So who do you date? Where do you find him? And how do you know that he is the right person for you? Now that we are no longer in the alcohol-soaked constant socialization-demanding confines of higher education, the opportunities to meet people organically have become increasingly slim, and society has more than decided what kinds of qualities are going to get you a gold star in the dating pool. (Of course, desiring and expecting to find any or even most of these qualities in a single person—and magically making them fall in love with you—is every shade of absurd, but dating is nothing if not an efficient way to make us all feel ludicrously inadequate.)
THE IDEAL GIRLFRIEND AND BOYFRIEND ACCORDING TO SOCIETY
And keeping in mind that the search for this perfect match will include stringently avoiding Irvings, there is not a moment at which your eyes can be too peeled. But there are distinct pros and cons to each location at which you will potentially find a date, and you’ll likely have to navigate all of them to finally kiss your Prince(ss) Charming.
Places to Meet Someone Special
WORK
Pros:
• You are in constant proximity with one another, making organizing your time spent together fairly easy.
• There will always be stuff to talk about, even if it is tedious office gossip.
• You get that hot, forbidden, copy-room fondling that undoubtedly fuels the libidos of 70 percent of office romances.
• The air of “Do they or don’t they?” floating around your coworkers makes you temporary celebrities among your team.
• Lunch hours at the taco truck are made infinitely more romantic.
Cons
• You might have to eventually report this to HR, which will undoubtedly take away some of the “sexy” factor.
• Talking about work is a fairly redundant activity, given that you both experience more or less the same thing every day.
• You are in constant proximity, which, let’s be honest, can get kind of grating after a while.
• Should you break up, your entire professional life will get kicked up several notches from “somewhat boring but pretty good, all things considered” to “absolutely unbearable, why do I have to work two cubicles down from someone who was inside me a short two months ago?”
SOCIAL GROUPS
Pros:
• The awkward “Let’s integrate one another into our respective friends groups” is not necessary, as you both come from the same primordial friends soup, so to speak.
• Hanging out is easy and convenient to organize.
• You likely know each other fairly intimately, and are therefore less likely to be surprised with things like a tendency to nit-pick about irrelevant things, or a burgeoning murder-and-dismemberment hobby.
• The dividing of your social life between your two respective friend groups is a headache you won’t have to endure.
• You have fewer people to invite to your wedding, therefore cheaper.
Cons:
• When you break up, literally everyone you know mutually is going to have to endure an awkward “Let’s decide who we love more” dance in which they try simultaneously to offend no one and please everyone, resulting in everyone hating each other. Depending on the ugliness of the breakup, this precarious picking sides routine could result in the complete dissolution of some of said friendships.
• Almost every local haunt you enjoy is now going to be forever colored by the memory of your failed relationship.
• You may very likely have to bear witness to your ex now dating yet another in your mutual friends group.
• Social gatherings are guaranteed to be uncomfortable for at least a month, if not much, much longer.
ONLINE DATING
Pros:
• You can hide behind a profile that only presents the most palatable parts of yourself, letting unsuspecting strangers fall in love with you before they get the full picture of that weird thing you do when you laugh and your tendency to send back food on almost every order at a restaurant.
• Highly advanced algorithms are there to reaffirm what you already suspect: The guy with the fedora in his profile picture and Atlas Shrugged among his favorite books may not be the perfect match for you.
• You have a catalog of potential mates to choose from at your disposal, making the rejection of someone for rather superficial reasons less of a risk than it would be in real life. (Now you finally don’t have to marry someone with a wonky toe simply because she fulfills every other need you have! The future has truly arrived!)
• Your self-esteem is in for a daily boost from a veritable army of suitors who send you unsolicited and ham-handed compliments that you promptly delete with a haughty laugh.
Cons:
• From now on, when you’re asked by older, less hip loved ones where you met your partner, you will be forever obligated to mumble under your breath the name of a dating site that you are terribly ashamed to have used.
• You won’t have a cute meet-story to regale to your future children.
• The thrill of getting to know someone little by little is somewhat dulled, as you start things off with a pretty expansive knowledge of each other’s personal tastes and at least several flattering photos of each other.
• There will always be at least one asshole who judges you for having met the love of your life on a website.
THE BAR
Pros:
• You’re drunk, so whatever normal filters you put over yourself to make things nice and presentable for someone you’re interested in have been completely numbed. If he falls in love with that version of you, he’s ready for anything.
• Chances are high that your cute meet-story may involve dancing to “Thriller” under the sparkling light of the dance floor.
• You know this person knows how to go out and have a good time from the get-go.
• No one makes a pretense about the fact that this place is entirely designed for picking people up to have sex/find romance, making starting the conversation all that much easier.
