The dating scene in the big city is one that will terrify the faint of heart. From blind meetups, going out to bars, to dating app swiping, you can find love, lust, and disaster in all corners of downtown. As a single man in the concrete jungle, I’ve given out my fair share of urban courtship. After a topsy-turvy start to the year 2019, I’ve come to an interesting, yet alarming, conclusion: dating is dying.
The knee jerk reaction to a statement like that would most likely be related to “hookup culture” or online dating, and how it is speeding up our traditional dating system to a more of a hump-and-dump (an awful saying) experience. I believe that this has much less to do with Tinder than it does with the culture wanting experiences as quickly as possible.
In my own life, outside of dating, I know that I have streamlined many parts of my life, and I am not alone in doing so. I order in with DoorDash more than I go out to eat, I order off of Amazon for things that I could go to a brick and mortar retail shop for, I stream movies instead of going to watch them at the theatre or from the movie store, and I uber all over town instead of relying on designated drivers or taxis. This generation wants these parts of our lives to be faster, so that we may be able to experience more of them in our limited time here on Earth.
In every single one of my dating experiences in 2019, the death of dating, as morbid as it sounds, comes up, and how my effort of taking them out to a movie, ice cream, dinner, drinks, to a wedding even (that’s another story for another time), is damn-near foreign to the girl. I understand that I’m quite young, and that not many men under 25 have the kind of money to be taking girls out on lavish dates, but this isn’t that hard to do. I mean, guys, use your imagination- this isn’t rocket science. Gentlemen, let’s do better- it’s summer, take your girl to your local dairy bar, spend five dollars, and take the time to slow down and enjoy each other’s company. She’ll love it, and you can take that to the bank…unless she doesn’t like dairy products, and in that case, is she even worth it?