If there's one thing I have learned in the way of romance in our generation, it's that dating isn't only hard, it's damn near impossible. I don't mean impossible in the sense that we are all doomed to be single forever, but impossible in the way that we just simply don't know how to date, and most of us don't even know what "dating" is.
We are the generation of technology and the generation of instant gratification, and that is constantly reflected in our love lives. Somewhere along the way, we have persuaded ourselves that "Netflix and chill" is the equivalent of going on an actual date, and we settle for that because we think that it's the only choice we have.
We meet people on the weekends, and when they don't text us, follow us or Snap us as soon as they leave, we trick ourselves into thinking that they just aren't interested. Instead of giving them some time (like we should do), we just shrug our shoulders and say "on to the next one." We give up on people before we even give them a chance.
We measure our attraction with the amount of social media attention we receive from a potential partner. If subtweets aren't getting favorited, Instagram pictures aren't getting liked and Snapchats aren't getting returned, we run for the hills. If someone that we are dating isn't putting up pictures of us for the world of Facebook to see, we assume they must be hiding something or that they are ashamed of us.
We are the generation that has forgotten that relationships are only the business of the two people in them.
We have come up with titles for different stages of relationships: if we're just "texting" or "talking" to someone, that means we hang out and watch movies and pretend that never going out in public isn't a problem. "Dating?" You're spending time together both in private and public, but you're still not exclusive and may never be. We act like this is normal because it's what our generation has decided the norm should be, and once again, we settle for less than what we deserve. If you have somehow made it through all of this madness and have created a relationship, then seriously, congratulations to you.
Does this sound confusing to you? Yeah ... us too.
We use Tinder and pretend we don't, send out anonymous crushes and confessions to college accounts, and run away from commitment because, deep down, most of us have the absolute worst case of FOMO.
We are the generation that watches the greatest love movies too closely and our own love lives not close enough.
What happened to the days when we walked up to the cute guy in our history class and asked him to hang out? What happened to waiting more than five minutes to text someone back? What about actually talking about our feelings when we have them?
But there is ONE great thing about dating our generation. We aren't the hopeless generation, we are the hopeful.
Even though the odds are seemingly stacked against us, we will always wake up hoping that despite the downfalls of technology, our own mentality and the actions of the rest of our generation, our own version of "The Notebook" is out there waiting for us.
