Dating & Singleness: An Honest Monologue
Buckle up, buttercup.
Dating and singleness are a few words that trigger a movie reel of memories to play through your mind. Some people may roll their eyes and others may laugh. Some people may get annoyed, and some may smile. If you feel all those emotions when you read those words and relive those memories, you are probably in a similar phase of life as me.
Welcome to the wonderful world of being single in your late twenties, in the 2020’s. A world in which air quotes have to be used constantly because it’s all confusing and ever changing.
Some things to note if you either aren’t in the age group I am talking about, or you have been in a committed relationship for a while:
Number 1: We live in a culture that glorifies unlimited options. Between dating apps with easy swipe options if you don’t so much as like someone’s hair color, to the endless scrolling we do on social media, there is no shortage of “unnatural” ways to meet thousands of people. Ariana said it best: “thank you, next”. And the slogan continues to ring true for all things dating related. Like our Amazon Carts, there’s a roster of people we are keeping just close enough in case we want to come back at any point… Consumerism at its finest.
Number 2: There are, what feels like, 20 stages to dating, and I am sure there is a new stage I am missing, but here they currently stand:
Texting (not responding for 3 hours or 3 days as to not seem desperate)
Talking (guarding our hearts with sky high walls and only giving answers you know will get the desired reaction)
Situationship (as undefined and confusing as it sounds)
Dating (going on dates outside of our tiny apartments with another person)
Exclusivity/Boyfriend & Girlfriend (having a conversation about what you “are” and establishing that you aren’t seeing other people now).
Most people don’t make it out of the Talking or Situationship stage without being “ghosted” or “left on read”. This is probably because one person (or both) had 6 other options that they liked better on their roster, not because they had an adult conversation about why they weren’t a right fit for each other. *rolls eyes* It has all become a game of who can seem more put together and less available. A game of who can give the right answers.
What’s worse is we all know we do these things, we all hate it when it is done to us, and yet we don’t want to lose the game or be alone, so we continue to be absolute assholes to other people.
Number 3: The life and beauty standards for both men and women are highly unachievable, and quite frankly (because when am I not), unrealistic, in most cases. If it weren’t for editing on 4 different apps and flat out lying about ourselves in order to come across as though we have our shit together, pores, grown out roots, and having shitty lighting, would be completely normal.
Number 4: We crave being the saddest person in the room and the happiest/most successful person in our circle of influence. It all comes down to needing attention in any form. Could be attention for being upset or attention for being joyful. There’s a desire to have an excuse to get out of events and stay at home, AND be the center of the celebration if we do choose to go out. It’s a continuous, contradictive, mental state. We want to be cared for and seen, yet don’t know what that personally looks like, or how to ask for it in a healthy way. Just because we are obsessed with self-help books, doesn’t mean we put the learning into action for more than a week, or even at all.
Number 5: Speaking of self-help books… There are 6,000+ opinions on dating, singleness, and attachment. We want to hear every single one hoping it’ll shed light on our very specific situation. We are overloaded with information meant to help us and yet we can’t even fully digest that TikTok video we saw yesterday that called us out and suggested our past partner may not have been the only one with toxic traits in the relationship…
You see, it comes full circle… we have so many ways to meet hundreds of people just with a swipe of our finger, which leads to us needing to make ourselves stand out even if it is a catfish, in turn making us upset when things don’t workout, causing us to reach for books or podcast episodes from “experts” on the topic, those “experts” all having different advice and different foundational principles, making your own foundational principles on dating shift based on the trendiest book at the time, all leading us to being completely overwhelmed with information!
It’s no wonder we all need therapists (don’t come at me, I have one too).
Whether we are making this time in our lives complex, or it has always been complex, I want to unpack it. Not as another self-help article, but as a raw view into the place some of us find ourselves in.
It’s time to talk dating; the ugly truth, the beautiful truth, and every illusive thing in between.
We will of course get to the positives! There’s just a lot of reality to digest before we can really see why it’s such a beneficial stage of life.
Confidently,
Katey
