Today, young professionals may be single for a variety of reasons. As a common response to the question of his or her single status, many YPs will say that he or she “just hasn’t met the right person yet,” they are just “so busy with work” or that they are “picky” overall. Not that there is anything wrong with that. After all, YPs never want to settle in any element of their lives. We have become pickier than ever in the dating department, but with good reason. Here are a few of them…
Career Competition
It is a tough and unforgiving job market out there. In face of fierce competition when it comes to careers, we must focus harder on securing and maintaining our jobs more than ever. This means we may not be as enthusiastic and open to “wasting” an evening (especially early on in the work week) where we could be catching up on work, or interacting with clients in order to take someone out with the risk of the relationship not being furthered. As we have to work harder, dating is more calculated than ever and we simply don’t have time to waste. We are so occupied with our careers that our personal lives may sit on the back burner, and it is going to take a pretty special person to change that.
Delayed Start Times
We are doing everything much later than our parents and grandparents. Most urban YPs are waiting until they are in their late twenties and early thirties to “settle down” with a special someone in a committed relationship. This means that we have had more time to date in our twenties. We are experienced in the dating world by the time we start to entertain the idea of settling down and are old enough to know what we want and don’t want. Most YPs in their late twenties and beyond can attest to how much we change from our early to late twenties and early thirties. We are all very different than we were at 21.
By a certain point, you become picky because you have grown in tune with yourself and are clear in what you are looking for in a significant other. This brings out the best and worst in you. You are (hopefully) mature enough not to get too involved with someone at this age whom you can’t see a future with, and wise enough not to mistake lust for love and intrigue with infatuation.
Divorce Rate
When our parents were our age, divorce was finally less taboo as it became more commonplace. Even those young professionals lucky enough not to experience a parental divorce have more than likely witnessed the affects of it on our peers. The numbers speak for themselves- approximately 40 per cent of Canadian marriages end in divorce. We are all very aware of these high failure rates of marriages and our generation too familiar of the affects of divorce- whether financially or emotionally. It scares us because we don’t want our future children to grow up in broken homes. As such, we want to be one hundred percent sure before making up our minds. It seems our new cautionary approach may be paying off- divorce is on the decline in Canada for the third year in a row, according to a new Statistics Canada report.
The Internet
The Internet has made us pickier than ever because it has expanded our choice of options- making them limitless through online dating and social networking sites. We don’t need to waste time getting to know someone the old fashioned way: if we don’t like what we see when during our background check on social media sites (for example, an ex who is still in the picture) we can promptly move on. We can usually get all the first-date questions out of the way thanks to profile creeping, simplifying the “elimination process.” Finally, we feel we can be picky because we have online dating sites as a backup plan- a go-to safety net if all else fails. As many young professionals like to remind themselves, however, we are not there yet.
The Next Best Thing
They don’t call us the entitled generation for no reason. Admittedly, it seems young professionals are in constant pursuit of the next best thing, even when we have something great in front of us. We have been told if we work hard enough and make the appropriate moves, we can achieve anything (or anyone) we want. Thanks to this mentality, we are increasingly reluctant to “settle” and we are constantly on the lookout for someone better. We only deserve the best, after all.
Photo courtesy Dating Diva Daily