Author|Liu Xiaotu
"Why don't young people want to get married now", this hot search topic on Weibo every third and fifth is being followed and discussed by more and more netizens.
This is an interesting phenomenon. After all, according to the yearbook of the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of first marriages in the mainland in 2021 was 11.578 million, a new low since 1985. In sharp contrast, young people's activity in social software and the overall continuous growth of social product users. Friends, what?!
I am also often urged to get married. Twenty-eight, ordinary looking, normal intelligence, no bad habits, a car and a house in his hometown, retired parents and good health. Relatives said such conditions were a good marriage match, but they had to be accelerated, and "it would not work for another two years."
Back then, we also bravely broke into a blind date~
It's not that I don't want to, it's that no one doesn't have a chance. Although everyone says "in fact, a person is very good", but most people still have desire and imagination for love, but full of blood and no output object, in the long run, they began to worry about their love incompetence, difficult to enter intimate relationships, and even slowly fear marriage, and then send large and small confusion in Douban "mother single mutual aid group", written into Soul #脱单太难了, eager for guidance.
Sociologists have given many answers. Among them, Shen Yifei, who runs the "Intimate Relationship" course at Fudan University, attributed the inability of contemporary young people to fall in love to the fear of human uncertainty, and the fear of love itself, such as the inability to adapt to role changes, which is particularly evident in marriage relationships.
Many times, I also want to ask the reverse question, why do young people want to fall in love and get married today? Compared with simple urging and complaining, heart-pounding encounters, ambiguous extreme pulls, and love with firewood, rice, oil and salt must make us who love incompetent have more courage.
So, this Valentine's Day, I talked to a few brave little couples who chased love.
Two encounters
Blind date, this is the 25-year-old, crawling to make the most effort and the biggest compromise for the matter of love.
After entering the society and starting to work, the social radius and space are drastically compressed, and there seems to be only one way to establish a new relationship and deal with the marriage urging at home. Under the introduction of relatives and friends, she began to actively go on blind dates with various boys, thinking of meeting a slightly suitable partner, definitely trying to cultivate feelings, and trying to see everywhere.
The climbing mentality quickly collapsed. In half a year, she met twenty or thirty people one after another, wasting almost all weekends and vacations for this, but the end result was failure. Some of those blind dates, some have strange personalities and difficult to communicate, some are too macho, and some are too mouthless. Occasionally met a good guy, the two could not chat together, silent, silent, and disconnected.
What makes climbing and climbing most disgusting is that the purpose of blind dates is far stronger than imagined, "everyone opens their mouths to bride money and marriage money, always material first." This is beyond her level of tolerance, and over time, the psychology of climbing has changed significantly, becoming more and more impatient when it comes to blind dates, and she has become pessimistic about romantic relationships.
This seems to be a robbery for single young people. In a bad blind date scene, tired and numb people say boring opening remarks, exchange a clearly marked scoring system, and conduct an indifferent examination and evaluation of themselves and each other. When they separated, everyone became relaxed and complained about the strange blind date experience on social media.
After another meeting without a problem, the anxious crawl opened Soul in the middle of the night and sent a clock, pouring out the pain and confusion of being forced to blind date by the family. The news was pushed to the square, the comment area began to lively, behind the likes and comments are young people who feel empathy and are also confused and loved, Sensen is one of them, he took the initiative to find climbing, chatted about the experience and daily life over the years, and the relationship slowly warmed up.
The two had a good conversation and decided to try to be together. In their opinion, the feeling of free love is much better than blind dates, and there are endless words every day. Later, the crawling Soul instantly is almost a trace of their love, such as the flowers of spring, such as the good night every midnight, such as endless snacks...
On Valentine's Day 2021, Climb and Sensen finally rushed to each other and gave each other a safe hug. They wrote excitedly in Soul: There are still stars and moons to hope for, and cosmic romance. Parents meet, get engaged, get married... What was agreed upon by both sides was happening smoothly.
On the day of the engagement, the two fathers drank too much and helped each other out of the hotel. On this day, the two young people decided to lead each other towards marriage and a new journey together.
Climbing, the girl who used to be afraid to talk about their families on blind dates, happily wrote "Dad said to Sen's dad that 'the family doesn't speak two words'".
