Dating now sucks, because you suck too

how modern dating has turned people into experiences and put love out of order

There are many things wrong with modern dating, between the constant need for validation, our inability to wait, our uncontrolled lust, the fact that we treat sex as something casual, and that we use chemistry and feelings as the main guidance for love, you would think these things alone would be enough to explain why so many people feel lost, hurt, detached, and unable to form anything lasting, but honestly, I think there are two deeper things beneath all of it that make the whole situation far worse.

Dating now isn’t just more shallow, dating now has completely changed the way we see people altogether. Somehow, and somewhere along the way we stopped people as someone we want to know, someone to honor, pursue, discern and maybe even possibly fall in love with, instead now we approach others not as a person, but as an experience to be had. I mean even in our language this is obvious, we talk about others like they were some lesson, a story, just a chapter, a fling, an adventure, a waste of time… but the problem is that once another human person becomes just an experience, well it becomes very easy to just consume them and move along.

The second problem is that we have totally inverted the natural order of love, we have given others access to us and our bodies before we even know them, before we are even able to trust them, before commitment before anything that would protect us. We are trying to begin with things that are meant to be the fruit of love, we don’t plant a seed anymore and wait for it to grow, we take the fruit, never plant, and then sit and wonder why nothing ever seems to grow.

and this is what I want to talk about today.

For as many times as I have complained how I felt used by other men I myself have also used others, it is easy to discard people when you do not see them as someone who deserves respect, decency and courtesy. Granted, I have never done anything outrageous, I never cheated on anyone, I never lied about who I was or what I wanted, but I did ghost a few people, I did act bothered that others did not get the memo that I simply was not interested, this all to say that modern dating did hurt me quite a bit, my participation in it hurt myself, and it hurt others also, and this is true for anyone that participates in this modern landscape.

I still remember the very first time I felt totally and completely used by a man, I was not prepared for it, my parents had not equipped me with the necessary tools to navigate modernity and I failed miserably. That empty void that lingered, the dark void staring back at me that always stayed in my chest is something I never want to experience again, and I definitely do not want any of you either.

We were not made to break ourselves and others in this fashion. Think back to your grandparents, back then people dating long-term, living together was not common, nobody had multiple long-term relationships where you build an entire life together only to have it completely torn apart, and now we do this multiple times in our lives and call it good, we call devastating heartbreak… good. Back then, nobody experienced this kind of ache unless their spouse literally died, this is a new phenomenon, and it has massive implications and long-term effects. The first time my heart broke, I was seventeen. I felt things I had no idea how to manage. I was devastated, beyond words. At the time, I did not understand it, but I was experiencing real grief, deep grief, and it was because I had done it all wrong I had given part of myself away, and I did not even know what I was doing. Unfortunately, it did not stop there. I would go on to have my heart broken more times than I should have. All of it because I was not seen as a person, and I did not see others as people either.

This is what unfortunately happens when we start seeing people as experiences, we do not think in terms of who this person is, what are their intentions, are they someone good, are they someone I could actually build something with, we think instead mostly in terms of how does this make me feel, is it fun, is this worth my time right now, and this might sound like it really isn’t that big of a deal, but I truly believe it is, and I argue this because once another person becomes something you are just “going through” it becomes very easy to move on from them, the second things are no longer exciting or easy, it is very easy as well to just detach, to pull away, to do the good ol’ fashion ghosting, and it is easy because it was never serious to begin with anyway, but friends, this is a problem.

It might not have been serious to us, but it might have been for the other person, and even if it wasn’t that is still another person, we might not like to admit this and frankly I think it is because we have also done it, we have entertained people we knew we were not serious about, we have let things go on longer than they should have, we have taken attention, time, and most of the time even intimacy from people we never had any real intentions of staying with. The problem with this behavior is that it not only hurts the other person, it also hurts us, over time breaking up just becomes easier, leaving also becomes easier, and taking anyone seriously becomes the opposite, it becomes harder.

And because we do this, it ties into our second problem perfectly—which is that we have completely reversed the order of love.

Dating used to take quite some time, we used to call it courting, back when things were far more serious, we got to know the other person, their family, it was slow and intentional, then came marriage, and after that well of course came children, but now we are doing everything upside down. We don’t wait until marriage, we wait until the first date, we jump straight into the deepest parts of a relationship without any of the foundation that is suppose to come first, we give easy access to ourselves, both emotionally and physically, before there even is trust, or commitment, and then when it inevitably ends, we sit and wonder why we feel so wrong. This hurts us because everytime we are in relationship with another, we are giving ourselves over, this works and is true of any relationship we have, but the problem with this new love order is that we give away something of extreme importance, something that used to be protected by the old rules with now love to hate. You cannot build something lasting on something that was never built properly to begin with, and I think this is why so many people feel so exhausted by dating now. It’s not just that people are bad, or selfish, or unserious, though sometimes that is true, heck it’s probably true pretty often, but it is also that we are all participating in a system that trains us to do things backwards. We are trying to start with intimacy and hope that commitment shows up later, instead of starting with commitment and letting intimacy grow from that, and well the results have been, to say the least, very uninspiring.

So yes dating sucks, but part of this uncomfortable truth is that it sucks in part because you not only suck too, but you also suck at it, but just because you suck does not mean you are stuck.

We can do better, matter of fact, we should do better.

Be honest about what you want from the start.
Don’t entertain people you already know you don’t want.
Don’t drag things out just because it’s comfortable.
Don’t get physically involved with someone you aren’t married to.
Say what you mean instead of hoping people “get the hint.”
And treat people with basic respect, even when you’re not choosing them

all isn’t lost, if you want more of a deep dive into these issues, a personal take, practical advice and my honest thoughts and opinions I like to keep private, then click to listen to this article: