A strange statistic about my friendship group of 15, is that only one set of our parents are still together. Just one. At some point, it stopped feeling like a coincidence and started to seem like a pattern.
So maybe it wasn’t a coincidence after all. Maybe our friendship group was simply a reflection of a wider reality, just particularly concentrated. What I wonder, though, is whether growing up this way has changed how we see love.
We joke about it because what else are we supposed to do? “Daddy issues” has become a punchline. We send each other ironic reels about attachment styles and call it therapy. But when I stop laughing, it feels heavier. So many of us grew up in homes that split in two.
Our parents are Gen X. They built adult lives in an offline world that slowly migrated online. They met in real life, dated in real life and married in real life. And then, halfway through those marriages, the rules changed.
“If our parents were the first to navigate marriage in an increasingly online world, we are the first to date entirely inside it.”
Suddenly there were smartphones. Text messages and social media. This meant old relationships became searchable and new ones became instantly reachable. Private conversations became easier to sustain. The internet had not only introduce distraction, but it has altered the structure of intimacy.
For the first time, comparison was constant. You could see other lives more clearly. Other couples. Other possibilities. It became easier to imagine that maybe you had chosen too young or settled too soon. Temptation no longer depended on proximity. It lived quietly in your pocket. I think this could be a reason so many marriages end up not lasting.
I know it would be simplistic to say only technology caused recent divorces. By the early 2000s, separation was already flowing. For many women, rising divorce rates represented autonomy. Financial independence meant that enduring decades of unhappiness was no longer the only respectable option. Leaving became powerful.
But for us, the children, that break is what lasts.
When my dad left, it was not explosive. It was just quiet and permanent. One day we were a family in one house. Then we were not. It was no big scene. Just absence. There is no rehearsal for learning that stability can rearrange itself without warning.
I sometimes trace my own anxious attachment back to that moment. I struggle with not knowing where I stand. If someone I am seeing takes hours to reply, my mind accelerates toward worst case scenarios. I know it is disproportionate. But beneath the reaction is an early lesson that people can leave.
A lot of my friends recognise that feeling. We say we want healthy relationships, stable ones. We complain about how disposable everything feels. The quiet suggestion that there is always someone better one scroll away.
It is hard not to see the overlap. We grew up watching long-term relationships unravel at the same time the world became connected online. We witnessed that drift and now we are hyper-aware of it. We monitor tone shifts. Response times. Energy changes. We are vigilant because we have seen what happens when attention fades.
My friend group talk about stepping back from our phones. I do not think it is only about screen time. It’s about wanting to be chosen on purpose, not constantly compared to everything else. We want to know that we are not one notification away from replacement.
I believe many of us are now emotionally cautious. We are still shaped by family breakdown, living in a world where leaving takes almost no effort. If our parents were the first to navigate marriage in an increasingly online world, we are the first to date entirely inside it. What hope do we have?
No wonder we romanticise dinner parties and long walks. No wonder we talk about “presence” like it is a luxury. It is not nostalgia for a simpler era. It is a response to instability we absorbed early.
We grew up watching love end. Now we want to log off and look someone in the eye and ask, without irony, “are you staying?”.