Cons:
• You met at the bar, which is kind of skeezy.
• People you meet at a bar are generally not the people who you one day see yourself starting a family with. Or, if they are, they are certainly not putting the “Let’s get married and take out a mortgage together” foot forward while wobbling toward the bathroom.
• There is a more than decent chance that you will be wasted when you first meet each other, and if someone is really that into Drunk You, do you trust him as a person? I mean, I know Drunk Me, and she is kind of awful.
I’ve met people in all these situations, and have found assholes and princes in each one. The truth is, we have more ways than ever to put ourselves in proximity with new people and present ourselves in the way we want to. We can be a totally different person on a dating website than we are at a bar, which is also totally different from the person our friends know and (mostly) love. Is this a good thing? Debatable. But it certainly means that the “other fish in the sea” platitude that is so far from comforting when you are covered in snot and mascara, crying over a devastating breakup, is more true than ever. You can organize a week full of dates, one each night, if you are so inclined (and I know more than one person who does that, because why the hell not). The end of a relationship is just that, a brief end to something that could be the beginning of a million new, infinitely better, experiences.
We even have places like Missed Connections pages, where the people who stared at each other for a little longer than would be considered appropriate in the produce aisle of the local grocery store—people who only a few short years ago would have gone the rest of their lives only thinking of each other as “asparagus hottie”—are now able to potentially find each other once more and start what could be a lifelong romance. Technology and people’s growing confidence to approach one another have made this possible. It’s insane, the degree to which we are all constantly able to connect.
So why do we stay with Irvings when they are clearly terrible, and we could certainly do so much better? When we could go online and, within a twenty-four-hour period, have a dozen new potential Loves of Our Lives who are “matched” to us with some insane percentage like ninety-two. (How is that even possible? That seems absurd.) What is the motivation to settle for something that is definitely not mutually beneficial, or even enjoyable? I find it hard to believe that we have some tiny chip lodged in all our brains that says, when we are blown off for the third evening in a row, “This is marriage material right here. Mate with this. Reproduce with this. Put more of this into the world.” I just can’t believe we are this self-defeating. But I think there is some truth to the notion that, because we are all having a tough time establishing ourselves and finding a real pathway to success, independence, and fulfillment, it is hard to demand that kind of self-assurance from someone else.
Our mothers would not have considered getting serious with someone at twenty-five who wasn’t interested in the long term, who wasn’t able, willing, or working toward being able to provide for a family and set up a home somewhere. Those were basics, and the respect that came along with those basics was essential. But today we have no individual pressure to make big decisions (or, at least, no one is surprised when it isn’t possible), so we are willing to accept relationships that linger on in the not-so-serious stage for years on end. Years. Literal years.
I know people personally who have moved in with their significant others of several years, with no real plans for the future and no real feeling that their relationship is a priority in the SO’s life. When I ask them what they want, they usually respond marriage, kids, a house somewhere, being a real family—pretty standard things. And even though it is clearly not in the cards right now for this couple, my friends are happy to stay and prolong the whole “We’re just kind of casually seeing each other” process, moving in unceremoniously solely because it saves money. This is not what they want, but they assume that there is nothing better out there or that it would be unfair to ask for more. Somewhere along the line, the idea that you should only be investing in people who ultimately want the same things as you went completely out the window—likely around the time bath bombs became popular.
But someone doesn’t have to be rich or even financially comfortable to be moving toward the goals of one day establishing himself. At the end of the day, the defining factor in whether or not someone is going to be a good match is how he treats you and how he makes you feel about yourself. When you’re not a priority for someone else, you can feel it, and there is no reason to actively put yourself through the daily confidence beating that comes from being with someone who is indifferent to your existence. Seriously, it is incredibly humiliating to be clearly more into someone than he is into you. It’s the emotional equivalent of walking around all day with a square of toilet paper stuck to your shoe and no one telling you; you just look like a fool, and everyone kind of silently pities you.
We know that we can do better. We know that there are kind Petes, there are empathetic Sammies, and there are legions of underrated Harries. We have options, endless options, and there is no reason not to pursue them. It doesn’t matter if we’re not going to be in the white-picket-fenced house with 2.5 children and a Shetland Sheepdog by the time we’re thirty-one; it just matters that we’re moving in that direction and treating each other with respect and love. You can go to the bar and drunkenly tell someone how much you love him within the first ten minutes of meeting him. You can reach out to a friend who has always interested you, but with whom you never really wanted to risk the friend dynamic. You can suck it up and go on OkCupid, and realize that there is only, like, a 3:10 skeezeball ratio overall on that website.
