His Turn – New Age Dating
Our new columnist, Lesedi Molefi, reflects on the grim reality of attempting to find love in the 21st Century
MXit ChatZone (now defunct) is where single people went to meet in 2007. Ten strangers would gather inside a digital chat buffet wearing handles like @SexyEyes994 or @AngelicNympho69. Compelled by on-rushing puberty, this was where I planned to find a “hot girlfriend” or at the very least, a competent sexter. That’s how @Will4Love91 came to be. I had hopes of being someone’s digital Prince Charming, get married to digital Cinderella in 10 years time and finally lose my virginity. All via a Motorola. By 2009, approximately 20 MXit strangers had become my ‘friends with mobile flirting benefits’. I learnt, very quickly, that romantic disillusionment would be a fact of life.
Going further back in time, the idea of being someone’s soulmate by age 25, and then owning a happy marital home before reaching 30, wasn’t uncommon in the early 90s. Both sets of my grandparents married relatively young. My mother had been married and divorced by the time she had me at 26, which is why my father and uncles give me the side-eye when, at 28, I still show up uncoupled at family gatherings. But they lived out their dating days at a time when religion and Hollywood flicks sponsored the values of the boy-meetsgirl storyline. But, 2019 is a different place, and so are our expectations.
“No matter how much you bekezela, no one is going to save you,” tweets a friend who was raised on a steady diet of Snow Whitestyle fairytales, when asked “O jewa keng?”
Do you remember Snow White? She was apparently the model 20th Century girlfriend candidate — comatose and nonthreatening. Oh, Disney! To date, we’ve learnt that Prince Charming can’t save the day with a kiss. Statistically speaking, he is the dragon she needs saving from, and the delivery boy of a poisoned apple. We’ve woken up from fairytale dreams to the #MeToo movement, where power and political science have had to intervene in the dating game; reminding us of how and why traditional views of romantic love can obscure the flaws that underly how we choose to love each other. We’re cynics now.
Yes, I did want marriage and a laughter-filled home by age 30. In reality, I live with a friend of 10 years in a Braamfontein flat that my ex-girlfriend claimed I’ve long outgrown. I remain very single. I’ve managed to lose my virginity, but with it has gone my romantic verve and sensibilities. My 16-year-old self would be disappointed. I’ve ghosted
We’ve woken up from our fairytale dreams to the #MeToo movement, where power and political science have had to intervene in the dating game.
and battled ghosting. I’ve seen former romantic candidates watch my Insta stories and ignore my texts. And I’ve committed similar romantic crimes. Sadly, nothing in love has turned out the way I’d imagined.
It seems ‘sad single person’ culture is the new normal. We engage in ‘meaningless’ hook-ups, peer enviously into the relationships of others via Instagram, post “self-cav is the best cav” captions in our loneliest moments, and text our most insecure, disposable and least demanding exes when we need company.
We take longer to grow up and don’t value the title ‘husband’ or ‘wife’. Now rests a wasteland full of single people with trust issues — nobody wants to be saved or save anyone. We self-parody with “self-love” memes, and believe the only person that won’t betray us is ourselves. And even then, we’re often wrong.
But with the romantic instincts of that 16-year-old, I’ve found a silver lining. We’ve grown more selfaware in our pursuit of true love and companionship. That’s why I’ve decided to search the streets of Joburg for evidence of new and wholesome norms of dating. “Joburg is a cynical place,” I can hear you think, “it’s no place to find clues on love and meaning.” But it’s also a refuge for the romantic. Most of us are here chasing gold, after all. What could be more romantic than that? Lesedi Molefi is an author, videographer and entrepreneur. His debut book, Patient 12A, is shortlisted for the 2018 City Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award.■