The Loveless Twenties
The dating scene in your twenties is a push-and-pull game with rules I don't understand.
Latia Falcher
There is a popular notion that your twenties are meant to be the best time of your life. I mean, after all, this is the decade of your life where you're not only supposed "find yourself" but also experience a life-changing love. You know, that one visceral romantic relationship in films and novels that haunts our main character until their time ends. But what happens when the love thing hasn’t happened for you as it hasn’t for me? As I make my way through these formative years, dating has started to feel more hopeless than romantic, more like a chore that I haven’t been able to check off.
When I was growing up, if you had asked me what love looked like, I would have responded that love was whatever passed between Gomez and Morticia from the Addams Family films. Their connection was just so visceral and beautiful. Even after years of marriage, their adoration never wavered.
That is what I want in my love life.
However, as reality unfolded, I struggled to find my own Gomez or Morticia through high school. Even though I was preoccupied with my academics, the fact that I didn’t have a high school sweetheart like so many of my peers took a toll. It felt like nobody was checking for me, a matter of me as opposed to a question of fate or timing.
My lifelong romantic nature didn't let me give up that naive hope, praying that I would find that special person in college. Compared with high school, college was a completely different experience: there was so much variety to life there, so many options. It should have been the perfect way to genuinely connect with someone new. But nobody mentions how college life has its entrenched mating rituals— the kind that usually begins and ends with partying. So what happens when you’re not an extroverted partier? It drastically reduces the number of suitors I’d be able to interact with. It just wasn’t my thing. Since that didn't work out, I did what any twenty-something person desperate for their happily ever after would do: I made a Tinder profile.
I quickly discovered that online dating was...interesting to say the least.
If I felt like finding love was impossible to do in person, it revealed itself to be even more elusive on a dating app. Before you ask, yes, I tried other dating apps as well, including Hinge and Bumble. Unfortunately, when I started using them, it felt like playing a twisted video game, just swiping right, waiting for someone to match with me. The obstacles don’t stop at the desperate attempts to match with a mystery person, though. Some would argue that that was the easy part. When I finally did get matched up with someone (which, more times than not, was a guy), there’d be nothing waiting but dull, dry conversation.
I would try to get to know the person as a friend first and learn about their interests. Did you watch the Steven Universe Movie? Thoughts? Or What’s your favourite movie from this year? For a while, it was easier on the few occasions I’d get matched with women because they would take some time to get to know me.
As I spent more time on these apps, it became apparent that most people are on there simply to scratch a sexual itch. More and more, the opening lines in a conversation would be some leering comment: “Look at those hips and ass, damn.” In stark contrast to my eager attempts at finding love, it felt as though I was being met by a horny wall of entitled matches, far from interested in pursuing something real. The feeling persisted until I matched with a guy named Dre.
I overlooked some early concerns about our age gap (he was a grad student while I was still an undergrad) simply because he could sustain a normal conversation. I finally had someone’s attention, and it felt like a real honest connection was building. We’d update each other about our days, what we were studying, and our hopes for the future. Things were going really well. It was so promising that we decided to finally meet in person for the first time. Plans were made, and a date was promised.
Reader, the man never showed.
My only viable romantic connection was a no-show. There was no text or anything explaining why. Later he offered some excuse about conflicting schedules, but it got to the point where it seemed he wasn't serious about meeting me. Perhaps what he liked most about me was that he had my attention. My desire for love was desperate but not that desperate, so I dropped him—onto the next one.
Maybe it would be different next time. Maybe my Gomez or Morticia was one more message away.
Nothing changed, though. Match after match, and still no fairytale ending. There were a few false starts, like Elijah, who seemed different from all the other guys, until we, too, hit an impasse. I’m starting to get tired of being upbeat about my prospects. I have trooped through enough mediocre conversations and two-dimensional ‘connections’ to start feeling disillusioned with the whole idea of love. Maybe it doesn’t exist.
While it may be sad to read, I am as entitled to my pessimism as I am to my happy ending. If I cannot have one, then let me have the other.
