Millennials Still Want Love, It’s Just Harder To Find These Days Than Ever Before

Millennials Still Want Love, It’s Just Harder To Find These Days Than Ever Before ©iStock/GoodLifeStudio

Another day, another thinkpiece about how Gen Y is basically never going to find anything resembling true romance. Yawn. Instead of making gross generalizations, maybe we should celebrate everything that this generation has: the ability to dream big, tons of career choices, and less societal pressure to just get hitched already and pop out babies. Call me nuts, but I still believe that we can find love. Here’s why this gen’s romantic days aren’t numbered:

  1. We’re sick and tired of ghosting. We’ve all been ghosted and done the ghosting — let’s just stop pretending and admit it. It’s crappy but it happens. When we find someone we truly care about, we’ll never ghost them – we’ll let them know how we feel.
  2. Waiting longer means we’ll truly we ready. There seems to be a new article in the media every single day about how Gen Y is getting married much later than previous generations. This is actually a good thing, in my opinion, because it means that we’re not settling for people we’re not into and we’re open to finding the right person. Love is still in the cards for us, it’s just going to take a bit longer. Another huge plus of staying single longer than previous generations? We have time to focus on becoming who we are and what we want, so when we do meet someone that we’re into, we’re more than ready.
  3. We won’t stand for anything less than we deserve. How many women used to stay in dead-end marriages for fear of being on their own? They didn’t have any money, jobs, or opportunities. Thankfully, we’re able to have the careers we desire and choose when we want to date or get married. It’s pretty silly if a millennial woman lets a guy treat her like total crap – it’s 2015, and we know that it’s better to wait for someone who’s good for us. We can still have love, we just want to make sure it’s the right kind of love.
  4. Our version of love may look different. Some of us don’t want to get married at all. We’ll have common law relationships and live together. We’ll get married and have no kids, or we’ll procreate yet our left ring finger will stay forever ring-less. It doesn’t matter and it’s all good. Just because we don’t all want a traditional romance doesn’t mean we can’t fall in love in a way that works for us.
  5. Tinder has made us believe in that Princess moment. I believe the most popular dating app ever has actually had a positive impact on our belief in love. With every slightly awkward or just plain awful Tinder date that we go on, we hope that the next one will be better. Not even better, but our Prince Charming. We still believe in that Princess moment when we’ll be totally swept off our feet.
  6. It’s easier than ever before to meet people. Before the iPhone era and all it represents, we met cute in real life – through friends or family, at parties or school. But without those introductions, we were basically stuck being single until someone came along. Now it’s super easy to meet people. We’ve got dating apps and sites galore. If we want to fall in love, as long as we commit to the sometimes awful dating process, we can find it.
  7. We can be proactive. We don’t sit around waiting for our phones to ring anymore. We go out there and make things happen. If we’re sick of being single, we can go on a boyfriend-finding mission (or something less cheesy). How could we possibly not find romance if we’re in charge?
  8. We’ve been in love before. Just because we’re considered millennials now doesn’t mean we’ve always been this non-committal and nuts. We’ve all had serious relationships in the past and know what it’s like to be in love. Why can’t it happen again?
  9. We hate being millennials. Okay, hate might be a little strong. We do love our Netflix and chill moments. But it’s basically true. Whatever people say about us, the majority of us don’t like that we’re afraid to commit, don’t give people a fighting change, don’t answer texts, etc. We want to be better. We want to fall in love. So why can’t we?
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance lifestyle writer and editor from Toronto, Canada. In addition to writing about dating and relationships for Bolde, she also writes about movies, TV, and video games for ScreenRant and GameRant. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. You can find her on Twitter @ayatsintziras and on Instagram @aya.tsintziras.
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