I don't envy young people today... of course, I am old an grey by now, but I worry about how people "relate" in this age where everything seems to happen "through a screen." Do teenagers even know how to have a meaningful dialogue with another person that doesn't involve a smartphone?

Does anyone "young" *really know what they want? Our brains aren't even fully developed till we're 25, so it seems to me that anything before that is just an experiment and fun and games.

I always came at dating "backwards." I was pretty geeky/nerdy, and brutally honest about who I was. I never "dressed up" my reality... I figured it was safer to have someone like my "reality" because a fake image would come out sooner or later... and that would mean trouble.

I never got the "deliberately be an asshole" approach to dating that seemed to be "it" at many so-called dating seminars. I always ended back at "And just WHAT sort of woman will you land, if she's allowing herself to be treated like crap?" Not someone I want to hang with... part of the drawback of having been a hobbyist psychology student since age 14...

Ultimately, there's someone for everyone. The main thing we lack is patience, and the self-confidence to be patient. Maybe we need to meet 50 people before someone really "clicks." That doesn't make us losers or failures. And good relationships bear very little resemblance to Hollywood and romance novels. That's fiction. Life is not fiction...