In Defatigatio Veritas

You dress up and put on your best behavior for the date. Avoid controversial subjects at dinner and make appropriate noises at the right time during the movie. Cheer for the home team at the game, even though the outcome won't matter to either of you tomorrow morning.

How on earth do you get to know anybody during a date? First impressions are all very well, and after that you may learn a little about how they want to appear, and how they act when all goes well. But masks are easily arranged, and it turns out most of life isn't a dress-up affair.

What you really want to do find out is what a person is like at the core, and that's not easy to discover. What will this woman do when something important is at stake, and she's frustrated? What will this man do when there's not quite enough to go around?

We can try to test somebody's character with games, but that's a poor substitute. The whole point of a game is that it is a contest that doesn't matter. A poor sport in a game isn't likely to be a good sport in a marriage, so you learn something about the person, but not as much as you ought.

You can try to watch them at work. Good luck. For high schoolers that's not so possible, and even for older people unless you happen to work at the same place you're not likely to be welcome as an observer. And even if you are, for many jobs the work isn't physically tiring, and I suspect that fatigue is a valuable stressor.

If you could see how a person behaves then they are weary and still trying to do something important, you would learn a lot about what kind of person they are at the core. Are they trying to beg off? Are they snappish, but still devoted to the task? Do they fade? Who are they, at the core?

Symmetry demands that they observe you too. Both you and the people you want to know need to be involved.

But in what? Games? Games don't matter. Amusements? They tell something about tastes, and sometimes morals, but not much else.

We're a rich country, and work that is both important and physically demanding isn't as common as it used to be, and communal work is even harder to find. No corn husking bees for suburbia!

This reads as though I am suggesting that an ideal second date would be a weekend working with Habitat for Humanity, building a house.

Well....

Yes.

Provided you both think that's important. Mowing lawns for the elderly, or helping somebody move, or something.

It isn't all about character study, either. There's often a camaraderie among those who work hard side by side (or bickering, but it is nice to find that out early on!), and something that links you together. Whether you will be mates or not, you can be friends sharing something important.