I Am Fed Up With Modern Dating, So I’m Giving Up

Sam Burriss

Real talk — modern dating is absolutely revolting and disgusting and embarrassing. It is a bottomless pit of rejection, of heartache, and of hookup culture that has no substance.

And I’m TIRED.

Honestly, I don’t know how people do it. How do you get through the rejection? The thousands of people that you swipe yes for who are all mediocre. How do you even date someone who is mediocre?

I can’t stand the endless swiping, the hundreds of messages left unread, the ghosting of people that you genuinely liked, the false hope of it all. Weren’t we all supposed to get more mature by the time we turned 24? I swear, guys were so much better when I was high school.

Recently I talked for three weeks straight to someone I had grown to like. He was always the one to make the first move, to ask the first question, to initiate a conversation first. It seemed like everything was going well, but as soon as I got my hopes up and he asked me out, he fell off the face of the earth.

Seriously. What. The. Hell.

I didn’t do anything wrong. And even if I said something too intense or weird or sensitive, ghosting is the cowardly move to make. And everyone does it.

A couple months ago, I went on a date with a bartender I was smitten with. We talked every day for a few months and our date went smashingly well. I almost couldn’t believe it. And then out of the blue, he stopped talking to me. Just. Like. That.

And I kept wondering, what the heck did I do that scared him away? Was it something I said? Was it something I did or didn’t do?  And then I realized that it was all him. He was the asshole. And I was just the girl that he played so expertly. 

I could go on and on about the many ‘men’ who have drawn me towards them only to let me go. I could probably write a whole damn about each and every one of them. But they don’t even deserve that kind of attention.

Because these guys are cowards. And they don’t deserve my strength and my vulnerability and my beauty. So I think, I’m giving up. Not forever. But for now. I’m so tired of trying so hard with little success. I’m so tired of wanting love so badly, and never even getting to the dating part.

Modern dating is a joke. The way people toss others away. The way we text for days on end and end it with silence. The way we hook up with no strings attached. It isn’t love. It isn’t even close.

And I deserve more. And honestly, so do you.  Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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