Can We Find Love In A Hopeless Place?
In the land of swipe right and double taps, it has become incredibly easy for us to show our interest in everything the world has to offer from the touch of our fingertips. Remember the days when you couldn’t even use your cell phone until after 7pm because of an old school technique called “minutes?" Or when you had to call your boo’s house phone and put on your most polite voice so his/her mother would give them the phone? Sheesh, that feels like a life time ago when it’s only been 10 years. It’s crazy how much technology has changed since then. It’s changed the way we make friends, the way we get jobs, the way we socialize and especially the way we date.
I’ve always been the relationship type of girl. Dating was cool every now and then but I just always felt best knowing there was one person by my side, riding this thing out together.
My last relationship lasted for 5 years and I thought this was it. I hit the jackpot! Sike, thought it was. We realized we weren't riding the same wave after all and decided to remain friends.
Remember earlier when I said technology changed so much over 10 years? Things changed even FASTER from when I started dating my ex until today. (This was back when Facebook was only college students and Instagram wasn't even a thing yet!) Imagine how I felt when I finally entered the dating world again in such a digital influenced era?? It was like teaching your elderly grandma how to use the Internet for the first time. NOTHING made sense. I tried dating apps and ended up deleting them within the same week. It wasn’t my style at all.
I made the mistake a lot of us do and pulled a "wash and repeat" a.k.a dated someone from my past. The familiarity of the situation was great but once the good feelings wore off, I was left with the shitty ones. The feelings that make you remember why this person was an ex to begin with. I was entering a vicious cycle and wasn't liking how it made me feel. When I finally figured out where I wanted to take my love life, adding that to my preferences, location, I was left with a very slim picking. It shouldn’t be this hard for someone like me to find someone! or was it?
After speaking with some of my guy and girl friends, I realized that this wasn't just a Tiffany problem, it was a lot of people in their 20s problem. My girls friends wanted something stable to begin building a future with and they kept meeting these fickle, fast talking guys. My guys friends wanted girls that were genuine in their motives but kept finding ones that wanted guys for what they could do for them without bringing anything to the table themselves. In conclusion, both sides were fed up with the current state of dating. With those results, could you blame them?
Speaking to them reminded me of those old school movies when the kids have that first middle school dance and all the boys are on one side and the girls are on the other side of the gym. Everyone just holding up the wall, waiting for the other person to make the first move. What's the point of putting yourself out there when it will just be the same ol' bullshit once again, right? Wrong.
We block ourselves from potentially building and forming a good thing because we feel entitled.
Even those of us that claim we really want something, we feel entitled to a partner without putting in the REAL effort. We take things slow. We don't like to put labels on things, just want to see where it'll go by endless text conversations and occasionally hanging out. We keep that person at an arm's length, creating this one foot in, one foot out kind of the situation because it's safe. We think we're protecting ourselves but we're honestly playing with their emotions and ours. But does it really matter? There's always more fish in the sea, there's always someone else out there, we can always just keep swiping right...
As millennials we tend to quit jobs and hobbies because it's not fun anymore or we simply don't like it. Unfortunately, we also apply these aspects to different parts of life. If there is always something new and trendy, when do you have time to appreciate anything? More than ever, we're living in this grass is greener on the other side mindset not realizing that your own grass would be just as green if you took the time to water it.
At the end of the day, love is out there for those of us that truly want it. What we're going through could be just another chapter of the big ass complicated book we call life. My best advice is to make sure you've worked on loving and knowing yourself completely so when the right person does come along, you'll have no choice but to be all in. Honestly truly.
