Why is dating so hard? The 5 biggest issues with dating these days

If you have found true love and gotten married, kneel and thank your stars, ancestor, and father in heaven – because it isn’t easy.

A brief recap of the history of marriage shows that past civilizations did not marry for love; the primary purpose was forging better ties, procreation and farming.

Most women were betrothed to their husbands, and never even met them until the day they were to be married – not to mention that polygamy and polyandry existed.

All these changed with the Christianity which entrenched the idea of monogamy.

In Nigeria, embracing the colonialists’ religion meant the idea of marriage was changed instantly.

Young people moved away from the traditional family unit and into the cities. They met and interacted with others and did not have to marry unknown people.

The most important change that happened is love and marriage became a choice they make and no one makes for them – well at least they believe it is now a choice even though parental influence, genotype, tribe, and religion still plays a major role.

In our generation, we also began to prioritize education and money before marriage.

Enough with the history lesson, how is the dating scene now?

The idea of dating is like young people at a buffet, with food spread out, and they have to choose, so they keep tasting everything.

In this scenario, the food spread on the table is intended partners. They go from table to table, having a taste of each other – some from a place of hunger and others from a place of greed.

Like the proverbial Goldilocks, they make comments about the other person’s inadequacy whilst not placing ourselves under the same intense scrutiny.

At the end of the day, they do not only damage ourselves but the other person.

Here are some reasons dating in this century is harder;

Nigerians might live in abject poverty, but they are attached to displays of wealth and influence.

Just take a look at their lyrics, ‘if you no get money, hide your face.’ Davido sings. ‘When money enters, love is sweeter.’ He also sang.

Everyone talks about how broke people shouldn’t date.

Most women are looking for rich men who can take their financial burdens from their shoulders and take care of them. Ask a young woman if she wants to ‘build’ with a man, and she would say no. Every woman wants an already made man.

This alone causes an imbalance in the dynamics of love and relationship. It perpetuates patriarchal ideals and pushes men into fraud and desperation for wealth.

Yes, marry a man with ambition and drive but marrying for money alone and not love makes people end up with the wrong partners.

The idea that you can speed time and energy trying to establish a bond with someone and break it off at the slightest provocation is another problem with dating right now.

Consider a talking stage like pre-dating. You can’t keep sharing deep parts of yourself with different people.

The point is, not everyone deserves to be on a talking stage with you.

Young people lack communication skills, instead of letting people know what they have done wrong or what they require from them, they stop talking to them together and make them wonder what they’ve done wrong.

Ghosting might seem like the way to avoid uncomfortable conversations, but it creates trauma.

They have such a rabid fear of being single, that they enter into relationships that they don’t want to be in – possibly for other reasons and start to lie and cheat.

The reason you are entering a relationship should not be to alleviate your loneliness, have sex, live out a fantasy and post cute pictures online.

Relationships are about sacrifice and commitment.

With sex being so cheap to get and pre-marital sex not being frowned on, the truth is the elasticity of monogamy is increasingly being expanded. In other words, many people lie and cheat because sex is more available.

Also, if we were waiting until marriage to have consenting sex, we would not be sleeping around and getting involved with people we have no business with.