The Currency of Us
Attention is the new intimacy. And we’re spending it like it’s endless.
We keep saying no one wants to date anymore.
That people are avoidant. Unavailable. Emotionally immature.
But that’s not the whole story.
We’re not broken.
We’re overstimulated.
And it’s ruining the way we love.
Modern dating has turned into a marketplace where attention is emotional currency,
cheap, scattered, endlessly exchangeable.
We don’t build connection anymore, we sample it.
A swipe here. A “hey” there.
A spark that flickers, fades, and gets replaced by the next almost-something.
When everyone’s an option, no one feels like a choice.
The Loneliness No One Admits
We are drowning in access and starving for affection.
We can reach anyone at any time and somehow, it’s never been harder to feel close.
We text instead of touch.
We refresh instead of reflect.
We watch people’s lives instead of being in them.
Constant availability has killed longing, that gorgeous, agonizing ache that once made love feel real.
The pause before a reply.
The wondering if they were thinking of you too.
The slow build that made your stomach flip.
Now, we just stare at the three dots wondering if they’re typing, distracted, or already gone.
We don’t get to dream about people anymore.
We just check if they’ve seen it.
The Science of Attention
Neuroscience calls attention a finite resource.
It’s how our brains decide what and who matters.
When we focus on someone, our bodies literally attune, heart rates sync, mirror neurons fire, oxytocin rises.
That’s what safety feels like.
But modern dating keeps us in constant partial attention
scrolling, comparing, scanning for better.
Each swipe gives a dopamine hit, a tiny jolt of possibility.
But too many hits and the system burns out.
We’ve trained our brains to crave novelty and fear depth.
To feel safe only in distraction.
To confuse stimulation with connection.
It’s not that we don’t value people anymore.
It’s that we don’t value what costs us our focus.
The Death of Yearning
There’s something sacred about missing someone.
About the space between I reached and you reached back.
It’s in that stretch that love deepens, imagination, anticipation, tenderness.
But we’ve stripped love of its silence.
Of its friction.
Of its mystery.
We’ve replaced yearning with availability, depth with immediacy, devotion with dopamine.
And now, no one knows how to stay.
The Cultural Truth
We made love convenient, and it made us careless.
We made everyone reachable, and forgot how to reach.
We made attention infinite, and emptied it of meaning.
We call it choice, but it feels like emptiness.
We call it connection, but it feels like consumption.
We call it progress, but it’s loneliness in high definition.
Attention is emotional currency.
It’s the proof of care.
The language of presence.
The foundation of intimacy.
And right now, we’re spending it everywhere but where it counts.
Because love doesn’t live in the constant contact,
it lives in the unshared minutes.
In the ache of waiting.
In the courage to stay.
In the quiet decision to give someone your whole focus in a world that never stops pulling it away.
That’s the real currency of us.
Finding Focus is here. And it’s for you. Order your book today!
With you in this.
Love,
Zelana