The 4 Principles of Millennial Dating

“Millennial” is a buzzword that the media just loves to hop on. It seems that every newssource strives to shed light on something as peculiar and revolutionary as the foreign concept of a “new generation.” Through my perspective as a millennial, I’d love to give everyone insight into our mating patterns:

1. We have a test to determine who wears the “Pants” in the relationship:

It’s the 21st Century, and Millennials believe in equality. It doesn’t matter what gender you are or who you’re attracted to; either one, or both of you, can be the breadwinner and bring home the bacon. But in the case of when a couple wants to determine who the breadwinner is, 80s and 90s babies have engaged in an ancient ritual since the days of 2007:

The Stare-Off.

Both Millennials sit across the table, and whoever is the first person to lift their eyes from their phone, and actually engage in (ugh) human interaction is now the beta in the relationship. This process has been adopted throughout millennial culture, and is commonly used to determine who is the CEO in a new Start-Up venture or who will be captain of a sports team, instead of using outdated concepts like merit, intelligence, and integrity.

2. We determine how successful our relationship is by how photogenic we look on Instagram:

As anyone can guess, us Millennials have long surpassed the need to gauge a successful relationship by things including, but not limited too: intrinsic happiness the other person gives us, whether they push us to be the best version of ourselves, and if we can be comfortable and emotionally intimate with our partner.

Instead, we gauge the success of our romantic ties through how presentable we are on social media. Is your partner snapchattable? Is a picture of the two of you together good enough to be an Instagram Story that promotes some tea that will help you on a cleanse? How many likes can you get in a profile picture? Millennials have realized these factors are more important than actually, genuinely liking the people we’re with.

3. Complaining is our favourite romantic bonding experience:

Similar to peacocks that demonstrate their feathers to attract partners, millennials demonstrate our ability to impress possible mates. We complain about a lot of the things that people of older generations say we whine about: global warming, a tough job market, an inflated housing market, and that there is a major shortage of gluten free, holistic, designer, vegan, avocado almond milk. We almost complain as much as older generations complain about us, and we find it most attractive when someone is not self-aware enough to acknowledge that the state of world affairs is really our fault, cause you know, it’s not like most of the lawmakers in our country are from generations older than millennials.

4. The Sweet Nothings we whisper into each other's ear are primarily text abbreviations and emojis:

Our generation has long realized that grand displays of love and words of affection are as obsolete as Windows 98. Instead, we have advanced society to a new level when it comes to showing someone you care about them. Here’s a real millennial love letter as an example:

Oh littest of bae’s;

Roses are 🍑

Violets are 🍆

And your ex is 💩

LMAO

😘 💌

WAZUPPPPPP

Us millennials are a peculiar bunch, but I hope this crash course has been informative, and gives you insight into the worldview of the generation that’s next on deck to run the world.

DISCLAIMER: It can be enjoyable to poke fun at any number of generations, or the generation that criticizes the ones that came after, but in reality, each age group has good and bad traits that resulted from the era they were from. Here’s hoping we can focus on what we have in common and work to make the world a better place for ALL generations, past, present, and future.

This Piece originally appeared on P.S. I Love You