People forget how incredibly difficult is to find someone that meets your expectations while you meet the expectations of that person as well, hit it off and made it through the stream of disappointments that follow to finally settle on a minimum set of values that are non negotiable and accept the fact that the perfect relationship you imagined existed only in your imagination.

Dating apps make this dreadful process much faster IMO.

I met my wife through one of these popular apps, but I had a process where I serially dated dozens of women over the course of years, optimizing for volume not for matching score.

Many girls I dated were great but it took years until I finally met the one I could actually marry.

In comparison my parents grew up in a small town and were pretty much set for marriage by their parents when they were very young. They spent almost 60 years together.

Did you grow up in a big city as opposed to a small town? Why do you think your experience has been so different from that of your parents?