I recently watched the Materialists (great movie) and it got me thinking about the modern dating world. The movie focuses on a high class match maker and critiques people for being shallow and only caring about superficial traits like income and height.

I don’t know how we got here, but somehow dating became a game to get the Best One. There is a linear scale along which all people can be placed based on their attractiveness and wealth and the status quo is we all date within our preset range. Maybe we get lucky and end up with someone out of our league, but when we see people “dating down” we assume something is wrong with them.

This is weird. Relationships aren’t a video game where we are all trying to constantly get to the next level. It’s about finding someone who makes you happy and figuring the rest out.

I’ve been fortunate to have met someone I love young, but it’s been anything but convenient. We went to college on different coasts. We are now young adults trying to figure out who we are, while also finding time to spend together. We’ve taken breaks in our relationship when we know we needed to focus on individual development, instead of focusing on building something together.

Now that we are getting to that age, people are starting to ask when we will get married. It’s strange to hear the people who told you to leave the door open at home in high school start asking you when you’re going to start having kids. It’s revealed to me a new great social pressure: The Script.

Meet at 24, date for 2 years before moving in together, get engaged a year after living together, engaged at 27 and married at 28 so you can be married a few years before you have your first kid at 30. Most of my female friends have done this math, it’s how we are all supposed to do it.

Having been in a real living relationship, that narrative is so incredibly nonsensical to me. You don’t get to decide when love walks into your life, and we shouldn’t be committing to spend the rest of our lives with someone just because we were together in our twenties. I totally understand the ticking clock that is the female reproductive system, but there are other ways we can solve for that.

We need to start taking love seriously. We don’t get to decide when we fall in love, it could be at 16 or 36 or 56. Feeling like we all have to to get married in our twenties is setting us all up for failure. Love should be something we feel, not something with deadlines. You don’t work love into your life, you build your life around love.

Sometimes in love, you grow in different directions, you have conflicts, you have moments where people want different things. Communicating and working through these things is love, not breaking up because things get hard. Love is cyclical, there are periods of euphoria and periods of growth. The only constant is the warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s the deeply felt certainty that it is worth it to have his hard conversation because we are going to come out stronger. It’s what people mean when they say “when you know, you know”.

Love is so much more profound than people treat it; the conversations we are having are table stakes. Wait for a profound love to walk into your life. Once you have it, work at it to keep it alive and well. Let’s take this seriously, its what life is all about.

I recently watched the Materialists (great movie) and it got me thinking about the modern dating world. The movie focuses on a high class match maker and critiques people for being shallow and only caring about superficial traits like income and height.

I don’t know how we got here, but somehow dating became a game to get the Best One. There is a linear scale along which all people can be placed based on their attractiveness and wealth and the status quo is we all date within our preset range. Maybe we get lucky and end up with someone out of our league, but when we see people “dating down” we assume something is wrong with them.

This is weird. Relationships aren’t a video game where we are all trying to constantly get to the next level. It’s about finding someone who makes you happy and figuring the rest out.

I’ve been fortunate to have met someone I love young, but it’s been anything but convenient. We went to college on different coasts. We are now young adults trying to figure out who we are, while also finding time to spend together. We’ve taken breaks in our relationship when we know we needed to focus on individual development, instead of focusing on building something together.

Now that we are getting to that age, people are starting to ask when we will get married. It’s strange to hear the people who told you to leave the door open at home in high school start asking you when you’re going to start having kids. It’s revealed to me a new great social pressure: The Script.

Meet at 24, date for 2 years before moving in together, get engaged a year after living together, engaged at 27 and married at 28 so you can be married a few years before you have your first kid at 30. Most of my female friends have done this math, it’s how we are all supposed to do it.

Having been in a real living relationship, that narrative is so incredibly nonsensical to me. You don’t get to decide when love walks into your life, and we shouldn’t be committing to spend the rest of our lives with someone just because we were together in our twenties. I totally understand the ticking clock that is the female reproductive system, but there are other ways we can solve for that.

We need to start taking love seriously. We don’t get to decide when we fall in love, it could be at 16 or 36 or 56. Feeling like we all have to to get married in our twenties is setting us all up for failure. Love should be something we feel, not something with deadlines. You don’t work love into your life, you build your life around love.

Sometimes in love, you grow in different directions, you have conflicts, you have moments where people want different things. Communicating and working through these things is love, not breaking up because things get hard. Love is cyclical, there are periods of euphoria and periods of growth. The only constant is the warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s the deeply felt certainty that it is worth it to have his hard conversation because we are going to come out stronger. It’s what people mean when they say “when you know, you know”.

Love is so much more profound than people treat it; the conversations we are having are table stakes. Wait for a profound love to walk into your life. Once you have it, work at it to keep it alive and well. Let’s take this seriously, its what life is all about.