This morning, it was raining again. I came out of the dormitory only to realize I didn’t have an umbrella with me. As I turned to go up the stairs, I saw a girl, also empty-handed, but smilingly walking toward the dormitory door.

A boy with glasses jogged over with his umbrella and took her hand with some formality. When she walked outside, the boy was afraid that she would get wet, and tilted the umbrella most of the way to her body.

The girl hooked up the corners of her mouth, red-faced and smiled down.

This left the hungover me helpless, suddenly tempted to withdraw the line I had just uttered to the boy I liked, “What are you doing tonight, want to have a drink together?”

I don’t know if it’s an illusion or not, but I’m noticing that I’m liking more and more people.

Not more people I like at the same time, but, the frequency of switching is much higher. Last week, I liked that long-haired guy who plays skateboard, but in the past two days, I was flirting with the handsome guy I met in the KTV.

Not only are they changing more often, but the way they are pursuing them is much more to the point.

No, that’s not “courting”, it’s “seducing”.

I will ask him for a drink in the evening, chatting with a yellow voice, “If you don’t have a boyfriend, I may have to go to the date,” or, without thinking, to reveal his schedule, telling him that I am free on weekend nights.

If the hints don’t work within two or three days and I don’t get him out to meet me, I’ll quickly lose interest and look for the next guy. If I like him for a longer period of time, I’ll tease him from time to time, not saying I like him, but saying something explicit.

The guys who like me don’t use phrases like “Did you see that movie recently?” when they tease me. Instead of “Did you see that movie lately?”, they would say, “I’ll be near your school tonight, want to hang out?”

Honestly, having sex for me is a way to test the compatibility of each other before we get together. Unnecessary, but convenient and quick, not wasting everyone’s time, how nice.

But what’s up with that, the girly, blushing feelings are hard to come by anymore.

Sometimes I think of my old self when I look at those flashy dating apps.

In my freshman year of high school, I was assigned to the media class. There were a group of well-off boys in the class who played with cell phones in class and played cards and ordered takeout after class. One of them, a boy wearing glasses, was called Y. The first time I noticed him, he was in the middle of a game.

The first time I noticed him, he was playing landlord with my classmate. He said, “Admit defeat, you guys,” after he played a pair of king bombs with no expression on his face. His voice was low and hoarse.

Usually, we say “there is no reason to like someone”, but my reason is so clear that people can’t believe it, is his voice. In my spare time, I would lie on the table and imagine him saying love words into my eyes.

After figuring out his time, I would pretend to walk with him. Hating takeout, I used to ask him, “Want to order takeout together?” When I changed seats, because I finally sat near him and heard his voice, my college entrance exam anxiety even disappeared.

Those uneventful days, every time I heard his voice, a flashing pink bubble would pop up in front of my eyes. Now, instead, I was producing dark-colored mutant bubbles straight away and popping them on boys’ bodies.
As I got older and went to college, I realized that the people around me were slowly losing their pink bubble production.

My friend A is a girl who is very good at seduction, and when it comes to the topic of “experience”, she must be the one with the richest stories.

One of her recent favorites is a senior, they met a few times, had a late-night snack alone, and when they left, A asked her senior, “Why don’t we go to your house?”

When they went to the senior’s house, things happened naturally. Only she said to me later, “We lifted our pants, but neither of us was interested in lifting our feelings.”

I thought of a term that is becoming popular in the United States – “dating doom.”

Dating refers to activities such as dinner and a movie for two people in a flirtatious relationship, which can then be developed into a couple if there is a good feeling.

Accompanying the end of dating is the rise of hookup culture, which refers to “casual, uncommitted sexual relationships,” including but not limited to one-night stands.

Surveys show that 60-80% of college students in North America have had a hookup and believe that 85% of their class will do it.

Millennials, with the assurance of mutual consent, see eye-to-eye and go straight to bed. Many are no longer interested in a real romantic relationship: with so many sexual partners, there’s no energy left for love.

Thus, the end of dating culture.

Picture.

A told me later that she didn’t like the senior much, she was just attracted by his handsome appearance and humorous conversation. Seducing him to the point of proving her charm and fulfilling her physical desires, the attachment between them only ended there.

Not only physical desire, we have come from the era of dial-up Internet access, and nowadays we still hate the video loading fast enough even when we are using 4G Internet; and we start complaining that the efficiency of the other party is too slow when we reply to WeChat a little bit later.

More and more greedy for “fast”, even the relationship, also want to be a quick fix, anxiety to impatient waiting. Hate to turn all the qualities of their own body into a label, such as probing and other software, according to the label to quickly determine whether the other party can “match”.

Inherent concepts, “holding hands – hugging – kissing” model of relationship development has long been broken, and now, we are used to go straight to the point, a night, can be completed once a month or more to complete the process. Now, we are used to going straight to the point, in one night, can accomplish what once took a month or more to accomplish.

There is no time for slow understanding, no time for gradual progress, like a straight line sprinting to the end, avoiding the round and round the curve, seems very efficient.

Simply holding hands instead became a rare return to basics.

However, as mentioned at the beginning, it is getting harder and harder for me to fall in love with someone for a long time, and I don’t even want to fall in love anymore. my little airport’s “Love Disabled” sings, “Love is incompetent in our time.” Yes, everyone has become incompetent in our time.

Yes, we have all become the prodigal son of our time, unable to moor. This is probably the end of dating for us.

Once upon a time, a young girl’s mind was overflowing, a single glance could burn her whole body, and a single touch could excite her all day long. Now, what comes easily is less appealing to me.

I lost my pink bubble and fell into an even bigger void.

But it’s so hard to start liking someone from holding hands.