It’s fair to say there’s a crisis happening in the world of modern dating. Over the past four years, I’ve been trying to find someone worth dating long term and constantly failing. It’s not that I haven’t met great matches, it’s that online dating has created a disaster that makes forming meaningful relationships really difficult. In short, the dating scene totally sucks, and that’s the understatement of the year.
- We’re in an endless competition. Before online dating, there was always a chance that the guy you liked could meet someone else before you two got together, but these days, it’s almost guaranteed. There’s always someone else in the picture — all he’s got to do is swipe left. We’re in a land of never-ending choices but it’s rare that we actually get selected.
- We’re not thoughtful anymore. It’s bad enough that chivalry is at an all-time low, but even women are guilty of giving fewer sh*ts about making actual effort anymore. A first date used to be a magical time where we felt sick with anticipation, but now we’ve been on so many first dates that never lead to a second that we’ve stopped hoping for more. We mistake a text message with real effort and have replaced intimacy with a carefully selected emoji.
- We all have major walls up. Online dating has created an exhausting cycle of being messed over time and time again. Nearly everyone you know who’s tried online dating has at least one horror story of disappointment. People are getting ghosted, dating multiple people at the same time, and sleeping around instead of seeking committed partnerships because no-strings-attached sex is so readily available. Because of this, we all walk around with invisible walls up to protect us from actual feelings.
- We’ve created an idea of perfection that doesn’t exist. We have a new-found sense of perfection entitlement, these days. We’ll write a guy off for having the most minor of flaws — he takes too long to respond, he’s not tall enough, he doesn’t have a six pack, etc. We create dealbreakers that are so insane, it makes it pretty well impossible that we’ll ever find what we think we’re looking for.
- We don’t know what love is anymore. We’ve created an ideal love based on social media standards. Love is a viral engagement video; love is a hashtag, a man crush Monday followed by a woman crush Wednesday. Love is what we see online, and not what we feel inside. It’s what it looks like on the outside that counts now.
- We can’t commit. We can’t even commit to our own friends due to one reason: options. We’re a technology-driven generation whose choices and options have been exponentially amplified due to a tiny device we keep in our pockets. A pocket of choices and a pocket full of reasons that we don’t need to commit to just one person or thing.
