Gray areas rock
Both of us are comfortable with the idea of dating. Not quite falling in love, but dating. We had a wonderful friends-with-benefits relationship with another couple last year and it was a bit like dating, though evidently it ended because the other couple felt that their boundaries were crossed.
Since then, we've drifted towards meeting poly people, and were even open to the idea of romantic involvement. The more we've explored this, the more we realized we just haven't met anyone we'd ever fall in love with (remotely!). We like meeting people, like the eroticism, like the warmth. We're not in love with anyone else. So dating is an appropriate "middle ground" space to be -- at least while we haven't met anyone who we have both really fallen for. It's not without its problems, but it's definitely added a dimension to what we used to have -- just a lot of one-night stands that were fun but almost meaningless.