I’m 25 years old, smackbang in the middle of my 20s.
According to pop culture media I’m supposed to be living life to the fullest, going to parties, loitering in bars, and sleeping with anyone and everyone who I can persuade to take their clothes off.
Then again, it also means I’m supposed to be solidifying my career, putting away savings, and finding that special someone I can settle down with before I hit the big 3-0.
There’s a fundamental inconsistency here, an incompatibility that runs right through the generation currently going through their 20s (millennials, not that I’m enamored with the term).
On the one hand our adolescence is ever expanding, the old comic conceit of the ‘manchild’ becoming less punchline and more par for the course. On the other hand, there’s still pressure, partly from older generations but just as much from ourselves, to hit the big milestones of life, to buy a house, get married, settle down with kids – all with the vague sense that if you’re not at least part of the way there by 30 you must be doing something wrong.
Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to romantic relationships. Enter a steady, long-term relationship – especially in your early 20s – and you face the common cultural notion that you’re wasting your best years, missing out on the chance to sow your wild oats, meet new people, and learn who you really are.
But spend too long single, too many evenings aimlessly swiping through Tinder or wandering through bars, and the opposite worry creeps in: that you’ve left it too late, as everyone around you seems to be settling down, marrying, and moving onto the next chapter in life.
Leaving you behind all by yourself.
So, what’s a confused 20-something man to do then? Sleep around or settle down?
Settling Down: “Everybody Else is Doing It”
It may at first sound daft to suggest that anyone is going into long-term relationships out of little more than peer pressure, but there’s something to be said for it. Especially entering the second half of one’s 20s, it can be all too easy to look around and worry that everyone else seems to be marrying off and settling down.
This is never more true than when entering the summer, as your calendar begins to fill up with wedding invites – often for both this year and the next – and everyone starts to look around and wonder who’s going to be next.
Throw in the fact that for many couples marriage is the immediate precursor to having kids, and it’s all too easy to get the sense that the singletons among us are falling rapidly behind.
It’s an understandable anxiety, and one tapped often enough by pop culture. No one wants to lag behind their peers, in careers or in relationships, and I suspect most of us have felt that niggling fear that we’ll be the last one left single, the only one among our friends still clinging onto our extended adolescence while the rest of them get on with being adults, whatever that means.
This is, of course, also a very silly reason to do anything, least of all enter a lifelong, committed romantic relationship. Sure, plenty of your friends may be wedding one another, but I’ll wager it’s not all of them – and it won’t be for a while yet, if ever.
This also comes with a huge logical fallacy. Since you’re a reader I already know you’re more introspective, more disciplined, and desire more for yourself than most of the population.
By assuming there’s something wrong with you because you’re single, you’re suggesting that everyone you know who has gotten married has the same high standards for:
- How satisfied, attracted to, and in love they are with their partner
- Having the strength to walk away from a comfortable relationship if it isn’t right (most can’t)
- How compatible the communication and values are, emotionally and sexually (most settle)
- Having incredibly high levels of respect for each other, to challenge and inspire each other, and to support each other even when you disagree
When you look at it this way, you may know one couple, if any, that has such a motivating relationship. By demanding more of yourself and your relationships you are committing to a life full of self-respect and confidence.
This can be seen as a parallel to the famous Dunning-Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias where intelligent and skilled people underestimate their own abilities and assume their peers are as or more competent; and relatively unskilled persons mistakenly rank their ability to be much higher than it really is.
Sleeping Around: “Your 20s Are the Best Time for It, Right?”
A seemingly obvious point in favor of avoiding strong ties: sex is fun, and by extension sex with lots of different people should be even more fun.
There’s a pretty widespread, natural urge for variety when it comes to sexual partners, and your 20s are a great time to scratch that itch – you’re young, you’re (relatively) carefree, and you’ve probably got the most free time you’re going to have until you hit retirement.
Well, if you ever get to retire – our generation is looking a little shaky in that regard.
Beyond the pure enjoyment of it all, it’s also incredibly educational. You’ll learn plenty about sex from trying it with different partners, from what you like to what they tend to, and that’ll be useful knowledge to have by the time you do find yourself in a committed relationship for good.
Both for having a strong and healthy sexual relationship with your spouse, but also for eschewing fear-of-missing-out anxieties that are common among men once they’ve been in a long term relationship that has naturally settled down.
On the other hand, the single life isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. No matter how many scaremongering Vanity Fair articles you read, Tinder hasn’t exactly turned us into a generation hooked on casual sex – in fact there’s some evidence that we’re having even less of it than previous generations.
In a committed relationship you can have a pretty regular sex life as long as you’re not going through any particular problems. Being single might offer more varied sex, but probably not more of it full stop.
There are more nights in on Netflix than nights out on Tinder.
A lot of the argument runs that you should use your 20s as a time to date lots of different people simply because there’s never going to be a better time for it. You’re young, your likely partners are young, and, so it goes, you’re all as good looking as you’re ever going to get.
You should have less baggage, less risk of serious exes, divorces, or kids to worry about. You’re also more likely to have a social life that already revolves around going out and drinking (ir)responsibly, which suits being a singleton pretty well.
I get the argument – and it’s part of what made me pause for thought during my last committed relationship – but more and more I’m questioning how much it holds water.
The rise of online and app dating has helped break down some of the barriers for dating – as long as you have Tinder or OKCupid, you can meet new people without having to commit every Friday night to bar crawls and overpriced clubs.
There are advantages to dating beyond your 20s too.
You (and your dates) might well have a bit more disposable income, which takes some of the financial bite out of heading out to a new bar for drinks every few days.
Plus, if you’ll pardon my French, you’re both more likely to have your shit together: to know what you want, to know how to be up-front about it, and hopefully to know how to handle all of the inevitable rejection that comes along with dating.
You’ll hopefully have gotten out of bad habits like ghosting or standing people up. In short, you’ll basically be more of an adult, and so will they, and everyone will probably have a better time for it.