It's the end of the year. Christmas is next week. Normally, at this time, people would be excited, busy thinking about what to wear and how to do their makeup for plans, but both my friends and I feel an overall sense of gloom.

Even though Christmas is just around the corner, no one is reaching out to me, and even living in a seemingly fine neighborhood like Irvine, I can't find any guys worth dating. I don't want to just blame myself for being picky. To be honest, the dating environment itself feels fundamentally broken these days.

When the topic of being single comes up, people often say, "It's because you haven't dated before," but I don't think that's the core issue. The real fear is not that I 'can't' date, but that the sense that makes one want to date is gradually fading away. They say the dating instinct dies... There should be a moment when attraction sparks, but now I find myself calculating instead.

I start to think about whether this person might like me, if I have the time to date right now, if it will become awkward and I'll end up losing out, or if I'll just get hurt for no reason. So before the excitement can even rise, I hit the brakes myself.

And my confidence really diminishes. The longer I go without dating experience, the more strange questions settle in my mind. "Am I really an unappealing person?" Once that question creeps in, social media becomes even more deadly. Everyone around me is dating, breaking up, getting back together, talking about marriage, traveling, celebrating anniversaries, while I have nothing going on. I force a smile and nod along when I hear others' stories, but when I get home, reality hits hard.

On top of that, career anxiety also creeps in. What feels even bigger than the fact that I haven't dated is the urgency of not even being able to find the right timing to start dating at my age. I have to work, study, build my career, prepare for the future, and as I live like this, dating always gets pushed to the back.

But then, as I keep pushing it back, at some point, the anxiety of "What if time keeps passing like this?" grows. In the end, being perpetually single isn't about being anxious because I can't date, but rather feeling anxious because it seems like time is passing me by.

This seems similar whether in Korea, China, or the United States. Outwardly, we talk about individualism, self-development, and freedom, but deep down, distrust between genders has become too ingrained.

At some point, the atmosphere has solidified into a frame where men are seen as potential aggressors and women as always victims, and in between, ordinary people are cautious about every word and action. As a result, dating leads to the conclusion that it's better to be alone than to risk starting a relationship that might get complicated.

What's even funnier is that amidst all this, the dating market is becoming more and more polarized. Attention is focused on a tiny minority who possess top-tier looks, wealth, and personality, and Instagram DMs only go to them. Those below the middle tier, which is most people, disappear from the radar. It feels like in the past, there were opportunities if you put in the effort, but now it seems like the conditions you were born with are almost everything.

So what remains? Even though it's the end of the year, a night with nothing happening, Christmas is just around the corner, and without a single heart-fluttering event, I turn on Netflix and tell myself, "Well, I can live well alone," while internally, I keep getting angrier as a single woman in my 30s. Is this really just my personal problem, or is it the result of the older generation leaving behind strange rules and atmospheres while saying, "The youth are the problem"... It just feels like stress keeps piling up.