{"id":6480,"date":"2011-10-16T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=6480"},"modified":"2015-03-19T14:57:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T21:57:25","slug":"dateless-tot-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2011\/10\/16\/dateless-tot-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Dateless: Something Something Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Last week I wrote a short post<\/a> saying that I was soon going to try and tackle a question I often\u00a0hear asked among my female friends:<\/p>\n

“<\/em>Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I wrote that blog entry announcement partially to ensure that I didn’t chicken out! The subject of relationships and dating is tricky and it’s inevitable that many people would not agree with my conclusions.\u00a0I’ve tried to do this series a couple of times before but I always managed to find something else to do instead. By publicly\u00a0saying that I’m going to do it, I’m making sure that I actually will…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Reactions<\/h2>\n

I have to say, I found the reactions to my initial post rather amusing.<\/p>\n

Before posting that entry, I posted another article earlier that morning. That article<\/a> took me over four hours to write and contained detailed commentary of the upcoming Sunday Mass Readings. On the other hand, it took me only fifteen minutes to write the entry about dating<\/a> yet, once published, my blog traffic rocketed…<\/p>\n

The ToT Effect<\/h2>\n

A while ago I started calling this phenomenon the “ToT Effect”. I had noticed that in every Theology on Tap series, the “relationship” talk was always the most popular. My friends over at Good Shepherd Parish even utilized the “ToT Effect” when they organized their ice skating trip, entitling the Facebook event:<\/p>\n

Something Something Relationships: GSYAM Ice Skating Fundraiser<\/a><\/p>\n

Why did they call it that? In the Event Details they explained:<\/p>\n

“…if you’re wondering why the event title is so… awesome, know that it’s been realized that any church event that we’ve gone to that has had the word ‘relationships’ in its title has been well attended…”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

What is the cause of the “ToT Effect”? Sure, everyone is interested in the subject of relationships, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s something more than that. Perhaps it’s partly because we know that, at least when it comes to romantic relationships, something isn’t quite right within our Catholic community<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Given the number of single people of appropriate age, shouldn’t we expect to see more couples, or at the very least more dating? Do we see the “ToT Effect” because we realise that we have a problem that needs to be addressed?<\/p>\n

Facebook Comments<\/h2>\n

I posted a link to the blog entry on Facebook and some of the comments people wrote were just brilliant:<\/p>\n

David Bates has posted “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

– “Because he’s either discerning the priesthood, or he’s dating a nice Protestant girl”<\/em><\/p>\n

– “I cant wait to hear the cold hard truth of these next few blogs bro”<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve written the first few entries in this series but they’re currently being examined by my\u00a0lawyers \ud83d\ude09 . I’ll probably post one next week, but until then I’ll leave you to guess which one of the above comments was left by a girl and which was left by a guy… \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I wrote a short post saying that I was soon going to try and tackle a question I often\u00a0hear asked among my female friends: “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”\u00a0 I wrote that blog entry announcement partially to ensure that I didn’t chicken out! The subject of relationships and dating is tricky and it’s inevitable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[330,2969,483,211,507],"class_list":["post-6480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-dating","tag-featured","tag-relationships","tag-theology-on-tap","tag-tot-effect"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6480"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6664,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/revisions\/6664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}