In a city that never sleeps, where everything is at our fingertips, from late-night sushi deliveries to ride-shares that whisk us away in moments, it’s easy to mistake convenience for love. We swipe right, get matched, and think we’ve found the one, but in the realm of romance, convenience often masquerades as a connection.
Take it from a woman who once believed that a quick text or a spontaneous date night could hold the same weight as a handwritten letter or a thoughtful gesture. Too many nights were spent waiting for a text back from someone who saw me as a convenience rather than a priority.
Men have historically found women convenient. They go to work in the morning and when they come home the house is clean, the laundry is done, there's dinner ready, and the kids are calm. But now everyone prioritizes convenience in their relationships. Are we 100% compatible? Will the relationship be easy? Do our schedules perfectly align?
When did love become something we fit into our schedules instead of the thing we built our lives around? Convenience is the Uber waiting downstairs, but love is the partner who walks through the rain because they know how much you hate thunderstorms. It’s easy to confuse the two in a world where our phones are extensions of our hands, providing instant validation and temporary satisfaction.
I remember this time in my freshman year of college when a guy came to pick me up with flowers for a well-thought-out date he had planned. My schedule at the time was complicated, but he worked around what I wanted and changed his schedule as needed. To him, I was a priority, but to me, he was just convenient. I never saw him again.
In our pursuit of efficiency, we’ve streamlined our lives to the point where genuine connection often falls through the cracks. We’ve become a generation of quick fixes and easyouts, thinking that love should be as effortless as ordering a latte. But love isn’t something you can Instacart. It’s the slow-cooked meal that takes time, patience, and care.
And this convenience isn't just surface level. There is this guy I know, he's young, hot, fun, and married with a kid and two dogs. He travels a lot for work, and on our last catch-up, he was telling me how he’d picked up a mistress in Miami (they work together). He tells her he loves her and how he's planning on leaving his wife for her, but he doesn't mean it. But she doesn't know he doesn't mean it. His marriage hit a rough patch and became something he had to work at and not something that was always easy and there, so he looked for instant gratification elsewhere and in a woman I’ll call Lily. Lily knows he is married and has a whole life in New York, but she doesn't care. She just cares that in Miami, he is hers (even though in reality she is his and he's everyone else's). He’ll never leave his wife because he loves her, but he will always leave Lily because she's convenient. She has become what will always be there.
Think about your friendships that have lasted through the years. They weren’t built on convenience (at least not entirely) but on shared experiences, late-night phone calls, and being there when it mattered most. The same goes for other kinds of love. It’s not the bouquet delivered with a note his secretary wrote, but the hand-picked flowers given with a kiss. It’s not the hurried coffee date but the hours spent talking and truly listening.
So, as we navigate this fast-paced world, let’s not settle for convenience. Let’s remember that the best things in life, including love, are worth the wait. They’re messy, complicated, and sometimes inconvenient, but they’re also the most rewarding.
I have to constantly remind myself that love isn’t about finding someone who fits into my busy schedule. It’s about finding someone willing to make time for me and someone I'm willing to make time for, even when it’s inconvenient. Because at the end of the day, convenience isn’t love. Love is so much more—it’s the beautiful chaos that makes life worth living.