A Millennial Way of Exploring Love

I want to thank my daughter for always trying to bring me into the 21st century and expose me to the world of social media and all that entails.  While I still have issues even checking Facebook, haven't joined Linked In, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare (is that still in the picture?) or anything else, I am following an interesting blog she sent me a link to — because it's very unusual and in its way, educational.

Now that she sent me to it, I'm hooked on:

40 Days of Dating

What do you do when you’re tired of the prospect of dating? Two good friends with opposite relationship problems found themselves single at the same time. As an experiment, they dated for 40 days.

Doesn't that sound intriguing? It's very Millennial*  Jessie and Tim are seeing each other every day, reporting on it, seeing a therapist together, blogging, designing it beautifully, embedding video, but only releasing it a day at a time, now that the experiment is over. (They're up to Day Thirty-One as I write this.)  It's just so original!

I scrolled down and started at Day One and have been caught up with following their progress day-by-day. What I like about it is we get to see inside the minds and hearts of these two people who clearly care about each other but are deliberately pushing themselves to fumble through this relationship in a very orderly and public way.  What a personal challenge to undertake.  I think they're being brave.


As I wrote in A Reality of Reality TV, I believe that media can serve an educational purpose — when it's at its best.  And while neither of these examples is THE best, they do open the door to seeing ourselves — foibles and all — in these real-life players who are letting us in on how they're grappling with life. And in that seeing, maybe learning something that helps us become better people, better partners, better friends.

While I don't know how it all comes out, I am rooting for Tim and Jessie to find happiness with one another, but who knows? Maybe that's a carryover of my generation— just another Baby Boomer looking for that fairytale ending.
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* Whether you're in the age zone or not, take the Pew Research Center's quiz to find out How Millennial Are You?  Me? I scored an 8...sigh.