Vogue asked if having a boyfriend is embarrassing now, creating conversations about whether having a boyfriend is truly mortifying or if there is nothing wrong with it. In today's day and age, with the norm of situationships, hookup culture and digital dating, Gen Z is feeling a shift in relationships.
Gen Z women on campus shared their experiences with relationships and the dating scene and highlighted the importance of picking the right person to date. Regardless of whether they're in a relationship, some women are more driven to work on themselves as individuals.
"Everyone has their own opinions, but it just depends," Eva Tooker, a sophomore studying business marketing said. "It depends who your boyfriend is."
Katy Swanson, a freshman studying nutrition, agrees that having a boyfriend is embarrassing. Swanson said she has never been in a relationship, and this is something she is not ashamed of because of her friends' experiences with relationships in the past.
Swanson also said that even though she doesn't feel pressured to be in a relationship, having a boyfriend has just become the norm.
"If one of my friends were to get a boyfriend, I don't think anyone would pressure them to get out of that relationship," Swanson said.
Swanson's perspective reflects other women's reasoning behind why they are not in a relationship — they value their independence and the time they spend by themselves.
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Cassandra Cotton, a professor at the Sanford School, studies family dynamics and relationships. Cotton said not having a boyfriend often allows women to focus on growth, family, friends and future plans.
Amber Rowley, a freshman studying business communication, is currently in a relationship and highlighted the struggle that comes with a long-term relationship.
While being in a long-term relationship, prioritizing things that are important to you without making your partner feel neglected is challenging, Rowley said.
"I have to grow on my own, too, especially because I'm not married," Rowley said. "Why do we have to act like we're married couples sometimes?"
Cotton said she believes women want someone who will be along for the ride with them through their ambitions instead of having to change their plans to align with their partner.
"Not that love has to hold you back, but a relationship means there's two people and there's compromise and there's change," Cotton said.
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According to USAFacts, U.S. adults are deviating away from marriage, the general end goal of a relationship, more than ever.
"There's other ways that people can have romantic relationships without the legal paperwork, if that's what they're choosing," Cotton said.
Terms such as "situationships" and "talking stages" have altered the way that people look at relationships and allowed Gen Z to approach them uniquely.
"It should be you're either dating this person or you're not, but as a society and young adults, we all have this skewed idea of what being in a relationship means and are trying to complicate it when it's really not that complicated," Swanson said.
With these ideas of what a relationship can look like, people's perspectives on others' relationships can be far from the truth. Some may view people who are in committed relationships to have values or to be people lacking fun in their life.
"There's so many girls and so many guys, too, that deserve so much better than what they get, but they don't know anything better, so they just keep going back to the hookup culture and situationships," Rowley said.
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Cotton said keeping social media platforms more private is an effective solution to prevent the influence of other people's opinions on what a relationship should look like.
"Make thoughtful decisions about what you share and who you share with," Cotton said. "We don't owe anybody everything about our lives."
Edited by Kasturi Tale, Senna James and Pippa Fung.
Reach the reporter at csfishe4@asu.edu.
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