Ryder McEntyre, Campus Carrier Graphics Editor
Society has two widely held ideas. The first is that relationships take a lot of work. The second is that we are incomplete until we are in a committed relationship. Allow me to explain.
Relationships do take a lot of work. The longer the time together, the more effort each party has to put it into keeping it going. Sometimes a relationship can seem like a marathon, sometimes it can seem like a sled hurtling down a snowy cliff, but at the end of the day we seem relationships as a way to be happier so the struggle is inevitably justified. But what this opinion so often ignores is the work it takes being single.
And I’m not talking about getting to choose whatever you want to watch on Netflix, and not arguing over which takeout to order because you’re by yourself. That’s a positive of being single – that’s not why I’m writing. And I’m not talking about the “just surviving” aspect of being single either, when you have no one to impress and you can do whatever you want. I’m talking about how hard it can be to thrive and grow when you’re single, because sometimes it’s difficult to simply be happy being alone. Don’t get this confused with me asking for sympathy, because all I’m asking for is empathy.
It takes a lot of work to have fun at a party without a date when everyone else has one. It takes a lot of work going to dinner with a bunch of friends who all seem to be in a relationship. As a gay man at Berry College, finding a date is borderline impossible. So I’ve had the single version of college life since the moment I started living the college life. I don’t regret this experience at all, because I more or less haven’t had a choice and we all know regret isn’t healthy behavior. It’s taken a lot of work, but I’ve become happy in my forced “loneliness”.
The hardest part of being single for me at least is dating. People in relationships no longer have to experience the soul-wrenching rejection, or the continually awkward first meeting that dating entails. Because we live in the 21st century, we often attempt online dating, which has a host of it’s own problems. I recently spent nine months attempting to find a date through the Internet with both OkCupid and Tinder, and here I am – still single, albeit happy. Dating through an app like OkCupid has a host of problems. OkCupid was so obsessed with finding you the best possible match based on largely contrived aspects of your personality rather than treating each other as human beings. OkCupid makes the dating process less natural, less organic. Often times I found myself on dates talking about our profiles and the decisions we made about our profiles rather than important and personal topics.
OkCupid essentially makes the date more about this representation I’ve constructed, and further creates dissonance between my constantly evolving sense of self and the idea of “being myself” on dates. When a person becomes a percentage based on responses from both parties, they become less human. Their meaning to you is quantified in a way that is pretty much arbitrary, but heavily dehumanizing. As insane as it sounds, I already had trouble realizing that the person on the other end was also a human being with their own collection of beliefs and thoughts and perspective, and that they too are constantly evolving because I was so caught up in trying to figure out if I liked them enough to actually have a good time.
When I say that I’m nervous before going on a date, the average response from friends and family is “You’ll be fine! Just be yourself!” That advice immediately puts me into an attempt to define myself quickly and succinctly because I want to size myself up and attempt to look at my “self” like someone else would look at my “self”. Too bad it’s impossible to completely sum up yourself in a lifetime, much less in an instant. We cannot define ourselves with a list of what I like to call ‘static’ adjectives, because how we choose to define ourselves depends on a lot of things beyond our past experience, behavior, choices, wishes and ideologies. We as human beings are the essence of evolutionary dynamism, and we cannot explain that on a static OkCupid profile. The second we try to define ourselves, we seem to temporarily expand ourselves, but definitions are also limiting and static. Once we decide we are “A”, we cannot be “B”, “C”, or “D” unless we change our minds and then we have to update our profiles. I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time to devote to constantly making my OkCupid relevant to my constantly evolving self.
The double-edged sword of online dating is this: Yes, we can quickly become whoever we want to be with little repercussions and we can aspire to be that greater representation, as our ‘self’ can be that fluid— but simply creating that representation of ourselves, we on some level lose the option to quickly change and evolve beyond that image we have created. It’s ultimately limiting. If we do not match up with our profiles perfectly, we are doomed to cause dissonance on our dates. I remember being asked about the rationale behind some of my answers to the rather arbitrary personal preference questions, and not being able to explain myself, because even though I answered the question weeks before the date… I had already changed. And yet, I was immediately considered disingenuous because I couldn’t justify things the representation I created said for me any longer.
Online dating has made being single and “on the hunt” more convenient, but the cost of convenience in our postmodern world is incredible complexity. If you still think being single is a lot of work, then I’ve done all I can. So why aren’t we okay with being single? Why do we put ourselves through insane things like online dating?
The second societal idea we’re subjected to, especially at Berry where people get married like it’s going out of style, is that relationships, or more specifically marriage, is the modus operandi of civilized people. Committed relationships, as we mature, become expected. Society literally expects us to be in a committed relationship. Sound ridiculous? How many middle-aged men and women can you name right now that are single? We are all expected to be in the pursuit of, or in, a relationship. That’s so unnecessary. We as human beings are naturally communal animals. In fact, our ability to build communities and complex relationships is kind of our defining characteristic. Society needs to shift, and allow us to be single instead of pressuring us into relationships we’re either not right or right for.