One thing I’ve become very good at is dating and relationship advice. After 34 years of working with teenagers who always grow up to become dating young adults, I have become a go-to person for dating and relationship advice. I now even have camp counselors seeking me out year round for this advice. I would like to be asked about other life advice occasionally but it is mostly about dating. I have somehow become very good at this. Maybe because I have so many strong opinions on this. Hmmm…

Being sought out for this makes me very glad. I very much want my grown teens to marry wisely. I do have a personal agenda here.

So I read this article. Why College Students Need a Class in Dating.  Look at these quotes:

• “(Erika) Christakis thinks it’s because college students these days are too focused on resume-building and career preparation. They’re indoctrinated into the cult of extracurricular activities in middle and high school, and the involvement obsession continues throughout college almost as if by inertia.”

• “Rachel Greenwald, an author and dating coach, thinks it’s because most college ‘relationships’ now occur within the context of a brief sexual encounter, or ‘hookup,’ as the youth say. ‘Romance,’ she said, ‘has gone the way of cursive handwriting.’”

• “’In gearing themselves up for sex, they’re draining themselves emotionally,’ Greenwald said. ‘They are in training to … discard, to ignore, to swallow their emotions so they can participate in the anxiety-provoking but common dynamic which is the hookup culture.’”

• “Lori Gottlieb, an Atlantic contributor, author, and psychologist, thinks it’s because Millennials have been so coddled by their parents and teachers that they are now unable to accept others’ opinions and realities.”

• “One reason why today’s college kids seem so lost when it comes to some of the basic functions of adulthood, they seemed to agree, was that their parents (meaning themselves) had held their hands a little too firmly throughout childhood. For every problem there was a parent-teacher conference, for every closed door a string-pulling phone call. Today’s privileged youth are never allowed to bruise, so how could we expect them to seek out the bruising of love?”

Culture seems to have created this need for dating coaches. I am signing up. I will bear that title.

Call me Text me. I’ve got advice.