Modern day dating, it’s a joke right? Or could it at least come with a hand guide? Some kind of identifier so you don’t have to use your heart as a punching bag for this process of elimination. Seriously, what the hell? Have you tried dating these days? Well have you? For your sake I hope not.
Lets pretend for half a second that you actually get past the meeting point. You know the kind where you spend countless hours sifting through online dating sites, pretending to carry conversation on the most basic insights to your life to an utter stranger; via text. Meeting people out, unless its a mutual connection, is well, a seemingly dying phase.
And even if you do get past the first date, you know the one where you determine if you could actually like this person and want to know them better, it doesn’t get much easier from there. Now we get to add in terms like ghosting, bread crumbing, zombie-ing, benching, catfishing or catch-and-release. Don’t know what these terms mean? Well, again, wouldn’t a handbook be grand? Try Google.
Mental games are played and emotions are seared. Honesty seems to be an impossible feat, for no one ever says what they mean, for that would go against some unbound rule. It’s as though there are unspoken rules in mannerisms and actions, but finding the baseline of these rules, isn’t to be found.
Then there is the sexual aspect. Why are there different rules for men versus women? Why is it that the very moment sex comes into play, everything always changes? What about finally getting what you want (both sexes) suddenly loses the thrall? Can women not have the same wants, the same desires, without hindrance? Is it about the idea of capturing control, of capturing the target?
And what is dating actually? It feels like everyone is dating multiple people at once and yet no one ever talks about it. No one ever communicates, for fear of losing what they do have. Wouldn’t it be easier to just state that you’re openly dating others? Wouldn’t that cut back on the half-truths and misdirection? As a women, I would almost prefer to know, for it doesn’t always have to be a one way street, thats a myth. And even if that truth ended it, isn’t it fair? Must we be so greedy with other people’s hearts? Undoubtedly, that is what is invested, to some degree.
Is it me or is it absolutely ludicrous that the whole purpose of dating is to get to know someone, but no one actually shows themselves in their basic form. That is inadvertantly shown through time, time that often isn’t granted. Then theres the numbers game. How many people that are involved in the mix, then changes the way you show yourself or the lights in which you are seen. Is it completely lost that people date to get to know another person?
Then theres the emotions. Women don’t get there on their own, but more times than not, it feels like women are left emotionally without much communication or acknowledgment. It starts with a common path, often times led by the male, only to be left by the male. Is there some kind of ability men have to turn emotions on and off? Can someone please explain to me how men have the unprecidient ability to make women feel crazy?
Let’s not even dive deeply into social media, but there is absolute truths that it plays a pivotal part in modern-day dating. The obsessive stalking, the validations, the constant touch of knowing what entities are present in others lives, the pops of updates to their lives. Most often, we as a society use social media to present our best self, to show the world as we want to be seen and not as we truly are in raw form. Social media too, has changed the mannerism in how we now date.
Why does everything have to be so complicated? So elusive? So much of a game. I almost don’t want to play it, for how can you play a game, if you don’t know the rules in which to play by.
Just Janke 