They’ve always said that love is the only thing you need but never before has there been such a surplus of my generation. We don’t connect anymore; we can’t take that risk. The selfishness and detachment are not what they seem: they are the byproducts of broken trusts and broken hearts. Romance and connection are there - we just don’t know what it looks like anymore because we’ve been burned too many times to allow ourselves to see it. 

If we choose - when we choose to commit - we are still one-eye-wandering at the options. How can we expect people not to be selfish and have one foot out the door, when so many have been burned in the past from putting all their trust and emotion into one person? 

We soothe and distract ourselves, and if we can’t even face the demons inside our own brain, how can we be expected to stick something out – to love someone even when it’s not easy to love them? We don’t. We can’t. Because once you’ve been cheated on you’re unlikely to be able to trust and let someone in for years to follow, let alone love him or her. By cheating on someone, you are not only breaking his or her heart, you are creating a generation of people who don’t trust and can’t commit. This isn’t because of the choices, the options, or the comparisons, but because the vulnerability of trusting again is a risk that is too great to take. And, the cycle starts again: we are so broken that we break someone else’s heart. 

And so, we break up. We break up because we’re damaged, we can’t commit, we can’t connect, and we can’t trust. So we swipe: swipe, swipe, swipe just a bit more on Tinder. We order up a human being in the same way we can order up Pad Thai on Seamless: OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Dattch…take your pick. 

Onto the next: searching for the intangible; the next quick fix; the next instant gratification. We know deep down that more is an illusion, but we can’t help it. We have trust issues; we can’t sit down long enough to connect with someone because connecting is feeling, and feeling to us means getting hurt. 

We realize that we want a love that builds: we want slowness. We want simplicity. We just can’t do it. 

Because when you cheat on someone you are not only breaking his or her trust in you but you are breaking his or her trust for the next person. And the cycle continues. 

We are not the generation that thinks intimacy lies in a perfectly executed string of emojis. We are not the generation that can’t put down our phones because we’re selfish: 

We don’t delete Tinder off of our phones after an incredible first date because we are shallow – it’s because we are scared. We are scared to feel because feeling for us means heartbreak. 

And so it is: the cycle that we so effortlessly have become a part of – one that we haven’t been asked to qualify for - becomes one that we hope to one day break ourselves.