The Selfish Solution For Women Attempting To Date In Their Twenties

There has been a lot of articles and blog posts I have read recently that talk about dating in your twenties. Let’s just keep one thing straight- it’s not fun. Unless you look like Blake Lively or literally have no standards whatsoever dating to me sounds really unbearable. Here’s how it goes down in girl world for you gents. You don’t eat for a couple of days because you want to look your skinniest, probably buy a new outfit, and drink a glass of wine or two before your date to shake the nerves. Maybe that’s just me, but the idea of going on a date with someone you drunkly made out with at a bar a week beforehand sounds utterly unappetizing.

Girls try so much harder when it comes to making sure that date is going to be abso-fucking-lutely perfect yet for the most part it always ceases to fail in some form or another. So if you couldn’t already tell, I hate dating. I put the effort into it when it feels like something worth my time but for the most part I stick to reading a book on my Kindle, eating corn chex, and hanging with my pug. My pug pays attention to me, knows when I’m feeling sad, and will watch any movie with me that I want. Now that’s what I call true romance.

Regardless of my infatuation with my pug, I find dating to be really hard. It’s not like college anymore. You can’t just meet some guy at a bar and he becomes your “friend” that you call after a pitcher of margaritas with your girls. It’s a lot harder to find that. More importantly, it feels like everyone couples up after college. A Ted Talk I watched recently summed up dating perfectly- “Dating in my 20s was like musical chairs. Everybody was running around and having fun,but then sometime around 30 it was like the music turned off and everybody started sitting down. I didn’t want to be the only one left standing up, so sometimes I think I married my husband because he was the closest chair to me at 30.”  This sounds really scary but the fact of the matter is that it’s true. What’s even scarier to believe though is that people are playing musical chairs way before their 30’s now and sometimes I feel like I’m the last one standing.

Just like finding the perfect job after college, we also seek out the perfect match. I thought finding guys who were older and had a stable job was the solution but I’ve come to find out an age doesn’t make you more mature or wiser. Just cause you have your shit together with your career doesn’t mean you have it together in other departments. So I ask myself (and you) this- why are people insisting on marriage before they are 25 all of a sudden?

Sure, it does work for some but not for most of us. Maybe if everyone took a more realistic approach to marriage I would stop judging so many people on Facebook. Not that it’s about me, but seriously people why are we doing this? Because dating sucks so we have to play musical chairs? I’m not buying it. I think we all could take a lesson or two from Beyonce and Jay Z. To me, they figured out life and marriage the right way.

Maybe if we just stopped putting pressure on ourselves in really all aspects of our lives, including dating, we wouldn’t feel the need to do things before a certain age. Instead of relishing in this new age of feminism we are living in, and trust me it’s been pretty kick ass for us girls lately, we choose to hide behind old fashion societal norms. Life is not a Nora Ephron movie. If anything, it feels more like the Hunger Games. This probably won’t change anyone’s perspective on dating and marriage but the takeaway message here is that dating in our twenties is hard and people putting pictures of their rings on Facebook with obvious captions like “I said YES!” (NO SHIT) doesn’t make us single people feel any better.

So I propose selfish solutions to this issue like traveling, working out, spending too much money on clothes and tapas, and going out with your girlfriends for one too many cocktails. Because planning a Pinterest inspired dinner for your hubby isn’t as fun as making out with a hot stranger in Spain. If none of that works out, there’s always your dog. Can I get an amen?