30 and Single: The Real Reason You Haven't Found Your Match
Most of us single people in the world all seem to have a very similar philosophy on why we have yet to meet "the one". We are too caught up in our careers and just don't have the time; we know what we want and will patiently wait for it; or the most common reason, it's a new generation. We're not our parents or grandparents, who got married when they were 18. It's different now! Right? But what's the real reason why you're still 30 and single? I mean, with all the readily available dating options online, it's so much easier to find our match. Or is it?
Think back 20 years ago, middle school for me. You met someone at the mall and thought, wow! I sure would like to see this person again. But how? You would wait until you got home from school and call up on your landline with hopes your crush would answer. Sometimes you got lucky and they had a phone in their room. If you got really lucky, they had their own line! You would talk for hours at a time until figuring out when you would see them again.
Fast forward 5 years. Along comes the Beeper! With this insane technology, you could now run to a pay phone, throw in 20 cents, and send a 143, just to let them know you were thinking about them. How cute. Let's move a bit further into time, like high school. My very first cell phone, the Nokia 8260. Remember that cute girl/guy you met in the mall? Yep, got her cell number. That 2 hour phone conversation became just 2 minutes. Those minutes were expensive! Not to mention, you needed to make sure you had enough battery power to call a few other peeps you met at the mall that night. It wasn't long after that that texting was introduced. You mean, now I don't even have to talk to you, I can just text you? This gave us as much time as we needed to answer a simple question like, what do you like to do for fun? I mean, you didn't have to be Edgar Allan Poe to respond to that one. But still, you'd take your sweet little time crafting the perfect reply before hitting the send button.
If that wasn't enough to change the dating game, then the internet certainly made its mark! Today, you meet someone at Green Rock and add them to Facebook. When you get into your office and log- on, you dig back 1 month, 6 months, 2 years? By that time, you have already made every assumption about this person before the first text. Dig a little deeper and you find out about their past relationships, work, schooling, favorite foods, and the list goes on. That awkward first date just got even more awkward. And to make things even worse, you're checking emails at the table. Is it our fault? Is this what dating has become?
So, why am I still 30 and single? The answer is clear. What was promised to make our lives easier may be true in some instances, but when it comes to dating, that's just not the case. You no longer meet someone and wonder when you'll see them next. You no longer have to hurry home so you can call them while laying in bed. But don't give up just yet! If you decide not to snoop the social pages, google their bios, or pay for an extensive background check, there just may be some hope. Until then, TTYL.
