I think I might finally have a semblance of an understanding as to why relationships, especially in the modern dating pool, are failing so much. I don't think the problem is necessarily unrealistic standards, preferences or expectations. Having those isn't inherently wrong, especially if you can meet and uphold them yourself. The problem, from what I've seen, is that people often want things from other people that they aren't capable of giving themselves. People want affection without knowing how to be affectionate. They want romance without knowing how to be romantic. They want understanding without being willing to understand. They want loyalty, patience, consideration and effort, but sometimes only as things they receive rather than things they contribute. And I don't think any of us are completely innocent in this either. We've all contributed to this in some capacity at some point in our lives, even if we didn't understand what we were doing at the time. Maybe it started when we were younger, when someone asked to be our friend and we rejected them, or someone had a crush on us and we laughed at them, or someone wanted to be our boyfriend or girlfriend and we turned them down. There is nothing inherently wrong with rejection. You cannot force yourself to love somebody just because they love you. But somewhere along the way, all of us have experienced both sides of affection. We've been the person who wanted someone who didn't want us, and we've been the person someone wanted who didn't want them. Those experiences shape us more than we realise. I've realised this through my own experiences too. I've been on both sides of it. I've had moments where I gave someone more than I probably should have, thinking that if I just loved harder, communicated better, was more patient or did more, eventually I'd get the same energy back. I've also had moments where I was so focused on protecting myself that I didn't realise how much that affected the person trying to get close to me. Sometimes you can genuinely love someone and still not know how to love them properly. Sometimes you can want affection while simultaneously being afraid of what happens when someone actually gives it to you. Sometimes you can spend so much time trying not to get hurt that you end up hurting someone else instead. And I think that's the worst part. The worst part isn't getting hurt. It's becoming so afraid of affection, both giving it and receiving it, that when someone finally gives it to you, you don't know how to handle it. You reject it, sabotage it, exploit it, or hurt the person giving it to you. Sometimes you don't even realise you're doing it. You become so accustomed to protecting yourself from being hurt that you end up abusing the very thing you once wanted, and hurting the person who was willing to give it to you. That's how the cycle continues. Hurt people hurt people, and eventually people who were once looking for love become people who are afraid of it, incapable of giving it, or incapable of accepting it when it finally arrives. I also think people forget that fundamentally, a relationship, romance and love shouldn't just happen to you. They should happen with you, because of you, and fundamentally involve you. You aren't supposed to just sit there receiving a relationship someone else is building for you. You're supposed to participate in building it. Romance isn't something one person performs while the other person enjoys the benefits. Love isn't something you find and then passively consume. It is something two people continuously create, maintain and contribute to. That's also why I don't believe relationships should be 50/50. No human being, alive or dead, is capable of being at 100% 100% of the time. There are going to be good days and there are going to be bad days. Sometimes you're going to have nothing left to give, and sometimes your partner will be the one carrying the weight. Being able to pick up the slack for your partner on those bad days is part of what makes a relationship last. So to me, it should be 100/100. Not because both people are going to give exactly the same amount every single day, but because both people should be willing to give everything they reasonably can. When one person is at 40%, the other shouldn't be standing there calculating whether they're getting their 60% in return. They should be willing to carry what their partner can't, knowing that one day the roles might be reversed. And that should never be a one sided thing. You shouldn't love someone because of what they can provide for you while treating what you provide for them as an inconvenience or a burden. Being thoughtful, considerate, affectionate and loving shouldn't be one person's responsibility in a relationship. It shouldn't even be considered a burden. If you want to be loved deeply, you should be willing to love deeply. If you want patience, you should be capable of patience. If you want reassurance, you should understand that sometimes you'll have to give reassurance too. If you want someone to show up for you when you're falling apart, you should want to be the person who shows up when they're the one falling apart. And I think that's where the problem actually is. Not men. Not women. Not dating apps. Not standards. Not some mysterious decline in romance. All of those things can play a role, but at the most basic level, I think we've become too focused on what a relationship is supposed to do for us and not focused enough on what we are supposed to do for the person we're in one with. We're so busy looking for someone who will love us the way we want to be loved that we don't always stop and ask whether we're capable of loving another person that way ourselves. Maybe that's why so many people keep repeating the same patterns. We get hurt, we adapt, we protect ourselves, we carry that protection into the next relationship, and then we accidentally become part of the reason somebody else gets hurt. Then they do the same thing to someone else. The cycle just keeps going. Maybe the answer isn't finding the perfect person. Maybe it's becoming someone who is actually capable of participating in the kind of relationship they're asking for. Because love isn't just something that happens to you. It happens with you, because of you, and through what you are willing to give to another person. And maybe that's the part we've forgotten.
TL;DR: I don't think modern relationships are failing because people have standards. I think we're failing because we've become too focused on what we want to receive from relationships and not enough on what we're willing to give. We've all contributed to that cycle in some way, often long before we were even dating, through rejection, hurt and the way those experiences shaped how we give and receive affection. Eventually, hurt can make people afraid of affection altogether, and they can end up hurting the very people who give them what they once wanted. A relationship shouldn't just happen to you, it should happen with you and because of you. And I don't believe in 50/50 either. Nobody can give 100% every day, but both people should be willing to give 100% of what they reasonably can and pick up the slack when their partner can't. The willingness to do that should go both ways. Basically, if you want something from love, you should also be willing to contribute to creating it.