This is probably the most unpopular opinion right now as a Millennial: I'm ready to meet the one I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. Now I didn't say I was ready to get married immediately at the mere age of twenty, that is a whole other stance. I understand nowadays women fight back against the old maid stigma if not married and creating children of their own by thirty, and that's okay, go feminism. However, I am not one of those girls (though I am a fellow feminist wholeheartedly).

Throughout the years of my own experience and the experience I have observed of others dating, I can boil it down to one thing: dating is exhausting. Each time you go out with someone new, it'll end two ways: you continue to date them and get married, or you end things at a certain point, never knowing how much time and emotion you will invest in them and drain of you. Dating kinda sucks, right? Putting yourself out there like that, only to be preyed and stomped on most times.

Then there's your first love; they were the one not meant for you, or so you thought since you were so young, but will stay a part of you forever, comparing your future relationships to them. Some people will take years to figure out their type; some will end up walking right into them (lucky). For me, I feel like I've been through the ringer with dating and have my standards set. They're mature standards that you don't usually see at the age of 20, especially in guys (sorry not sorry, it's science).

So, I will stay somewhat content being single and searching, rather than in a relationship and unhappy. This weekend I watched my biological father finally marry the best woman after being together for eight long years and creating two wonderful siblings of mine in that process. I am so glad he has finally found that love near the age of forty and her near the age of thirty, but I do not want it to be that long of a process for me. Then there is my mother, who I watched as I was growing up going through these potential stepfathers of mine, taking a toll on both me as her child without the stability of a man to look up to in the house and her going through establishing relationship after relationship (she married an awesome guy too when I was in fifth grade, giving me two siblings I love in the process; though it took some growing up to realize that). Instead of sharing sentimental moments with someone who will one day become a stranger and a memory, wouldn't you want to share them with someone you can look back on them with decades later? I know I do.