And if you don’t want to get married or have kids—or even have a long-term relationship—congratulations, you no longer have to. Whether or not you’re going to hit thirty and suddenly throw it into reverse, like a heavily abused rental car, and decide that you do want to start something concrete with someone, it doesn’t matter now. We are lucky enough to have been born into time when we are not all universally expected to be impregnating/impregnated by the time we reach twenty-five with no real future outside of living vicariously through our children for the rest of our lives. I think it’s easy to forget how amazing it is when someone reminds you, in your twenties, how “young” you are, and how you have “so much time” to be looking for what exactly you want out of life. That is such a huge step forward from pretty much every other point in history.
I admit that I am biased, in that I’ve known pretty much since I was aware of my surroundings that I one day want to get a ring put on my finger and start spawning, but I have nothing but respect for people who don’t want that. And, to be frank, the world is kind of your oyster at this point if you’re not wed to the notion of finding something serious. So many people out there right now are just looking to date casually, and are totally open about it. Hell, you can even mosey on over to Seeking Arrangement and get yourself a brand-new tacky Lexus while you work on your career or your studies. You have free rein to do so, and innumerable websites with which to locate singles in your area who are looking for a similar ratio of sex–to–actual feelings.
The point is that it’s the fucking twenty-first century, and there’s no excuse for any of us—no matter what we’re looking for—to be stuck in a situation that isn’t what we want. We can literally meet people from across the globe who can put in a concise little paragraph under a picture of themselves exactly what they want out of the next few years of their life. If you are making excuses as to why you are waiting it out with someone who will magically morph overnight into something you are actually interested in, you are wasting your time in the most painful way. You are never going to be this sexy, this energetic, this free of responsibility again in your life. Now is the time, if there ever was one, to be experimenting and going on dates and only getting serious when you feel like it—or remaining completely romance-free for a while, if that floats your be-vibrator’d boat. We have Grindr now; we are officially in the future we always dreamed of. There is no reason not to be yourself.
Chapter 6
FINANCES
Or, How to Finish the Month Without Crying into Your Ramen
Few things seem more intimidating to a young adult who has gone through his entire life without having to contemplate money in a concrete sense than the prospect of having to manage an entire budget by himself. Both sides of the equation—from consistently bringing ever-increasing sums of income into your bank account, to keeping the spending at a reasonable and sustainable pace—seem unrealistic to keep up for an entire life. Unfortunately, though, money just seems to become more necessary, more complicated, and more tightly wound up with other people as you get older. The days when your money was entirely yours to do with what you like (which mostly just entailed buying a staggering amount of Fruit Roll-Ups when taken to a grocery store) are gone forever. (Sidenote: I have not bought nearly the amount of soda and cake that I anticipated I would when I had complete control over my own money. Adulthood blows.)
Money management, aside from being a profession relegated to obese men with monocles and pinstriped suits, is just not fun. Strangely enough, no matter what kind of money you’re earning, you’ll still find a way to spend a disproportionate amount, which leaves you frustrated and/or nervous at the end of the month. As anyone who has gone from an $8-per-hour gig to earning real-ish money (and possibly back again) can attest, there is no amount of money you can earn that will just be “enough” and allow you to live whatever lifestyle you want without having to be concerned about your bills. I mean, technically, you could be a billionaire, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that twentysomething socialites aren’t hanging on every word of my financial advice.
Personally speaking, I have only in recent times come into a certain kind of coherence with money. For most of my life, even when I was being
forced by my parents to save my after-school job money, my life’s purpose seemed to be to indiscriminately drain my checking account until I was in tears, looking at the teller like an abandoned puppy, as though she were going to be able to do anything about my negative balance and merry-go-round of overdraft fees. I often come across things I purchased in the financial fugue state that was my life between sixteen and twenty-one, and I am overwhelmed with self-loathing. I went through a significant Lilly Pulitzer phase, convinced that buying $300 dresses when I was making minimum-ish wage and was still a student was a positive move for my future. Aside from looking like someone’s tragic, WASP-y stepmom who gets white-wine drunk and hates her life (no one should ever wear a pink dress with a mint-green cardigan, and yet, how many times I did just that), I was burning through everything I’d saved with no thought to the moment when I would actually need it.
Despite how much useless information we absorb during K–12 education, we never take a class that is just like, “Hey, shitheads. This is what a checking account looks like. This is what a budget is. This is what taxes are.” I would exchange my entire mathematical education for a weeklong workshop on how to set up a 401K. I’m not going to say that no one tried to instill proper financial protocol in my thick skull—I can hear my parents yelling right now about how all they did was try to convince me that I was wasting my precious, precious savings—but I was just not trying to learn. Perhaps if it were something we all had to learn and had a grade that depended on really comprehending the material, I would have taken it in more. (Though probably not.)
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