Lovers In A Dangerous Time: The Death Of The Date

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Since entering university, does it feel like your love life has taken a turn for the…short-lived? I know being in our 20’s is supposed to be about experiencing tons of different people and finding out what we like, but somehow, I don’t think that we’re taking any valuable lessons away from experiencing faux-mances, that have a last-call expiration date on them.

We’re certainly part of a generation that demands instant gratification; we want our internet to work quickly and without fault, we want to say a big “fuck you” to an entry level position, even though we have no qualifications other than our ego, and we definitely don’t want to feel like we’re alone, so we download Tinder and “go out” on weekends. But what do these brief rendezvous do for us?

I’m thinking back to the last couple of romantic situations that I’ve found myself in- none of them have lasted over one week or been worthy of a tear-filled, pizza coma. Maybe I suck, or maybe there’s something more to this modern day faux-mance. From what I’ve done and seen and heard, here’s how it shakes down a lot of the time for us singles:

  1. You’ve been mildly Facebook-stalking someone because you briefly met them at a party and shared a connection, and by connection I mean sexual tension.
  2. Now, because they clicked “attending” to that kegger on Friday, you’re definitely going to go.
  3. You go to that kegger.
  4. You see them.
  5. You do your infamous sexy eyes from across the room, which are actually just Steve Buscemi.
  6. You talk to the person.
  7. Maybe you kiss, maybe you go home together.
  8. Maybe you text the next day.
  9. Maybe It fizzles out.

We aren’t taking time to work at romance, yet it seems that we’re constantly looking for it with devices like Tinder. We have so many outlets that make it easy to reach out to people, so why don’t we use them to actually communicate?

Our generation’s idea of dating has become more like waiting around for that someone to inevitably shatter the superficial perception we have of them, by doing one thing that we don’t like, even though we could have liked tons of other things about them, but just didn’t want to put the effort into finding them out.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m totally guilty of everything I just mentioned. One time, a guy that I was “talking to” told me that he made a pumpkin pie, and I stopped messaging him. There’s something I just really dislike about pumpkin pie. I didn’t know enough about him to let the whole pie fiasco be drowned by his other likeable qualities, and therefore, an exciting could-have-been romance was determined by a pastry.

We need to bring back the date. We need to bring back face time…and not the kind that happens over a little screen with like, an alien as a switchboard operator. We need to bring back awkward conversations about our siblings or our favourite colour. We need to use our social platforms as tools for launching into real life interactions, so that we can either confirm or deny our attractions, through a more informed lens.

Our love lives have become as much about impatience as our demands for a fast-working internet have, or our desire to be recognized for our ability to run a multi-million dollar company straight out of a liberal arts degree. We don’t want to wait and find out more about a person, we want to make a final decision about them, sum them up, swipe left or right, without even speaking to them.

At this rate, by the time we graduate university, instead of knowing how to communicate in a mature, open and intimate way…we won’t. It will also be difficult to fill the standards that we place on one another, due to this impersonal approach to romance that we have. We need to stop disliking guys because they wear bad shoes, you know? Or because a girl used three exclamation marks instead of two!!!!!

I’m not saying that we should all be in committed relationships, I’m just saying that making snap judgements about a person can be easy, and wrong, especially out there in the proverbial fish tank of love.

So next time you’re on Tinder and you see a picture of a guy holding a fish, ask him about that fish.