The Dating “Issue” for Every Single Between 25 to 50s
I have been to many gatherings lately across different groups of people: professional women, female lawyers, effective altruists/vegans. One common thing among those groups is that their members are within an age of 25 to 50. Another common thing is that in their conversations dating is a topic that cannot be avoided. In those professional groups, we talked about work [unsurprisingly] and surprisingly, dating. In other groups, we talked about vegan food [unsurprisingly] and also dating.
As someone who recently became single, this observation makes me wonder if dating is “the Issue” that every single person in this age group has, and it makes me wonder if age is a key factor for singles to complain about their dating issues. I may reasonably foresee myself having the same dating issue in three to five years’ time, given that I am the youngest in those groups: finding a long-term exclusive committed relationship, or even just a committed long-term relationship (Dating Issue).
Unless someone really has an urge to enter a committed relationship, they should not have the Dating Issue. Dating apps, speed dating events, and matchmaking companies, etc (together, “Dating Facilities”) provide good opportunities for individuals to expand their social circles for dating purposes on the one hand, and on the other hand enlarge the size of the dating pool with “unlimited” candidates. Based on a reasonable presumption, there should be no difficulties for someone who is good-looking [as photos will be shown prior to any interactions], and interesting [as efforts are required to make the in-person meet-ups happen] to benefit from the Dating Facilities and able to experience “unlimited samples” as long as they are willing to keep using the Dating Facilities. In other words, a non-committed relationship is extremely easy to find, subjecting to the length of time of each non-committed relationship, but for the parties entering an exclusive relationship with long-term commitments (Dating Theory).
Despite the fact that the Dating Theory has been successfully tested based on my personal past experience, and the Dating Issue is yet to become serious at my current age, I could not neglect another factor — peer pressure. As an Asian, unsurprisingly, many people around or under my age in my Chinese/Asian friend zone are married, having one kid or even a second kid. At the same time, my other non-Asian friends, who on average, are three to eight years older than me, are married, have one kid, or even a second kid. The rest of my friends or people that I know who are still single but older, are talking about their Dating Issues, and I can tell that some of them are deeply worried about it.
Luckily, I still have time to think and plan. I think what I can do is to keep focusing on my career and, at the same time, make use of the Dating Facilities and Dating Theory while I am still yet to experience the Dating Issue and see if I can meet someone alone the way to tick off two items on my to do list in life: “Get married” and “Have kids”. There is no point in settling down just because of age, but it will be lucky to find someone at the right time, and then both of you decide to settle. Or at the very least, “Have kids” could happen at some point in my life even without “Get married”.
Hopefully, the Dating Issue may not hit me in the future one way or the other. Who knows?