WTF20s

For most of my twenties (a whole two years), dating has felt like an involuntary game of chance that never really ends. Sometimes it’s exhilarating, but more often than not it feels exhausting and hopeless. Granted, I’m in my 20s, but let’s be real. The future isn’t guaranteed, and the present is as real as it gets. And right now? It feels like our generation has no hope for real love.

Not movie love. Not situationship “void-filling” love. I mean the kind of love that has old people bicker at each other after 60 years of marriage because they can’t imagine life any other way. The real “’til death do us part” kind of love.

Heartbreak has a way of making the world feel small. Splitting from someone you let into your life is gutting. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that none of us are really alone in this. We’re all stumbling through the mess, trying to make sense of it, and hopefully make it out with some hope left.

So far, I’ve only been through one heartbreak that really broke me open. Some days I still wonder how far behind me it actually is. Each connection I’ve had has been different, each left its own mark, this one somehow shifted my world in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

It was the kind of love that builds a universe of its own. Intense, consuming, full of feelings I didn’t know existed. The thing about discovering new worlds, though, is that it’s easy to get lost when you don’t know your way. We were kids trying to be adults, navigating something we couldn’t yet understand.

And when it ended, it didn’t leave quietly. It took pieces of me with it. Losing him felt like losing the version of myself that had grown around him. For weeks, I prayed for God to bring him back, even though I knew, deep down, it was God who took him out of my life. That’s the hardest truth to accept: sometimes the loss is the protection.

But heartbreak, as brutal as it is, also carves out space for growth. It taught me to forgive myself for what I didn’t know then, to take both the highs and lows as part of the process, and to start rebuilding.

That ending forced me to face myself. To see how much I want to accomplish. To start imagining the woman I want to become, the values she stands on, the life she’s building, the discipline she carries. It made me realize how much time I’d been wasting and how badly I want more for myself.

Maybe that’s what dating in your twenties really is: not just about finding love, but about finding yourself in the wreckage of it.

And here’s the thing! I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m still learning, still healing, and still holding out hope. But if you’ve ever felt broken by love and unsure where to go next, you’re not alone. WTF Dating is where we’ll figure it out together.