Are we more focused on finding red flags than true love? Asks The Cheeky Charmer
BY THE CHEEKY CHARMER, IMAGE VIA PEXELS
Romance is dead and modern dating is killing relationships.
There. I said it.
And yeah, I know I said last week I was gonna try the modern dating thing and date multiple people blah blah blah…
And I am.
I have two dates lined up already.
But, there’s a problem…
I’m a massive romantic. I’m a little lost Romeo looking for my Juliet (minus the tragic ending). I was Jack and thought I’d found my Rose. But, since we broke up, I’ve switched my Leo references to something equally tragic (why does he always die dammit?!).
Anyway…
When I fall, I fall hard. It doesn’t happen very often. It takes someone truly special to get the Cheeky Charmer’s heart. But, when they’ve got it, they get me 100%, heart on sleeve, total commitment, romance and all.
And I don’t think women want that.
At least not the women I date.
I’m starting to think, maybe people don’t value romance anymore. Or people being nice.
I don’t think they trust it.
Which is the real tragedy, never mind the movies DiCaprio dies in.
Once upon a time it was deemed cute and thoughtful to turn up with flowers on a date or make a romantic gesture.
Now, many women seem to view this with suspicion, like there’s some grand Machiavellian plan behind it.
And maybe, in some cases there is. But maybe, just maybe 9 times out of 10, the person’s just being nice. Saying, “I like you, have some crap flowers I picked up from the garage on my way over.”
Ok, maybe not the last bit.
I once went on a cinema date and took a woman her favourite chocolates because she mentioned this was her cinema “ritual.” It was a tiny gesture. It’s not like I shot and directed my own movie, declaring my undying love. I took her chocolates. Chocolates. And she viewed it with suspicion like “what was my motive”? My “motive” was to do something nice, to say, “I like you” and I listened when you told me what you like.
And I can’t work out whether people don’t trust it because:
- They’ve been hurt
- They aren’t used to being treated nicely
Or…
They prefer dating assholes.
I blame modern dating. It’s not set up for finding lasting love. They want to keep us swiping. And we do. Physically and metaphorically. Why would we settle for someone who’s not 200% perfect when we can just swipe left and replace them with someone else? And that’s the thing. No one’s perfect. Not even me (I know that’s hard to believe). So, we miss the good ones, like the really good ones, thinking something better is coming along.
All this swiping’s like a bad video game. It programmes our brains the way we used to wait for buses: there’ll be another along in a minute and this one will be brighter, shinier and a double decker.
Will it though?
Sure, we shouldn’t settle for something that’s not right. That’s not fair to anyone.
But, how do we expect to find our Nemo when we’re so quick to throw each fish back in the sea (‘sea’ what I did there?).
We’ve lost our old fashioned values – the appreciation of love, romance and respect. Because it’s all to easy to keep swiping or to ghost someone we can’t be bothered to communicate with.
And so, we swipe away, hoping the perfect person will magically appear. And they probably have already. We’re just too lost in our own heads to notice.
That’s what modern dating’s done. It’s put us in our heads instead of our hearts. It’s why we distrust, look for red flags that maybe aren’t there and throw each other away like feelings just don’t matter.
I think it’s time we got back into our hearts and dated from there instead of our egos.
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