WILSHERE: Care to commit?

I am a child of divorce. By the time I was 14 my parents had become another statistic in the success rate of marriages, which is a whopping 50 percent. It took watching eight seasons of “Scrubs,” blowing through three tissue boxes and writing pages upon pages of dramatic poetry to relieve my broken heart. But it eventually healed, and my faith in love was slowly restored. The question remains, however: if supposed failure is imminent, why commit in the first place?

As a society, we have taken a liking to hook-up culture. A couple of swipes on Tinder, some boring vague discourse where the male never uses a question mark to ask a question, a meeting place disclosed and a few hours later you’ve found yourself in the detached world of “Netflix and chill.” Though “Netflix and chill” might be tempting because it keeps us from responsibilities, feelings and, if we’re lucky, the pressure of picking a good movie, the excitement does not extended past the next morning. Although hookup culture seems promising at first, we are limiting ourselves to singular experiences. When we remain detached, we don’t get hurt. That’s the problem.

The reality is we need to experience dating so we can grow, heal and learn that going on a second date to Moe’s Southwest Grill isn’t always the best idea when you don’t have a pack of gum with you. Sometimes we need bad dates to remind us what a good date feels like, even if that date is just talking about literature over a couple cups of coffee till the café closes. I’m willing to take the plunge. I will fake laugh through every bad date just so I can learn what a real laugh feels like with the right person. I am willing to get hurt to learn how to heal.

A guy I was head over heels for in high school once told me he’d never get married because his parents got divorced. It was the rate of failure that got to him. He was a man of numbers, and the 50 percent chance of failure forecast didn’t look too promising. His was a fear of failure, a fear of being another part of that statistic. He resolved that the best strategy for him was to never commit, to remain detached. Things didn’t work out between us, mostly because he didn’t believe in love and I didn’t believe that golf was an entertaining sport. Fear of marital commitment aside, we should not be afraid to commit to another person, even if it lasts only a short time.

The truth is, relationships fail. They end sometimes over something small, something trivial. People get hurt. Sometimes that hurt lasts longer than we’d hoped. Maybe we’re not ready. Maybe we’re just scared. Maybe we don’t have the time or the capacity to commit. Maybe we need time to figure ourselves out before we trust someone again. But I am taking a stand. I want to move past the hookup fascination.  I want the uncertainty, I want the vague dating rules and I want the strategic timing of texts messages to not seem too eager. I want to try and fail.

I refuse to let cynicism in. The facts and statistics of how frequently relationships fail do not deter me from trying. The 14-year-old version of me would have failed at the challenge, but then again she also misspelled every other word in her diary and referred to boys by their code-names. I want to move past “Netflix and chill” culture and open myself up to another human being. It might fail and I might get hurt. We tiptoe that line every day with every relationship we form, romantic or not. Taking those chances, no matter the outcome, always proves to be better than never taking those chances in the first place.

So I implore you: let’s date. Let’s make a whole mess of it. Let’s get hurt. Most of all let’s heal, and do it all over again. To quote my 14 year-old self’s diary, “I’ve been hurt before and I guess that’s what makes love so mysterious. We don’t know where it could take you. Will it hurt you? Will it be enough? I don’t know.”

I still don’t know, but I’m willing to find out.