24 ★ † FT Weekend 9 November/10 November 2019L
ast year, an elderly woman
informed me I was going to
die alone.
I don’t think she meant it
as an insult.As we sat in her
floor-to-ceiling chintz living room
during one of my weekly visits, she
stared at me through bifocal lenses that
magnified her eyes to the size of
saucers and told me straight: my
romantic prospects at the advanced
age of 27 were slim.
I had been a volunteer with
homebound elderly residents in my
neighbourhood for a few weeks, which
mostly entailed listening to stories
while nibbling on biscuits. And by all
accounts, my eccentric friend was an
authority on matters of love.
A bombshell blonde in postwar
Britain, she met her first, second and
third husbands at the organised
dances that took place at a club near
Trafalgar Square each Friday night.
Everyone went, apparently.
When I was forced to admit that my
friends and I did not attend such
functions, she cried: “BUT HOW DO
YOU EXPECT TO MEET MEN?”
I wondered if she had a point.
Despite the proliferation of
technology designed to make it easier
to meet people,my generation is dating
less, marrying later (if at all) and
having a lot less sex than our parents.
We were raised on a rich diet of TV in
which sexually liberated twenty- and
thirtysomethings perpetually fell in
and out of bed with attractive, STD-
free partners they met in places like
coffee shops or at work. Workplace
romance has since become taboo— and
has anyone been picked up in a coffee
shop since 2008?
The lapse between expectation and
reality makes the lack feel all the more
stark. As a single friendtold me over
drinks to celebrate an accidental
abstinence anniversary,Sex and the City
has a lot to answer for.
Studies aimed at decoding the sexual
decline have found explanations
ranging from macroeconomics to
simple stress: 45 per cent of Britonsreported in 2018 that stress had a
negative impact on their sex lives.
Marriage has long been correlated
with the economy, as people seek
financial security before tying the knot.
And while the marriage age has risen
steadily since the advent of birth
control,this trend has accelerated
sharplysince the 2008 financial crisis.
Buried under unprecedented
mountains of student debt as housing
prices skyrocket and wages lag behind
inflation, our lustiest looks are saved
for the real estate we can’t afford. We
work longer hours for less income, and
are more likely to rent accommodation
with several roommates, cutting into
both time and funds for dating.
But I don’t think young people areless interested in sex and romance than
our forebears. In the UK,93 per cent
still say they aspire towards marriage.
The romantic landscape has changed
dramatically.Dating apps that make it
easier to meet new people you never
would have otherwise encountered
have also left a hole in their wake:
meeting people in real life.
Mobile phones have all but
eliminated happenstance. My parents
met when both were stood upat a
concert in Boston. I doubt my shy
mother would have venturedoutif her
friend had texted her beforehand:
“Really sorry, not gonna be able to
make it... Sooooo tired xxxxx”, the
cancel text every child of the mobile-
phone generation will befamiliar with.
Apps allow singles to jump from one
prospect to the nextwith alarming
speed.Committed relationships, the
kind that require work andcompromise, can struggle to find fertile
ground. The casualness has given rise
to impersonal dumping practices like
ghosting and breadcrumbing, a
tortured process of being strung along
by digital interaction.
We live in a time that should be more
open to sex, sexuality and romantic
preference than ever before, and in
many ways it is. Being single is
considered an acceptablechoice for
women, as the actor Emma Watson
illustrated this week when shedeclared
herself happily “self-partnered”.
Premarital sex and hookup culture is
the norm, sexuality is recognised as a
spectrum and polyamory and
asexuality are both household terms.
At any given time you could have
multiple dating apps on your phone
from Hinge to Bumble to Grindr to
Tinder, presenting you with an endless
buffet of potential compatibles.
But the abundance has left me
craving something else: simplicity.
One Friday night this autumn, I went
to a ceilidh — a traditional Scottish
dance — at a community centre in
London. When everyone was told to
grab a partner of any gender, I was
struck by how many people had
arrived at the event alone. An elderly
man sitting by himself threw himself
into the melee. As we all held hands
with strangers and moved to the tempo
of the fiddle, I knew it had nothing to
do with romance. But I wondered how
many in the room had looked forward
to this slightly sweaty moment of
human connection all week long.
This coming weekend, like so many
in my generation, so well connected
but still so often lonely, there’s a high
chance I’ll be bingeing Netflix and
replying to Hinge messages.
But if it were up to me, I’d see you
later at the weeklydance. We might
move on to the next partner after a
turn, or we might find happily ever
after. Call me old fashioned, but I think
our generation still has something to
learn about sex from our grandparents.[email protected]When you’re young
and not in love
N
othing confirms the folly
of today’s youth like their
willingness to come to me
for advice. I think I
understand what is going
on here. Because most columnists are,
for want of a better euphemism,
“distinguished”, I am mistaken for a
youngster who can relate to Generation
Z. I forever dread being roped into
some kind of FT mentor scheme,
where an intern and I clock-watch our
way through meetings like a divorced
father and his son on a weekend
custody trip to Pizza Hut.
