“You two seem to be really close recently, are you guys dating?”

“Oh no, we’re just talking.”

“Have you guys talked at all about getting together?”

“Not yet, I’m kind of nervous how that would change our dynamic.”

As the conversation shifted to a new topic, I couldn’t help but come back to an earlier phrase. Oh no, we’re just talking. I uttered this sentence, but to be honest, I have no idea what it even means. How can I define myself in a category that makes so little sense? For example, I like to talk to my guy friends, but I’m not talking to my guy friends. Where is the line drawn? Why do these lines even exist in our modern age of dating? After a few quick google searches, I’ve come up with a decent enough definition:

Talking: When two people are not exclusive with each other nor have established what they are as a couple, but have some sort of relationship.

So here I sit and wonder why this is necessary. Why is it so hard to sit down with another person I genuinely like and have an honest conversation about our feelings? Commitment has become the fear, but it’s also the end goal. We’re living in a new age of relationships where dating is rare and closed-off emotions are the norm.

We don’t commit to one another because we don’t see the point. Why commit when we can comfortably be in the “talking” stage and still live up the single life? The idea of being intimate with another person has gone from long talks under a starry sky, to long text conversations back and forth until late hours of the night. We believe that it’s easier to be in this stage of “talking” than to simply sit down and express our feelings. We complain that grand romantic gestures are no longer a thing, but we don’t take the time to fix this.

Yes, maybe relationships in our society have evolved, and though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we need to learn to change with them. Maybe try looking up from the phone when out to eat with your S.O., or even simply going out to eat rather than constantly staying in and watching Netflix. Instead of long text conversations, how about a phone call, or better yet, a friendly meet up on campus to work on homework and get to know one another better. The littlest moments of effort are what I believe we need in order to push past this dreaded stage of “talking” and to get back to what made dating so great.