Dear Roe,<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a millennial<\/a> woman who has been single for five years. I find when it comes to dating and bringing things to the next stages after the first handful of dates and discussing what we\u2019re both looking for, it feels like we\u2019re speaking completely different languages. I couldn\u2019t be more clear in my dating profiles and in person that I\u2019m very romantic, don\u2019t do casual, and I\u2019m dating in the hope of finding connection, intimacy, and to be in love with someone. They agree that they are also looking for connection and intimacy. We\u2019ll chat a bit further, and I\u2019ll come to discover they\u2019re not actually looking for a romantic partnership. They do want all the trappings of it \u2013 just without any of the commitment or responsibility. <\/p>\n Much to the dismay of my nervous system, situationships seem to have become the default setting, but what\u2019s worse is that now they\u2019ve adopted the vocabulary I would associate with romance and partnership. After each break-up, I blame myself for perhaps selectively hearing what I wanted to hear. I wonder, are other people struggling with vagueness and lack of clarity in dating? If I have to have one more person bring me the most gorgeous breakfast and coffee in bed, kiss my forehead and tell me how special I am to them, only to not text for two weeks and resurface to let me know they\u2019re not ready for a relationship, I think I\u2019m going to tear all my hair out. Help!<\/p>\n My answer to this contains an absolutely uninformed, speculative, non-peer-reviewed theory about what is happening among people in the world right now, and then hopefully some advice<\/a> that may help us navigate it.<\/p>\n My theory begins with a feeling: I do not think we have even begun to grapple with the emotional and psychological trauma<\/a> of Covid<\/a>. I understand how after such a seismic shift, everyone\u2019s first instinct was to try to just dive back into life as normal and move past it as quickly as possible \u2013 but, like any trauma, things have to dealt with or else they rise up in weird, unpredictable and harmful ways, and I think we\u2019re seeing a lot of that in society. And one way I think we\u2019re seeing that is that we\u2019ve forgotten the absolute necessity and life-affirming experience of being inconvenienced by other people.<\/p>\n Covid made being around other people literally dangerous, and it resulted in everyone losing years \u2013 years \u2013 of socialising, dating, being in contact, proximity, and community with other people. <\/p>\n This not only meant we all naturally became more self-centred, as we were forced to spend so much time isolated, thinking about ourselves, scrolling online being fed our individual little algorithms \u2013 but we also lost years of the practice of being inconvenienced by other people, experiencing the friction of having to put up with annoying co-workers in our offices, of having to wait behind people in line, of making small talk at the bus stop or in the lift. We didn\u2019t have to sit in front of our friends and stumble through a tense moment of disagreement before adjusting our tone or apologising; we didn\u2019t have to practise being patient with that one cousin who always gets on our nerves at family gatherings; we didn\u2019t have to regulate our nervous systems when other people got on our last wick.<\/p>\n And although Covid was horrible and isolating and devastating for so many people, it also heralded an era of low-effort, hyper-convenience. We got used to groceries and clothes and other items being delivered to our door. We swiped our way through all the single people in our area and chatted without expectation or commitment or needing to endure them chewing with their mouth open on dates long enough to realise that aside from that, they\u2019re actually kind and funny.<\/p>\n Romantic words and gestures are easy; consistency, effort and follow-through are what actually signal capacity for a relationship<\/p>\n My (again, absolutely non-scientific) theory is that the combination of not interacting with others and having everything delivered to our doors eroded our muscles that allow us to cope and lean into friction \u2013 and this friction is absolutely necessary, for emotional regulation, relationships and life. Love, connection, friendships, relationships, the \u201cvillage\u201d \u2013 all of that is fundamentally dependent on connecting across difference, of putting in work and effort, of navigating conflict and tension, of committing to each other in ways that are hard and demanding and challenging and absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n Over years of seeing each other as potential threats and being isolated from one another, we somehow forgot that being inconvenienced by each other is actually the whole point.<\/p>\n