits of bathhouses in San Francisco.

Ads like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9f378T49E

And this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVggWZuFApI

But I mean, sure you had suburban kids experimenting. Not as much as now, and not as cavalier about it. But it happened.

Title	What was dating/sex like in the 1980s?
Author	rovad_
Upvotes	23
Comments	138
Date	May 13, 2019 7:04 PM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/bo7o2n/what_was_datingsex_like_in_the_1980s/
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