As a young 23-year-old I hated online dating. I hated the fact that there was the intent of wanting the same thing because it was somehow shameful and/or embarrassing, mostly because I wasn’t confident in myself. I hated that I had to result to this and couldn’t wait to meet a fairytale prince to show up at a bookstore – bookstores that I spent a lot of time in. And I hated the fact that I hated all of this – because fairytales aren’t true.
Millennials these days have an unproportionate amount of intrinsic belief that humans are monogamous. Yes, articles always point to Disney – but if a person makes the same mistake more than 2 times, they’re contributing to their own failure, no?
The main reason why I hated dating while young was… because I was young. And so was everyone else. And the people that were older that I filtered for still saw me as young. And now I can see how young as I was, even though I didn’t think so at the time – in other words, immature.
No, I was not at the wrong place at the wrong time. Dating in your 20s is the worst; no one knows what they want but everyone thinks they know what they want. Young men with no ambition want something casual and young women with a career and their mid-level positions want to settle. Listen, ladies, it’s just not time yet. Live it out and enjoy it. I am now meeting hoards of married couples at my age who wish that they got to try online dating (they truly don’t, though).
Online dating in my twenties was terrible. People could not control the amount of drunkenness they were after work, and no one could control how much they want to wake up next to someone the next morning. This cycle led to many of me and my friends becoming jaded.
Luckily, I quit.
I stopped the drink dates, coffee dates, lunch dates, and brunch dates altogether for 2 years. That led to me thinking I met the person of my dreams (who turned out to be the person of my nightmares). And after a major life change I decided to try online dating again.
Please believe me that online dating in your 30s is the absolute opposite of online dating in your 20s. At this point you just don’t give a fuck and neither does anyone else. No matter what country, city, what career, what mindset you’re in, you’re already so confident and happy with your body and mind that no one else’s opinion matters anymore. And because you don’t care, you start to meet the people of your 20s’ dreams.
CEOs with $100 million Series A VC investments. PhDs in molecular biology. People who grew up in the exact home and neighbourhood environment that you did. Everything of your goddamn 20’s dreams and beyond. It’s insane.
None of it will matter. Finally at age 30 and beyond you realize that home ownership (especially in Toronto) and everything that screams “validation” mean fuck all to your well-being. People stop trying to one-up your travel experiences, and they stop competing with your accomplishments. You start attracting more people of this calibre because all you want is to meet kind, generous, and sweet people. That’s all. When you expect very little, sometimes you get a whole damn lot.
You don’t need someone who understands your childhood. You need someone who understands your needs NOW and much later, whatever that looks like for you.
And for me, there are so many checklists to fulfill, but in the end none of them will really matter. It’s been so long that I’m just trying to find someone understanding, kind, loving, and not a Trump supporter. Just like a recent date had mentioned about a great sales person: “it’s impossible to hire the right sales person, because they will either be able to only train their team or be the best sales person on their team”. I believe the opposite – I think we can be the best team. And I believe there is more than a fairytale.
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