How did we get to a point where it’s okay to waste people’s time and then just drop them like they never existed?
Maybe I’m a rare one but I get attached. I can’t spend a lot of time with someone without getting attached to them and caring about them and then when they just leave I’m left wondering what I did wrong and why I wasn’t good enough.
I want so much more than this new version of “dating.”
I want to talk and get to know each other. I want date nights and Sunday morning breakfasts. I want the awkward moments of meeting the families and the inside jokes.
I want to matter enough for you to be honest with me and to tell me where you stand with me. I want enough of a relationship to know when it starts and when it’s over.
I want to find the man of my dreams and build a life together. I want to get married and have kids. I want a home and a dog. I want to go to bed with the same man every night and wake up with him every day.
But instead, we have millions of people at our disposal every day. We’ve opened the door to being able to flip through human beings and pick out ones we “like” solely based on location, availability, and looks.
We’ve become a society where we don’t make real, deep connections but we’re constantly connected to hundreds or thousands of people.
Dating has become such an ambiguous thing.
You "talk" and you "hang out" and a few months later the infamous line comes out "you're great, but I'm not really interested in dating anyone right now, but we can keep hanging out."
And then you're there thinking then what have we been doing the last couple months? What was the point of the time we spent together?
We don't put labels on our relationships. We can hang out and go out together, but we're not boyfriend and girlfriend. That would mean we're off the market to the other people we're "talking to."
We might actually have to commit to someone else and think about their wants and needs instead of just our own. What an outlandish idea.
We can talk, hang out, have sex, whatever, but we can't put a label on it because then when we get bored, lose interest, or something better comes along we would actually owe someone else an explanation of our choices.
Without the label, we can just stop talking to them and that's fine. We don't have to say goodbye to them because we weren't actually with them. And poof that "relationship" is over before it ever even officially began.
What happened to getting to know someone, dating them, committing to them and if it didn't work you broke up, grieved, and moved on? Where did that go?
We'll send people a naked picture of ourselves, but we won't label our self as their girlfriend or boyfriend. All of a sudden that's our new normal?
Am I really the only one left who wants something real instead of this sad excuse for love these days?
*Photo from Pixabay no attribution required
