Millennials: Does This Sound Like You?

All I keep hearing are different versions of how difficult dating is, how hard it is to find Mr/Mrs. Right.

A generation full of young people who know about everything have almost nothing.

It seems there are two types of “daters” these days.

First, we have “The High School Sweethearts”; the duo that gets together young and stays together out of comfort and fear of the unknown, unchartered territory. Secondly, “The Entitled Romantics”; the singles who have an unattainable expectation of what they’re looking for and therefore cannot find it.

Am I wrong to think that perhaps apps & internet dating are to partially to blame for why people can’t find Mr/Mrs Right? I’m starting to think dating apps/websites have become the undoing of romance, bond, and true connection. The chase has been replaced by a swift swipe right to connect, and that insta-connection ends up being less right and mostly wrong. Am I right?!

Social media dating has taken first impressions to a whole new level, a completely ridiculous, unnatural level full of false expectations and therefore dysfunction. It was more difficult to disguise our personality blemishes before profiles became “a thing”. We’re in the wrong place (app world), with the wrong intentions (finding perfection), putting only the best things about ourselves on our profiles (illusions & delusions) and we wonder why we can’t find the right one.

With no chase and minimal effort, we meet up, soon learning that we are not infact compatible at all (surprise, surprise). We then revert back to our cell phone, download a new app, play the swipe game & hope it doesn’t disappoint again. Well.. good luck with that.

We so often end up running back to our last ex (x) on the roster. All at once he/she doesn’t look so bad, suddenly he/she is kinda shiny, tainted memories are now manipulated & maybe he/she deserves to be erased from the blacklist. We quickly promote them back to human form, as oppose to the previous form of “monstrous life ruiner”. Another fatal move that costs us our heart, creating more desperation & need for the app (also a martini and a nap).

In the universe of social media, where everything is hand selected by you, made up by you, photoshopped by you, edited by you, re-edited and triple checked by all 14 of your closest friends… nothing is ever as effortless as it seems. Nothing we’re putting out there is truly humbled, honest, or legitimate. With that, how can we expect to find something that is “humbled, honest & legitimate”? If your answer was “we can’t or shouldn’t”, you’re on the right path to finding what’s right for you.

The simple truth is, we’re not all that aware of what we actually want & need. In light of this, I’ve begun to ask my clients something along the lines of “what don’t you want?” verses the obvious age old tired version “what do you want?”.

I find this to be a more productive approach since what we dislike is often crystal clear after the plethora of less than glamorous opportunities to figure out our tastes. We forget that looking for what we need is much more powerful, successful & more effective than the search for what we want (more like think we want). Regardless of how you meet someone, if you’re unclear with your needs you are setting yourself up for a huge disappointment.