Being a twenty-something year old in the year 2016 can mean a lot of things. You could be in or recently graduated from college, crippled by student loans and coming of age stress. You might be struggling to hold a job that barely covers your rent and makes you reconsider this whole “growing up” thing. You may find yourself realizing that all your high school friends have changed and moved on from what you remember. Some of them are married already. Some are expecting a child. How could this be when it feels like only a few years ago you were a child yourself? So while your buddy from football is on his second marriage, and your best friend from theater is expecting kid number 2, you are stuck in the scariest, most confusing and frustrating place there is: The dating world.
Unfortunately for you, you didn’t marry your high school sweetheart and you now have to endure through the toxic, technology-obsessed, war zone of a dating world our society has now created.
As a 20 year old myself, I can’t attest much to how dating was prior to technology. The beginning of my dating career was also the beginning of the texting age. Even so, texting was rare as you usually only had so many texts per month without being charged an extra fee. I remember calling my boyfriend after school, sitting on my bed, and talking to him about how our day was (as if he didn’t already know because of our classes together). As young as we were, there was still communication. We knew how to hold a conversation.
Today is different story. From texting to social media to the dating sites and apps we have, dating in this day and age has dwindled to a toxic petty war for power and image protection. Texting has become the foundation of any dating situation these days. Want to know what someone is doing? Send a quick: “What you up to?” Want to know their hobbies? Send them an ever-eloquent: “So, what do you do…?” Feeling daring? Turn any sentence into flirting with a good ol’ semi-colon and end parentheses: “Do you like toast? ;)” Did that conversation go well and now you’ve built up the courage to ask them out on a “date?” Send them “Netflix and chill?” (Okay, don’t do that.)
One might argue that a positive of texting would be that it allows time to sort out exactly what you want to say. I can agree that I’ve been in situations where I took a while to text back because I didn’t quite know how to respond. However, does that detract from the ability to have an organic conversation? When you’re talking to someone face to face, you don’t have that time. When you’re getting to know someone through text they could ask you, “So, what’s your favorite band?” You can receive that text, jump over to their Facebook page, find out their music interests and then text back accordingly. Granted, that’s a pretty dark example. Hopefully you love yourself enough to not pretend to like things you don’t just so someone finds you attractive.
I could go on and on about my negative feelings towards texting in today’s dating world, but what is the alternative? Well, how about phone calls for starters? You can even shoot them a text asking if they’re available to talk. Sure, some might be taken back by it at the beginning, but if they’re worth your time, shouldn’t they be okay with having a real conversation with you? You’d be surprised how much good communication can benefit any relationship. So next time you’ve found someone you’d like to get to know, take advantage of that “call” function on your cell phone. I heard it’s still there.