The Defining Decade - Part 2: Looo-ooooo-ooooveeeeee

Online dating sucks. Hinge, Bumble, Tinder—the unlimited possibilities feel quite limited when you can’t find someone you have no prior attachment to eat food from a restaurant. As Jay says, don’t settle for low quality or low criteria based in your availability. Now if you’re a girl or a guy who likes men who exclusively post pictures of themselves holding fish or say that they’re “forklift certified”, click on, because I don’t know how to help you. But regardless of whether you’re looking for a hook up, casual we-can’t-put-labels-on-this-cuz-it’ll-end, or for a relationship partner, you still probably need to stop compromising what you want for what you’ve seen. The best thing, according to Jay, that you can do for your future relationship health is to start working on it before you have one! (71).

What you need is stronger boundaries and more confidence in what you want, says Jay. You know the deal. You meet a guy and he’s nice enough, so you go home with him. Maybe you sleep over. Then the next week, you leave some mouthwash in the car before the second date and he gives you clothes that you need to return, but offers to pick them up the next time you see each other. Or maybe he’s got a spare toothbrush already there for you! This is the slippery slope that Jay refers to as the cohabitation effect! By avoiding asking what you are to one another, you’re letting your fear of seeming like crazy commitment lady or complacency cause you to miss out on boundaries… which are essentially simple answers to how much you text, expect snd care.

“We all ought to feel confident we are choosing our partner and our partner is choosing us because we want to be with them” (86)

So, I leave you with a final thought—yes, breakups suck and the muddled mess of dating or separating one’s feelings from rejection are the absolute worst, but chances are, you’ve done a breakup before and have learned that you heal. You’ve gotten your things, moved on from missing them and seen the new, more opalescent butterflies return. Get out, get on and find better, or see the better in yourself. Shift your perspective from ‘being wanted’ to wanting and “that makes all the difference” (94).