Dating at any age can be rough, but dating in your 20s is a special kind of awkward. You're finally navigating life on your own terms, and throwing someone else's emotions into the mix when you can barely handle yours is tricky. Still, for all the low lows, you'll also experience some pretty sweet highs that remind you that love needs no definition. For all of its upsets and heartbreaks, getting to establish your own brand of love is pretty sweet in itself.
1. "You're like Bella Swan from Twilight, and I'm like her weird friend who doesn't understand how fabulous her life is because my boyfriend won't spend four dollars on tacos." -- Shoshanna
In reality, dating is often way lamer than both our childhoods and Hollywood would like us to believe. We watch romantic movies and read fairy tales becuase we want to escape, but letting that escapism put blinders on what we want our realities to look like only stifles our worldviews. Bella Swan was dating a vampire. A guy who was undead. That is the price she paid for mood lighting. I would rather take tacos any day.
2. "I've been dating someone who treats my heart like it's monkey meat. I feel like a delusional, invisible person half the time so I need to learn what it's like to be treated well before it's too late for me."-- Hannah
There comes a point in everyone's life when you begin to set standards that go beyond whether a person is cute or not, or have their own car, or a late curfew. Both your friends and the person with whom you're in a relationship shouldn't pummel your self-esteem into a pulp. It's not fair to you, and it's not an actual friendship much less love. But the only way you can keep yourself from being invisible is to make yourself seen. Know that you're worth that spotlight in somebody's life, and decide when you want to be in that light. (Hint: now's a good time to start.)
3. "You act like I'm uptight and then I follow suit. I become uptight. It is the most frustrating dynamic on the planet. It drives me crazy. I can't stand it."--Marnie
We spend so much time around our friends and significant others that it becomes hard to not internalize everything they think about us. Eventually, we come to see ourselves only through their eyes. But the way we perceive ourselves and the way they perceive us are two different sides to the same coin. It's important that we let ourselves grow on our own, and not get stuck in the identities they've created for us.
4. "I don't even want a boyfriend. I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time, and thinks i'm the best person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me."--Hannah
We live in a very twisted world that, for all its insistence on labels, has a very convoluted apprehension of those labels. We don't want the pressures of obligation when we're not even sure what we want to do with our own lives, let alone someone else's. But if you strip away the cliche notions and expectations, we all just want somebody to care about us. We want somebody to think we're special. It's frustrating when the person we think is special doesn't think we're special in return, but in that frustration is the ability to know that it's time to walk away and find someone else - someone who likes us more than they dislike preconceived societal norms.
5. "I'm attracted to everyone when I first meet them. And then it wears off. It always wears off." --Jessa
The best thing about being attracted to someone from the get-go is that you don't know that your notions of them are wrong. Everything is so full of possibility and chance, and when the specific of who that person is starts coming into play, we have to qualify the potential with reality.
6. "It wasn't love the way I imagined it but if just felt weird if I didn't know what she was up to or whatever."--Adam
Even though dating had become way more casual and it's rare that we put labels on thing anymore, that doesn't make it any less meaningful. Love often comes in the most surprising and unexpected forms, and fighting the forms in which it appears tends to be pretty futile. There's a certain freedom in not only seeing the love that's offered to us as an opportunity, but appreciating it for its unique features. Maybe your teaching someone something, or maybe they're the ones teaching you. Maybe your relationship is built solely on being homebodies together, and that's okay; Fighting that is exhausting. Questioning it is exhausting.
