"If you like Southern girls..."

The saying goes, "If you like southern girls, raise your glass. If not, raise your standards."

I've been in bad relationship after bad relationship, excluding the boy I dated for six months my freshman year of high school. Five boyfriends, one of whom I dated twice, and nine flings later I realised that I have only ever been out on legitimate dates with one boy.

My most recent ex-boyfriend, the one I "dated" twice, turned out to be a bonafide jerk. We both went to different universities and could only see each other when we went back to our hometown. Anyway all I asked for was for him to ask me out on a proper date and that threw him in a tizzy. He told me that it was the twenty-first century and that I should ask him out! Needless to say, that wasn't happening. So we never went out on a date.

In my mental book of moral codes that I follow, this is something that I will not do. I don't care if it's the thirty-fifth century, if I live to be that old, and it is society norm that the husband take the wife's surname as his own when they marry. I will not look nor chase a man, I will not ask a man out on the first date, and when I get married I will take my husband's surname as my own. I'm all for gender equality don't get me wrong but there are some things I am an adamant traditionalist about.

End of that spiel. I got to the end of my freshman year and realised that I am nineteen going on twenty and have never dated a boy before he became my boyfriend. And after reading Steve Harvey's "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man," which was phenomenal by the way, I have decided to make that a requirement. I feel like after so many unhealthy exclusive and non-exclusive relationships that I have been going about this the wrong way since high school.

Which brings me to the exciting and nerve-wrecking fact that I actually got asked out on a date and I said yes. He isn't my boyfriend and we had a class together in high school but I don't know him well. What we're doing is a complete surprise because I left that ball in his court, all I'll have is the day we go. Even though known surprises make me nervous I'm excited.

What are your opinions on dating during the twenty-first century?
P.S. I apologize for writing an essay.