Graphic by kayleigh woltal
I’ll be the first to admit that I am a bit of a hopeless romantic. Maybe it stems from too much time inhaling Sandra Bullock’s entire body of work, but I’ve always believed in true love. I’ll meet a guy and, for a split second, I let myself consider that he may be my soulmate and we may be about to chart a course to marriage and babies and a white picket fence the second I shake his hand. Luckily, I’m smart enough to know that thinking like that is a little delusional, and so my search for my Prince Charming is not deterred by Jamie from Bio 101 not being ready to get down on one knee just because I let him borrow a pencil. I would not say that I’m racing down the aisle to get married or that I am even really looking for a serious and committed relationship. It’s more like I love the novelty of love and falling in love, which makes dating one of my favorite pastimes.
I love getting all dressed up and going out for dinner with a guy (once I get over the initial impulse that he is going to kill me on this date). I used to never understand it when someone told me that they weren’t interested in dating because they didn’t think it was worth it. It didn’t make any sense to me that someone would cut themselves off from the opportunity to love and be loved. However, talking with my girlfriends has made me realize that the emotional exhaust some women feel towards dating stems from the dilution of American dating culture.
Let’s face it, dating now isn’t like how it is in the movies. More often than not when I ask people my age how they met the person that they are dating now, the answer is the internet. Tinder. Bumble. Instagram DMs. There are seemingly endless channels through which you can casually meet someone on the internet. A survey conducted by CollegePulse found that of the 1,000 college students polled, around 80% reported that they utilized dating apps. The casual nature of dating apps has taken away a lot of the pressure and structure that used to be associated with dating.
Perhaps the following situation sounds familiar to you: you match with a cute enough guy on Tinder. He hits you with a pick up line as his opening and you chat for a while about your majors or your hobbies. You don’t hear from him for a while and then he texts you, “u up?” at 11 p.m. You are up, and so you tell him as such and then next thing you know, you’re watching Netflix for 45 minutes in some dude’s sparsely furnished apartment with one pillow. You and Mr. One Pillow hook up and the cycle of him texting you at night continues for a few months. Somehow, you start to get attached to Mr. One Pillow and you spend a lot of time agonizing over the state of your relationship and where it’s going. You start doing little things like being available to him all of the time or taking care of his emotional needs because you like him and you want him to like you back. Eventually, you ask him what the two of you are in hopes of quelling the agonizing ambiguity of the state of your relationship. He tells you that he’s not looking for anything serious because he isn’t into relationships, and he thought you knew that. Of course that doesn’t mean he wants to stop having sex or that you need to stop being avaliable to do nice things for him, he still really likes that and oh, did he mention that he thinks you’re super a super cool girl for not wanting to put a label on things?
There isn’t anything wrong with participating in hook-up culture, just so long as you’re doing it because you just want to hook up. If you want a relationship, it doesn’t make sense to seek one with someone whose correspondence makes it clear that they are just looking for a booty call. Too often girls make themselves smaller and their needs less in hopes of carving out an intimate romantic connection from the marble that hookup culture provides. A lot of these girls expend energy trying to come off as chill or cool by acting as though they do not care what a boy does for them, only to agonize over it in private.
I’ve long since realized that there are periods of life where hookup culture serves me, and periods of my life where it doesn’t. In the periods of my life where it doesn’t serve me, I have created some tenements to help me separate the two.
The easiest way to radically change the way you date is by clearly defining your expectations with yourself. Write out a list of what you are looking for and live by it without compromise. Think about the kind of lifestyle and traits that you want your future partner to have and what role you want them to play in your life. Laura Rubin, the creator of the journaling company AllSwell Creative says, “When you’re single, you have the incredible opportunity to choose your partner, the more self-aware you are of the positive and negative attributes you’re looking for in a partner, the more discerning you’ll be about who’s right for you.” Figuring out what your red flags and deal breakers are beforehand prevents you from potentially making the wrong move when you have to make a judgment on the fly.
It can also be helpful to do some journaling and reflection on your relationship with dating and love. Introspection can help you work through some problems that may be holding you back from curating healthy relationships. It can also offer some degree of clarity about your own needs, which can help you better express those needs to a future partner.
For some people, sticking to a strict list of what you want can be a bit intimidating when your potential partner starts to balk at meeting the expectations that you’ve laid out for yourself. It’s 100% easier to settle and work for something that doesn’t fully serve you than cutting a guy at the first sign of trouble and waiting it out for the kind of treatment you think you deserve. Countless magazines and TikToks titled “How to Get Him to Commit to You” or “5 Ways to Convince Him You’re Wife Material” have created the narrative that it’s a woman’s job to convince some guy to give her love that she deserves.
The truth is that modern dating culture has completely decentered women from dating. Back in the day, women used to be the objects of desire while men were the agents of pursuit, displaying their ability to provide and care for a woman. That kind of thinking may be kind of outdated, but that doesn’t mean you should be afraid of asking too much of the men that you date — you’re worth it. In the 1800s, if a guy was into you, he had to come to your parents house with his financial and genealogical information readily available. So it’s not insane to think that the guy who is pursuing you can text you back and pay for dinner.
TikTok is full of discourse about 50-50 dating — and you can think whatever you want about that — but a surefire way to see if a guy is interested and invested in you is to see if he is willing to go out of his way to treat you and make you feel special. If you decide that you want to incorporate having a 50-50 relationship into your dating life, you have to make sure that it’s actually 50-50 (financially, emotionally, socially, etc). A genuinely 50-50 relationship between a man and a woman is hard to come by in a society that is not 50-50 for men and women, which is why it’s often wise to not go into a relationship expecting it to be 50-50. Instead, dating a guy who is initially willing to give you 60 to your 40 could potentially keep you from wasting your time in the long run.
However, the best way to keep yourself from wasting your time is by prioritizing yourself. Even though dating is fun and it often seems like society is saying we all have to do it, it’s a non-essential activity. Investing in yourself and your self care will allow you to only act out of want and not need when it comes to building relationships. Centering yourself will also help you navigate your general life with more certainty, which opens you up to new opportunities everywhere. Creating a standard for how you want to be treated and adhering to that standard can only help you in the long run, even if it delays the arrival of Prince Charming.