Throughout our lives, growing up, our parents, schools, and cultures have taught us for the most part how to treat others and how to want to be treated. Little girls, like myself, grow up watching romantic comedies where the man goes out of his way to treat a lady right, he sticks up for her in front of the antagonists that plague the plot, and sure, they run into problems throughout the movie, but they still end up happy in the end. And I'm sure you're thinking, "c'mon, it's a movie, you know better than to base ideas off something that isn't real," but tell that to your childhood self that still believes somewhere deep inside that Maid in Manhattan can happen in the right place at the right time. But it's not just the movies that prove the "gentleman" role is disappearing as we know it.

I guarantee if you ask your grandparents about how they met and the things grandpa did to capture his lady's attention, they're nothing like what we experience today. Little boys were taught to respect a lady, to be a companion, and to do his best to make her happy, and that was expected and taught by parents, schools, and cultures. A time where honesty and loyalty were completely normal, not considered "lucky qualities" in a person. Instead today we find ourselves plagued with men/women who play the field, lie because it's the normal thing to do, and are scared of commitment. I look at myself and three best friends who are all going through the same struggles with men. I watch them cry and want to pull out their hair in frustration as we all team together to try and analyze cryptic text messages and opened Snapchats along with mixed signals and tacky excuses for hurting them over and over again, and I can't help but wonder- is this our modern day gentleman/lady?

I know technology and norms have shifted from decade to decade, but it seems like in these past six years or so a new type of "gentleman" and "lady" has been forming. We are living in a time where hookups and one-night-stands along with the fear of commitment are seen as normal and are then taught to young children who then demonstrate that to the next generation and so forth. I am in no way saying that this is every man/woman out there, and that our search is a lost cause, because I know there are, but I am stating the fact that it's not really normal anymore to see a two people meet by chance anymore and stay together for long periods of time. I'm not a relationship expert in any way, if anything, I'm the exact opposite, but I have to say that seeing so many people around me get cheated on, used, led on, stood up, hook up, and do things that otherwise would be seen as taboo, makes me wonder how things got this way all of a sudden, and it's not just the boys anymore.

Watching my friends absentmindedly swipe left and right everywhere we go and talk about being afraid of "catching feels" as if it's some disease leaves the little girl who watched romantic comedies within me brokenhearted and confused as well. Are we all just giving up on the romance and searches of finding a companion and instead replacing it with a warm body for a night and onto the next? Is that even healthy? Are we for the most part becoming emotionally numb to the idea of monogamy? If so, why are we all still brokenhearted at the end of our daily soap opera episodes called life? I seem to ask these questions to myself in hopes that I'll find some answer to where the "lady" and the "gentleman" have disappeared to, but I have no idea, and no idea how to get it back.

Media has portrayed relationships as something to yearn for and envy, but what are young boys and girls yearning for anymore when their favorite celebrities bounce to and from one another every other week like it's nothing. We're now being exposed to all the new apps for meeting others quickly, throwing the needs for human interaction/companionship and manners that people were once expected to possess out the window. Is this the norm now? Being exposed to our modern culture and norms, we begin to feel lonely at night as we stare up at our ceilings knowing that the one person we'd want to be real ladies and gentlemen with are busy not wanting the same. Instead, they are wanting someone else or lying with a warm body they swiped right to just a few days previous.

I, along with a handful of others today, was raised to value monogamy and search for that one person who could challenge and make me want to be a better a person. Yet, I still find myself being boggled over cryptic text messages from the ones we end up "catching feelings" for, being disappointed, and moving onto the next over and over again. Being led on and falling into the games that lead us nowhere and not stopping to ask any questions along the way. So is the real "gentleman" and "lady" who are together for the long haul and will teach their children to respect and treat others the way they want to be treated rather than judging a profile based off an initial attraction for a quick hookup still around? Is there some sort of way to integrate that back into our technology-glued society? Or are we all doomed to settle with a warm body we don't want out of convenience?