When I began college, I thought that perhaps I should gain a boyfriend and finally stop being that friend that’s always single; the distant third wheel squeaking in the back for any attention my coupled friends would show me.
Yet, the boys I met were mainly from fraternities and we often would only hang out for a few incidental moments, with our time mostly filled with him talking about how extraordinary he was. Not asking to go on a date, but to merely hang out at his place or meet him at some social gathering, where he drank so much alcohol prior to seeing me that he could barely remember my name. Then despite any drinking impairment he may have had, he always immediately tried to get me alone with him, while his friends gave us sly glances and held up their beers in a congratulatory manner.
Each time this happened, I knew that the intention was not to get to know me personally but, instead, to have sex with me.
Quickly, I would try to make any dire excuse to evacuate the area, with the boy furiously looking at me since I had refused to be his new sexual object for the night. Then, in desperation to look “cool” in front of his male friends by aimlessly gathering women into his bedroom, he would make any manipulative false promise to have me remain by his side. Which usually involved blaming me for “misunderstanding” the situation or that his aura of sexual urgency was all “in my head,” as his charcoal eyes intensified on my dark lips and his hands couldn’t seem to find place their place away from legs.
Disheartened that fraternity boys were not offering me any form of commitment, my naïve self-thought that possibly I could try Tinder, this dating app where some of my high school friends had met their boyfriends. But I soon realized that Tinder wasn’t any better. All of the messages I received from men were about meeting alone, late at night in their bedroom or a yearning for an exchange of risqué messages, which I readily declined.
Now a year later, I am still extremely single.
It seems that no matter where I turn, the dating world seems to be gorged with boys who deeply desire nothing but sex. Obsessed with their image of appearing manly, they became terrified into not “catching feelings” and they fiercely refuse to gain any type of romantic connection with a female. Instead, relying on meaningless sex to satisfy their sexual urges.
With this hookup culture in place and empowered by free dating apps like Tinder, society seems to have destroyed traditional dating.
Now individuals impatiently judge if one is worthy to date or have sex with merely by their initial appearance. Dating apps are structured in a format to cater to the user, which in turn brings people to constantly regard their potential partners in a perspective of what he or she can do for them, while also serving as a symbol that there might always be someone more attractive or better than their current companion.