Speaking of the concept of love, climbing firmly means that he likes to go with the flow and does not like to force. In fact, every climber who is in the "blind date bureau" resists not blind dates, but the act of treating blind dates as a transaction. It's just that later, young people like Climbing and Sensen searched and circled around on Soul, and had enough initiative to separate love from desires, interests, and transactions, and return them to each other.
Blind date and online dating are essentially just a social way, and there is no difference between advantages and disadvantages. But what is certain is that a friendly and safe atmosphere of interaction allows people to maintain their dignity and individuality, actively overcome strangeness and distance, and run to each other easily and resolutely.
Human beings, how can they be considered to be in love
Compared with Sensen, who took the initiative to chase his wife, Jing Zexu was too slow and hot.
In 2018, Jing Zexu wrote in Soul: "The first time I wanted to be a home like this, I sighed late at night when I was single. At the time, he had been signing up for the software for months, and he didn't know where the seeds of love were, let alone signs of germination.
Isn't it very similar to you and me who convulsed late at night! This is this generation of single young people, who can neither pay for the heartbeat generously, nor can they desperately let go of love, always struggling repeatedly between intermittent wanting to fall in love and continuing to "lie flat", staying longer and deeper.
So single-minded, but in addition to occasionally sighing a few words, Kyozawa Xu began his daily life of the Buddhist lineage. In social products, he instantly shares his interests such as pets, travel, photography, piano, and bartending every three or five times, and he looks like a science and engineering man who lives seriously. Jing Zexu's happy interaction with pets often attracts the praise of many breeders, and his cat has become the strongest wingman, and a move of "forward rolling talent" has helped the owner attract a lot of peach blossoms.
Now that I think about it, Kyo Ze Wook actually has a strong ability to love, he does not just put his body and mind into feelings, but strives to live his life well, show his full personality, and naturally exude charm in the process. In an era when fun networking was trending, he clearly found the best way to open his network.
As for why young people are single and the prevalence of marriage urging, Jing Zexu has thought about it, saying that family members are often anxious that you don't have the attitude of wanting to deal with someone. Life and work are so good and unchanged, the body is not taken care of, the hobbies are not increased, and the life experience and behavior have not grown. If you become excellent while waiting for someone who is destined for, your family will also think differently.
This is like Zhang Xiaoxian said, every love is a self-extending story. Whoever you are, you will meet your kind, or the redeemer. The reason why we are single is just shuttling through the vast sea of people, and it is not yet the time to rub shoulders.
This mature emotional outlook may also determine that young people are actually more cautious about romantic relationships. In 2018, Kyo Zexu already met his current wife at Soul. The two who are both cat control suck cats in the air and exchange cat raising experience, and the two sides have a good impression of each other during this time.
After acquaintance, the two did not rush to develop a romantic relationship, but continued to chat and interact in Soul. A year later, the two naturally became boyfriend and girlfriend, really responding to Jing Zexu's saying that "if there is a topic to talk about, it will come together". In 2022, the couple, who married because of cats on Soul, insisted on receiving a marriage certificate and publicly thanked the cats for their assistance.
The Kyung Ze Wook couple are not very new in love. "Love is, play together, how not to get tired," is also the love philosophy and love cornerstone of the 94-year-old girl Cai Cai. At Soul's online playground, she meets her crush, her current husband.
They didn't fall in love just to want to fall in love, but they only bumped heads in the spiritual world, and when they looked back, they found that "everything is right". Because they talked about Hanfu culture in Soul, their already ambiguous relationship quickly heated up, and the progress bar soon pulled to the Xitang Hanfu Festival and made a wedding wish on the love wooden card.
Last winter, this love from online to offline spanned more than 700 kilometers, accepted more than a year of running-in, and finally achieved positive results. Cai Cai said that more important than heartbeat is action and courage, if you want to love, you should love quickly. And Soul's heart also has the courage to be determined in the real world, there are many autumns in her life, but none of them will be as memorable as the autumn of the Xitang Hanfu Festival.
