As millennials, we live in a society with unlimited access to information. With the Internet at our fingertips, we research everything we do or buy. And, we’re damn good at it too. We don’t go to a restaurant without consulting Yelp. We would never purchase a flight without using a price-comparison site and wouldn’t dream of buying any electronic without reading reviews on Amazon.
This information revolution is life-changing. We know we’re getting the best deal for the best product because we carefully weighed the pros and cons and made a decision after viewing all the available information.
There’s never uncertainty. Never any risk. And Lord forbid we buy something we don’t like, we can always return or at least exchange it.
This backfires in one sector of our life: dating. There are no reviews online for boyfriends. No stars. No ratings. No history reports. If we want to date someone seriously, we need to take a risk without having all the information available and without knowing if there’s someone better right around the corner.
Since we don’t have access to this information, we do the next best thing. We get advice from friends. We are a generation of advice sluts. We ask advice from one girl, get solid advice, then turn around and ask advice from the next guy. Of course this doesn’t suffice because it’s very difficult:
A. To get honest advice from a friend unless the person we’re dating is truly awful, at which point our friend might say "he really sucks."
B. For the friend to know the nuances of our relationship. Unless you tell them everything, there's no way for them to understand every aspect.
So advice from a friend is typically broad, skewed, and biased. Not at all objective.
Without any level of objectivity while dating, we’re left with an uncertainty. An uncertainty we’re not accustomed to dealing with. Is there someone else out there better for me? We can never know for sure. Since we don’t definitely know, we don’t commit.
We revel in the gray area of relationships. In fact, we’re still swiping on Tinder while pooping. We’re not even sure why because we’re happy with our man. But who knows? There might be someone out there better for us, and we’ll be damned if we miss him.
A lot of us don’t even know if we’re dating exclusively. While that’s okay, what’s not okay is that we’re too afraid to ask because asking jeopardizes the entire relationship. It makes us seem needy or overly invested. I’ll never understand why it’s considered too invested to ask if you’re exclusive after sleeping with him for three months.
Dating apps have only exacerbated the problem. They distort our sense of reality, making us feel as if we have unlimited dating options. All looking for someone to share their lives with. With all those options, why commit? Odds are there’s someone out there who’s a better fit.
There are plenty of fish in the sea.
People who say that hackneyed proverb have never fished. If they actually fished, they would know that while there are millions of fish in the sea, you only catch a few (if any); 99 percent of fish don’t bite.
We’re a generation who can’t commit to relationships because we’re always looking for the better person—the better deal. We’ve learned not to make risks when buying products because we don’t have to, but now, when faced with something that’s extremely risky, choosing someone to date, (Is it even that risky? You can always break up.) we avoid the risk completely.
We don’t commit. We act like we’re dating but avoid labels like the plague because, you know, just in case. We’re a generation who’s having a ton of relationships without having any meaningful ones.
There’s no real solution to the millennial dating problem. I could say learn to take risks. Learn to commit to someone realizing that you’ll never know if there is someone out there who’s better for you.
But how?
It’ll be different for everyone, but if there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s use the web to figure shit out. For some of us, sheer acknowledgment of the problem may be enough to change our actions. For others, it’ll take some more introspection. Some more exploration.
Whatever it is, research it. You’re a millennial. Figure it out before it’s too late. Don’t let someone special pass you by. There aren’t as many biting fish in the sea as you think.
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