> "80 percent of Gen Z say that they want a romantic relationship, but 55 percent say they’re not ready...We’ve screwed up a whole generation with this idea you need to overly self actualize before you can be in a relationship."
Their belief is accurate: young people no longer accept flawed partners the way older generations did.
They don't even accept flawed celebrities or flawed relatives.
I've found that the core issue is that they don't accept or love themselves. If you can't accept yourself in spite of your imperfections, it becomes nearly impossible to love/care about someone else for reasons beyond the superficial; how they look, where they sit on the social ladder, etc.
So you end up with a whole bunch of people focused on chasing status to feel worthy of having a partner who already has that status.
Being flawed is not same as not being maxed-out.
While not accepting flaws (serious ones) is a good thing, the problem is that people poisoned by social media do not accept non-maxed-out people. Even aspiration and effort to improve is not enough, one has to be already in the perfect state.
Though maybe you have meant that, that even small imperfections are not acceptable anymore.
I wonder how much of this is due to the likes of Instagram, where everybody presents a throughout curated, filtered version of themselves, setting unrealistic expectations as a baseline everywhere.
"Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something"
~Jake the Dog (Adventure Time)
I feel this doesn't get taught enough in school and it's a really important life lesson.
... or to believe that you can't be lovable if you aren't perfect.
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