My mother wasn’t much older than me when she had me. She and my father have now been together for about 25 years. At my current age, I cannot fathom the idea of a child, let alone a long term committed relationship. And for most of my peers, it is the same trope with their parents. They met somewhere in the tail end of high school, university or just after it. It’s almost a blueprint our aunties and mothers hand down to us as we head into university. Focus on your education, but if from the corner of your eye you catch a glimpse of someone with whom it could lead to something, lean in.
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Here’s the funny thing though. In my own observation of my friend group, campus and the general vibe, it’s maybe two out of every 150 people who meet at university that are in something you’d actually call a relationship, the kind with a trajectory toward an altar. You know what’s not rare, though? Ships! Everyone I know has been in a ship of some sort and there are so many flavours now, it’s a whole dictionary. There’s the talking stage, technically nothing, just talking about favourite colours, drinks and everything in between. It should lead to a relationship but mostly ends up with one person becoming a professional status viewer. Then there’s the situationship, which has every feature of a relationship except the label, usually because one party won’t commit and the other’s too confused to ask why. Then comes the maybelatership. You meet someone who has the desirable traits and could potentially be the one, but just not now. So you keep them in your back pocket to perhaps try it out later. And then my personal favourite that I’ll go ahead and name myself, the humiliationship, where one person is embarrassingly invested and the other is simply not interested enough but tags along anyway. Seven times out of ten, the person pursuing knows this. They just keep hoping that the other person will eventually come around and see how great they are if they keep trying.
You have to wonder. Are Gen Z actually incapable of committed relationships? Have we collectively lost the plot? Or is something else going on? The best way I can describe what’s happening is that dating right now looks a lot like joining the Ugandan job market. You intern. Then you intern again somewhere else, unpaid, for four to six rounds, collecting “experience” and “exposure” before being offered an actual role. Relationships have started working the same way. Everyone is an intern waiting to be retained somewhere with good conditions, but is anyone even hiring? The dating pool honestly looks like those ghost jobs on LinkedIn.
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Let’s start with the most obvious culprit: money and its effect on traditional home dynamics. People love to say economics has nothing to do with love, but deep down, we all know it does. It is the first time people are dating for character and everyone is single. Don’t know how this adds up? Well, let me cook! Gen Z women were raised with the instruction to get educated and employed so that they don’t need a man to survive, as opposed to back in the day when relationships were built around a model where men were the default breadwinners and providers while women nurtured and took care of the home. For many women, relationships were tied to survival as much as they were to love.
Going into relationships now, Gen Z women are looking for worthwhile partners who are supportive, emotionally attuned, capable of providing actual companionship and willing to make room for growth. Men have to provide more than income now. Which is around the point where we start noticing what I like to call a deficit of human decency, because the truth is, nobody trained the men for this round of interviews. Girls got a whole dual syllabus on independence and how to care for all the people around them, while their male counterparts claim to have been told to “man up” and hold their tears in. But beyond that, they were taught very little, especially about how to be dependable, which is exactly what an independent woman needs by her side.
Monkey see, monkey do. The men now just saw the men then work and come home to be served a hot meal. The expression of love was “kameza” money and that can’t survive today’s relational, social and especially financial climate. Now, don’t take me for a misandrist, I am simply pointing out the obvious. There isn’t enough guidance given to men in their formative years on what it means to be emotionally available, supportive and dependable companions. It is this very void that has contributed to the rise of the manosphere and red pill movements all over the internet. A real problem is being identified, but the wrong prescription is being offered.
Speaking of the internet, we cannot leave this conversation without looking at its effect on modern day dating. Our parents and the generations before them dated from a prescribed shortlist that included the neighbourhood, church, mutual friends and school. Before internet adoption, a regular guy might see one proper baddie in his entire lifetime. A handful if he was lucky. But today, they are just one scroll and tap away. Were we ever meant to be as exposed to this many options and relationship goals like helicopter proposals, money bouquets and lavish trips as we are today? Of course expectations are going to be unrealistic. If you remember your basic economics properly, you know that too many options can kill decision making. Scarcity forces a choice. But with everyone one app switch away from seeing a supposed 10/10, nobody is going to settle.
And we ought to also talk about the parental precedent. While some of us watched marriages that lasted twenty five years, others watched the fights and separations play out in the living room. Some of us grew up looking at our parents and thinking, “I want that.” Others looked at theirs and thought, “Absolutely not.” Add our latest culture that preaches “focus on yourself” and “don’t settle” and things start to look more like risk management than commitment phobia. Why willingly walk into something that could hurt you when you have spent your entire life being told to protect your peace?
Perhaps the biggest misconception about Gen Z and relationships is that we do not want them. If the number and types of ships this generation has come up with show us anything, it is that the desire for companionship is very much there. We are simply very deliberate about who and when. We are also more aware of unhealthy patterns, which means we sometimes take longer to decide who and what is worth being involved in.
The one thing we still have to learn is vulnerability. Yes, we want love, but we don’t want the possibility of rejection, which is inevitable. Love requires accepting the possibility of heartbreak. You cannot completely protect yourself from being hurt and still experience intimacy. At some point, you have to take the risk. As they say, it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
But despite all the “fear men” and “fear women” tropes that trend online, Kampala is still wedding after wedding, every other weekend and on weekdays too. Love never left. It’s only being done differently. There is hope for all our ships after all. Eventually.
This article has been guest written by Keinemigisha Elizabeth, an enthusiastic business strategist, communications professional, and emerging entrepreneur with a background in Strategic Management. A Young Silverback Award winner in Public Relations, she is passionate about business development, corporate communication, events, and creating opportunities that contribute to youth and women’s livelihoods. Follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram.