Sorry for the formatting.I don’t know what happened.
That will be interesting. Among the educated, divorce rates are already lower than among the general public (about 25% vs. 40%+/-) but who knows, it might decline further. My sense is that fewer people are opting for marriage and kids - maybe it is the difficulty of finding a partner or maybe this generation puts self-fulfillment ahead of family formation. It is hard to tell.
I was talking to my mid 20s son and a female (platonic) college friend of his over dinner last week. She said she couldn’t be bothered with all the hassle of dating (even casually)and she’d rather go to the gym or spend time with friends instead. They are both very busy with careers.
I definitely understand that in the first few years after college your life is very busy and there might not be much time left for dating on top of everything else with work etc. But that’s partly why in my generation most people tried to stay together with their college BF/GF so you didn’t need to invest more time in dating. Maybe some would call that settling? But in my kids’ generation it seems quite common to break up with your college BF/GF after graduation rather than making the compromises necessary (eg long distance for a time) to stay in a relationship.
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None of my friends stayed with their college BF/GF. We all got married, though. We made time for dating even while busy with careers. People would go out for drinks after work or attend alumni events (quite a few of my classmates married other grads from our college that they started dating AFTER college). It just seems really different today. As I said above, my S24 would love to meet someone but he is shy and not confident when it comes to women. He’s really smart and nice and reasonably cute but hasn’t found much luck. I hope he keeps trying because he would actually like to be married and have children (and he knows how to cook and clean).
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That’s tough when people aren’t going into the office and some younger people are drinking less.
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But we also had company sponsored volleyball, softball teams; various volunteer things in the community, lots of non-drinking opportunities. And intramurals with the other teams from OTHER companies so you weren’t just socializing with the folks on another floor at your own workplace.
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Trivia night is a very popular thing in my D’s friend/work circle. Their group goes with folks from another company. They’ve also started going out to hear local bands playing after work.
I have to believe that she’ll eventually cross paths with someone she’s interested in dating. Right?!?
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If people aren’t going to the office, and prefer to work from home, are there still company sponsored teams? The opportunities to mingle seem to be dwindling for a large portion of young workers.
It doesn’t have to be about drinking, but pre-Covid, happy hour was a thing, at least in cities. My son and his fiancé like to bring their dog to local breweries to meet their friends. Their social circle continues to grow specifically because neither of them can, or has ever worked remotely. Neither do their friends. It makes a difference.
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My D is part of a running/biking group. However, within that community most of the people married are women and they are in their 30’s. Most the (single) guys her age are not really “dating.” She thinks that their training schedules combined with work make dating too much trouble and time for them. She has done a few app dating things but says most of the time it just becomes a messaging back and forth… never a real date or meet-up.
I think things were dwindling even pre-Covid. I haven’t heard of a company with a company-sponsored team in at least 15 years, maybe more. And of my various employers, it was only at one organization where people would regularly meet up for happy hour (with several people who would have soft drinks…so just there for the socialization and not the alcohol). At my current employer, HR organized a couple district-wide meetings that concluded with lots of games available (trivia, charades, etc), and maybe only 5-10% of people ending up playing any kind of a game together even when there was still time on the clock, so not needing to leave to pick up kids/cook for the family, etc. (HR has since given up on that.)
The team I work on now has undergone a lot of changes (including in personnel), but it went from a regular standing lunch where we would go out to eat together once a month and people were open to doing things together and having occasional happy hours to one where it’s like pulling teeth to get people together for a lunch once every few months. And this is at an organization where people have no more than one work-from-home day per week.
Covid may have made things worse, but I think a whole lot of folks, from young adults to older ones are bowling alone, and it’s not making things easier or better for our society.
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To your point:
“The United States fell to its lowest happiness ranking ever partly due to a rise in the number of Americans eating their meals alone, an annual UN-sponsored report said Thursday.”
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Thanks for sharing that article. Unsurprising, but still sad, that one in four Americans are eating all of their meals alone.