On the other hand, if I don’t give
them advice, they will just get it from
a less scrupulous dealer, and the dodgy
stuff can do irreversible harm. No
generation has had to digest more
advice than the one below mine.
Self-help used to be a discrete field,
comprising such fixtures of the western
canon asAwaken the Giant Within nda
Wherever You Go, There You Are. It is
now so ubiquitous as to constitute a
kind of ambient noise. It is the
unofficial language of Instagram.
Here, then, is my rebuttal to the worst
advice: my counter-advice.Be true to yourself
Actually, don’t. A huge part of life
comes down to acting. You change your
accent as you move up socially. You
feign confidence when you feel none.
Once you make it, you do the inverse:
feign bashfulness and self-doubt to
avoid ruffling people. None of this
makes you “inauthentic”. Or if it does,
then authenticity does not warrant the
hype thathas grown up around it.
Lying is corrosive. But a certain
amount of dissembling is hard to avoid.Don’t compare yourself to others
This is a good way of preventing
insecurity. It is also a good way of
underachieving. Competition is a spur
to performance. Even people who are
not work-focused engage in competitive
parenting or competitive socialising.
And if you try to avoid invidious
comparisons, your brain will resist.
The research on “inequality aversion”
suggests that people think in relative
rather than absolute terms. We wouldrather have less overall if it means our
neighbours do not have comparatively
more. “It is not enough to succeed,” said
Gore Vidal, my life coach, my Deepak
Chopra. “Others must fail.”Follow your passion
This is wrong on two counts. First,
many passions are hard to monetise.
This was true of music and novel-
writing even before the straitened
economics of those industries set in.
Creative pursuits favour downwardly
mobile rich kids, hence the oversupply
of contemporary fiction by authors
who “live in New Haven and Jakarta”,
starring characters who fly a lot and
feel a bit sad.
Second, if you do make a career out
of your passion, some of the passion
goes. Bar songwriting or filling thattroublesome regista slot for Arsenal,
there is nothing I would rather do than
write columns for the FT. But because
I do, it is a job. I don’t get to saunter
over to the laptop when the ghost of
inspiration possesses me. I have
deadlines. Any activity, even Alba
truffle-eating, becomes less fun once
your ego and livelihood depend on it.Work for your dream
Up to a point. But there is no linear
relationship between effort and
success. And while hard work never
killed anyone, it has drained them of
their happiness. I keep wanting to
press this case through a trilogy of
self-help books (Lean Out,The Seven
Habits of Highly Rested People,The
Fierce Urgency of Tomorrow) but it
seems like a lot of work.A penny saved is a penny earned
An old one, this, and it shows. Many
asset classes have risen faster than
incomes throughout your lives. It will
take some heroic saving to buy the
house you want. The modern world
often disincentivises you — all but
mocks you — for thrift.
The memories you acquire in your
twenties will sustain you later. Make
sure those memories are of something
better than diligent tithes to your
401(k). Retrench in your thirties, if
you must, or just marry into money.
Economists will splutter. But they
undervalue what they cannot quantify,
and they cannot quantify raw human
pleasure in the moment. The best
things in life are not always free, even
if this advice is.[email protected]Make sure the memories
you acquire in your
twenties are of somethingbetter than diligent tithes
to your 401(k)A Big Fat Sky s 30-year-oldi
Max Miechowski’s exquisite
ode to Britain’s eastern
coastline. The up-and-coming
photographer began shooting
his award-winning depictions
of halcyon summer days in
London, before moving to
document “the different pace
of life” among coastal
communities from Suffolk to
County Durham.
His collection is tender and
meditative, oscillating
between the glow of sunlight
on skin and endless horizons
where sea melts into sky.
Miechowski’s title borrows
a line from “Our Coastal
Poem” by John Cooper
Clarke, which he says evokes
childhood memories of
“fishing for crabs and braving
the waters of the murky
North Sea”.
Madeleine PollardMax Miechowski is a winner of
the Offspring Photo Meet’s Best
New Portfolio Award. His work,
and that of the other winners,
can be viewed at theprintspace,
London E8, to November 25SNAPSHOT
‘A Big Fat Sky’
(2019) by Max
Miechowski
Madison Darbyshire
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Join us at the FT NextGen
Festival in London on November
16 for a day of culture, fashion,
tech, business and opinion. Hear
how Monzo CEO Tom Blomfieldbuilt a millennial brand; learn the
secret to plant-based cooking
with Anna Jones; debate the
future of feminism with Laura
Bates, founder of the Everyday
Sexism Project.We’ll also be discussing
fashion’s sustainability problem,
how to turbocharge your career,
and politics in the age of protest.
Find out more and buy tickets at:
ft.com/nextgen.comFT NextGen Festival
My counter-advice
for Generation Z
anan GaneshJ
Citizen of nowhere
As housing prices rise
and wages lag, our
lustiest looks are
saved for the real
estate we can’t afford
NextGen
NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20197/ - 17:44 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD22, Part,Page,Edition:WIN, 24, 1