In order to get rid of the single, people in the past deliberately presented the attractiveness and advantages sought after by the public, such as family background, education, social status, and so on. But today's young people are eager to be understood and listened to by their peers, pay attention to spiritual resonance when making friends, and prefer to precipitate deep relationships through interests. Recently, the "Generation Z Marriage View Survey" launched by Soul's Just So Soul Research Institute shows that compared with material, in terms of choosing a marriage partner, more than eighty percent of young people are more concerned about the consistency of the three views.
In The Art of Love, Fromm also tries to state that mature love is the integration of human integrity and human individuality.
Give me a reason to be in love
The so-called love must at least be a link between people and people.
Therefore, young people who cannot fall in love and cannot get married, is there a possibility, they do not want to love, but they are unable to love, or even have no opportunity to love. Even teacher Shen Yifei sighed: "Many times say that modern people do not have romance, but in fact we have not given ourselves the opportunity to be romantic." ”
On the Internet, we have seen thousands of love puzzles, each of which can make people quarrel for eight hundred rounds. These messages are more about amplifying anxiety and don't really address the underlying reality. Various love courses have fallen into quantification and laddering, which is a symptom of the "love incompetence" of contemporary young people.
But in those "if I have a boyfriend" and "when I have a girlfriend" fantasies, men and women look very good and serious. The pressure still has to be given to the old lady of the moon, and hurry up to bring these single young people who are waiting to be fed so that they can exert their real strength.
It's not a dumping pot, I really feel that many young friends are "forced" into love incompetent. The dating model with too much purpose is easy to make them resistant, and the failure rate is even more offensive, especially blind dates, which magnify the affairs of two people into the affairs of two families from the beginning, which will inevitably cause unnecessary trouble.
In my experience, those couples interviewed were obviously more likely to bond because of social products than acquaintances.
The most important thing is that in passively developed love relationships, couples always lack words when they talk about the concept of love and marriage, and they revolve around the "door-to-door" and "suitable conditions". In a free social love relationship, couples can accurately say when they meet, when they move, when they love each other, and what ritual things they have done to each other, and the words exude romance.
It's hard to disguise the excitement. I deliberately flipped through the topics related to social products, and #感谢Soul分配的你拥有近4 2,000 moments, pairs of little couples posted love stories, and happiness could not be hidden. #Soul民政局更是有着40多万条瞬间. 200 million views.
The data clearly points to one phenomenon: young people who cannot get rid of each other are less likely to have an encounter than those who lack the ability to love. In this way, the advantages of online dating are obvious, no matter how hard the seven aunts and eight aunts work hard, the love resources can not beat Soul, a social product with nearly 10 million daily active users.
However, the social products that can really promote good relationships need to be carried out from the top down to develop some "fate arrangements". For example, there are players who help young people meet Crush by sliding left and right, and there are players like Soul who are the first to introduce AI into social relationships, which is crucial in allowing users to meet like-minded people.
At the same time, Soul is also constantly innovating in community functions, algorithm recommendations, and dating scenarios to bring a better user experience. Recently, Soul's Valentine's Day event "Where there is an encounter, there is a miracle" has allowed young users to walk to the right person with the blessing of "Adventure Bell". Today, the platform has launched a "Adventure Party", accelerating the Qiyu Bell function throughout the day, allowing more people to open a real and warm romantic encounter. According to the data, the Soul Adventure Bell rings about 23 million times a day, and more than 95,400 people find true love in Soul.
The most important thing is that in the world of Soul, from the community to the user, they are soothing the anxiety and fear of love of single men and women with a full sense of security and belonging. Entering a relationship is actually a process of constantly "exposing" and opening oneself, and those fears of human uncertainty and fear of love itself need to be hedged with more affirmation, safety, warmth, and goodwill in the process of brave pursuit of love.
Here, in the loving platform atmosphere, even if we maintain our personality, rebellion or pickiness, we can still find that comfortable, suitable for ourselves, deep, high-latitude intimate relationship, no longer afraid to unlock a new identity in the intimate relationship. And this is undoubtedly the best reason for young friends to fall in love, and it is also one of the ways to harvest happiness.
It is the season when trees want to blossom and people want to fall in love, I wish single men and women the best of luck. Needless to say, I'm going to seize the opportunity to open the screen.