Below were some quotes that really resonated with me:
“The number of people dining alone in the United States has increased 53 percent over the past two decades,” the authors said, noting that sharing meals “is strongly linked with well-being”.
the United States was one of few countries to see a rise of so-called “deaths of despair” – from suicide or substance abuse – at a time when those deaths are declining in a majority of countries.
enjoying beautiful nature could help explain the consistently high level of happiness
evidence indicates that engaging in acts of generosity and believing in the kindness of others are “significant predictors of happiness, even more so than earning a higher salary”
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One of the reasons I am so happy that D2 lives less than a mile from us is that she can share meals with us. She lives alone, works from home and does not currently have a significant other. She comes for dinner at least 3 times a week and sometimes comes for lunch too. Last night H and I walked to her place since there was a pizza food truck at her apartment complex and got food and watched the UCSD basketball game with her.
D2 is definitely lonely at times as many friends her age (30) are married or coupled up and don’t invite her as often as they used to. She is struggling to find some new social groups in addition to hoping for a life partner. She is good about getting exercise and spending time outside especially since our weather is so good here in San Diego. It seems crazy to me that a smart, hard working, funny and beautiful young woman is mostly alone.
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Exactly. There were opportunities to socialize with your co-workers.
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And an acceptance (sometimes even an expectation) that co-workers would date…
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In our early 20s, right after DH and I married, we lived and worked in the Chicago Loop. Almost every night after work, it seemed the whole city converged on the downtown hotels and bars for happy hour at a time when happy hour often included free appetizers so no pressure to find or cook dinner, just long regular evening hours laughing, chatting, connecting. This was probably the most social time in our lives and was a dating buffet for singles. After that, I was fortunate to be part of a successful startup, the intensity of which forged a family whose ties still bind today-and produced several marriages. Every job until I retired was marked by hard work/hard play/shared meals/fast bonds. Even in my last job, where everyone on my team worked from home, we went into the office on Fridays just to go out to a long lunch together, often calling it a day afterward.
Eating together, whether as family, friends, or co-workers, is an act of community that builds relationship. I think the loss of regular table time is a sad hole in today’s isolating work/life/social dynamic that exacerbates the difficulty young people are having to organically meet each other. Also, I do wonder if the “too busy to date” posture is an honest position or a defense mechanism against this hole. What does it say about us if we’re really too busy to make a priority of finding each other?
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Running clubs are huge dating pools in major cities – lots of flexibility in scheduled runs and generally very welcoming, inclusive groups for runners of all paces and sizes.
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Ds1 was one of those “too busy to date” people. I told him when you find the right one suddenly you’ll find the time. And he did.
People don’t want to hear it, but dating takes work, especially in this work-from-home climate. It’s not romantic – Tony and Maria locking eyes across a crowded dance floor. When looking for a job do you sit at home and wait for the offers to come rolling in? No, you put out feelers, tell friends, do research, apply at places that interest you. When ds2 was loneliest, he made it a priority to talk to a new person every day, even if it was only the produce guy at his grocer. Just some kind of social contact. I fear that work-from-home and Covid and apps have made social muscles atrophy.
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Social muscles AND small talk.
Every encounter doesn’t need to be a therapy session. Some times it’s ok to laugh about the crazy weather, the stop sign on the corner that a kid has spray painted with “Stop Complaining”, or how much you love the new cereal/caramel donut at the local bakery.
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College or grad school is still the best environment to find someone. The pool is diverse and there are a lot of different opportunities to socialize without doing the heavy lifting to organize the group. D and fiance met in college.
The pickle for S is he has a pretty intense job in NYC. Most of the people he socializes with are people who work with him or are otherwise in finance. He used to have a better college network who had their own social network, but he is at the point where a lot of them have done their NYC adventure and have moved on. He has tried dating apps, but has been disappointed. No surprise a lot of the women on these apps are very much into SM, including trying to be “influencers”, which is definitely not this speed. He is trying to figure out why the algorithm keeps on steering him to these types – probably because he exchanges texts and then goes out (1 time) with them, lol.
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