Dating is dead, and it's not our fault. Well maybe a little.

Carrie, cooking up yet another ridiculous theory.

Every Sunday my Grandad loves to tell the story about how he and my Grandma traveled all over Charleston and eventually down to south Georgia to get married. No, not looking for the perfect venue, I mean looking for someone who was comfortable illegally marrying two teenagers. They met, dated, fell in love, eloped, had three kids, and have been together ever since. I always try to get lost in the romance and nostalgia of the whole thing, but my critical, independent-woman brain screws it up every time. Didn't you want to...date around? Live together first? Wait--he was your first kiss? And they both laugh and smile, pitying my jaded outlook on romance.

But see, it's not my fault. The dating world has become a hopeless maze of disappointment, where no one is satisfied, mostly because they don't know what simple satisfaction feels like. But even the simplest, relationship-minded people can't find what they want because the dating market has gone completely haywire, and the game is impossible to play. Women are supposed to play hard to get, but not too bitchy. Give a guy what he wants, but not too fast or you're easy. But even if you play it all right, and things are going fine, is it healthy for love games to form the basis of a relationship?

The first and probably most influential factor in the dating disaster is exposure to warped media. I am the product of 24 years of exposure to fabulous sources of information like Sex and the City, reality television and Cosmo. And I suck it all in like a sponge, because somehow these sources of information have dictated not only how we date, but what we expect to feel when in a relationship. Because if your boyfriend is suddenly calling less and acting cold it means he has an emotional wall that you will eventually tear down, because that's what happened to Carrie and Mr. Big. But even if you can't parallel your situation to a Sex and the City episode, the answers are out there. It goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Boy does something that confuses/angers girl. Girl seeks out a magazine written by women to better understand men. And everything promptly goes to shit.

Whether a result of media exposure or an entity of its own, exploring a pool of endless options will ruin any chance of happiness. I don't mean dating to find out what kind of person you want to be with, I mean always ending relationships because you're hoping for something better. Often experienced during post-grad wandering, this will send you through cycles of confusion and heartache, when maybe...you keep ending relationships because you don't want to be in one at all.

On the contrary, many people are showing up to second dates that should never happen. Lowered expectations keep people in bad relationships for years and years, because they think at the other end of the spectrum: there are no options. This is just as dangerous as endless options syndrome, because they stick around, dealing with things, making sacrifices, being unhappy and wasting their time. The key here is to simplify and be honest.