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| Single Girl Society |
Sometimes as a single girl in college it feels like your dating life is split in two halves—one spent actually dating guys and the other spent in coffee shops with your girlfriends talking about dating said guys. So if half of our dating world is actually spent dating, what exactly is the other half spent on? I’d say probably too many lattes and not enough sensible advice. I’m as guilty as the next girl. I say I don’t want to talk about something and sure enough 20 minutes later, my friends have pulled it out of me and now I’ve somehow connected something as minute as my guy not noticing my new slingbacks to his daddy issues that I’ve now taken the liberty of convincing myself he has, even though he clearly doesn’t. So girls analyze their love lives, what’s new, right?
What’s new is that now, with social media, we have the capability to literally spend the majority of our dating lives just talking about dating. Half is more than enough, but not only do social platforms like Facebook and Twitter give us a way to continue communicating, they provide us with an abundant amount of information to keep the conversation going. It used to be that if we thought our guy was cheating, we’d just picture them with a face-less blonde bimbo with Pamela Anderson’s body and the IQ of a goldfish. Now social media has armed us with not just a picture of the potential bimbo, but a list of interests (turns out the face-less bimbo with no soul actually likes all the same things as you!), enough photos to fully decipher exactly where she’s been every Friday night since 2008 (judging by the number of different guys she’s slung around in these photos, you’re probably not the first girlfriend to creep her), and a list of mutual friends. Social media has given girls more than a way to talk, it’s given them more to talk about. Social media has upped the ante on girl talk sessions at coffee shops and drunk brunches everywhere.
So what’s the problem, right? Since has it been a crime to be well-informed? The problem lies in girls, heated in conversation, stirring up problems and things to worry about simply because they read somebody’s Facebook status. If a girl puts up lyrics from a Death Cab song as a status, her and her relationship become the next topic up for discussion at the next weekly coffee girl date. It never crosses our mind that maybe that girl just really likes that song or that she thinks the lyrics are really meaningful even if they have nothing to with her life, but we automatically interpret it as her trying to tell the world something, preferably about her dating life. Because if it isn’t broke, let’s pick it apart and analyze it until it is.
I love my glasses of wine with my girlfriends as much as the next girl and I wholeheartedly agree that they are some of the best times of my life. However, too much of our time with our girls is spent discussing our boys. I think the only time it’s healthy to analyze your dating life is when you actually have a problem with your dating life. If you start to pick apart everything out of habit, you’ll never stop. We often forget that our time with our girlfriends should be spent getting away from dating dramas. Of course, we should seek advice and consoling, but only when we need it. So the next time you’re with your girlfriends, think about how much of your time spent with them is devoted to being determined to find something wrong with your relationship or dating life. The less time you spend talking about dating is the more of a chance you have to not create problems, like his apparent daddy issues or like how you’re absolutely certain that he’s cheating when you really know he’s not. In short, talk about the problems when they exist and don’t make them up if they don’t just to continue conversation.
Our girlfriends can be our best allies or our worst enemies—they can build you up and make you realize you’ve got it really good with your man or through over analyzing every little thing said, they can make you question everything about your relationship with him. What we often forget is that, for the most part our friends are supposed to be a respite from the dating world, not an extension to it.
What’s new is that now, with social media, we have the capability to literally spend the majority of our dating lives just talking about dating. Half is more than enough, but not only do social platforms like Facebook and Twitter give us a way to continue communicating, they provide us with an abundant amount of information to keep the conversation going. It used to be that if we thought our guy was cheating, we’d just picture them with a face-less blonde bimbo with Pamela Anderson’s body and the IQ of a goldfish. Now social media has armed us with not just a picture of the potential bimbo, but a list of interests (turns out the face-less bimbo with no soul actually likes all the same things as you!), enough photos to fully decipher exactly where she’s been every Friday night since 2008 (judging by the number of different guys she’s slung around in these photos, you’re probably not the first girlfriend to creep her), and a list of mutual friends. Social media has given girls more than a way to talk, it’s given them more to talk about. Social media has upped the ante on girl talk sessions at coffee shops and drunk brunches everywhere.
So what’s the problem, right? Since has it been a crime to be well-informed? The problem lies in girls, heated in conversation, stirring up problems and things to worry about simply because they read somebody’s Facebook status. If a girl puts up lyrics from a Death Cab song as a status, her and her relationship become the next topic up for discussion at the next weekly coffee girl date. It never crosses our mind that maybe that girl just really likes that song or that she thinks the lyrics are really meaningful even if they have nothing to with her life, but we automatically interpret it as her trying to tell the world something, preferably about her dating life. Because if it isn’t broke, let’s pick it apart and analyze it until it is.
I love my glasses of wine with my girlfriends as much as the next girl and I wholeheartedly agree that they are some of the best times of my life. However, too much of our time with our girls is spent discussing our boys. I think the only time it’s healthy to analyze your dating life is when you actually have a problem with your dating life. If you start to pick apart everything out of habit, you’ll never stop. We often forget that our time with our girlfriends should be spent getting away from dating dramas. Of course, we should seek advice and consoling, but only when we need it. So the next time you’re with your girlfriends, think about how much of your time spent with them is devoted to being determined to find something wrong with your relationship or dating life. The less time you spend talking about dating is the more of a chance you have to not create problems, like his apparent daddy issues or like how you’re absolutely certain that he’s cheating when you really know he’s not. In short, talk about the problems when they exist and don’t make them up if they don’t just to continue conversation.
Our girlfriends can be our best allies or our worst enemies—they can build you up and make you realize you’ve got it really good with your man or through over analyzing every little thing said, they can make you question everything about your relationship with him. What we often forget is that, for the most part our friends are supposed to be a respite from the dating world, not an extension to it.
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