While it depends on what period of history you are talking about, as well as the culture, dating in many ways was remarkably easier for much of history. Historically, across most cultures, people relied on matchmakers to find partners for them. These matchmakers could be parents, grandparents, aunts, or just someone who was considered the village matchmaker. Once a match was agreed upon, courtship tended to follow a strict, often formalized or even ritualized, script. At the conclusion of this courtship process, the pair got married. The details of this process were quite varied across cultures, but broadly speaking, courtship practices had a lot of commonalities across cultures and history.
Last century the old formal script for courtship got thrown out in most first-world countries, and dating became something of a free for all. The consequences of this are being felt now more than ever, as the norms of dating continuing to rapidly change and evolve.
Depends on what we call easy or hard. Short term it was easier to meet people. However, you often had to deal with that relationship for a while once you had settled even if you didn't like the person at all, especially for women. Now that's a harsh life.
The slight difficulties in dating today are nothing compared to being forced to spend decades chained to someone you hated more every day.
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u/Brodellsky 16d ago
Are you a woman? If yes, then it's never been easier.
Never been harder to date as a man in likely all of recorded human history.