Why Modern Relationships Feel Empty

Weeks passed and graduation time approached.

It was nothing that Joachim was worried about anymore.

He worked.

He worked day and night to find capital for PlaynDate and to get it completely ready.

It was a completely different job than with G8KeyPR and so he didn’t have to work with beautiful impossible girls.

He was tormented from time to time by memories.

Once they had actually talked about his love life.

It wasn’t often they talked privately but she had playfully said that if he only had someone who could control his choice of clothes, hairstyle, creams, lifestyle and hobbies then maybe maybe …

Then she laughed.

“I’m being serious,” she said.

“You can’t just walk around looking like a sack of hay and expect anyone to pick on you, can you?”

“I’m not very good at social things.”

“No, I know,” she laughed again.

“But you can be.”

“Maybe we can do another experiment when this is finished,” he said with a vague smile, not understanding what he meant.

“Maybe so,” she replied, without being able to read anything into it at all.

But there would be no more experiments and especially not with Nikki.

He had stopped following her Dating Line and otherwise it was quiet there since she took Fredric back.

There wasn’t even much on her other social media, and he had given up on them too.

He didn’t need to go there anymore Hoebooken in his life.

He needed a charter and money to get PlaynDate on the market.

No matter how he searched, there was no capital to be found.

In front of him, he saw his degree slipping away from his hands and unemployment rising.

Of course, there were junior jobs to apply for, but he had more than that in his vision.

He didn’t want to be a simple worker at some company.

He wanted to build something for the future.

His online dating app was exactly what he had imagined.

An app that could bring people together in a deeper way but with a playfulness – completely unlike today’s apps.

An app that even a superficial girl like Nikki liked.

Although that was wrong.

Nikki wasn’t superficial.

But probably naive.

That’s how it hit him.

Even if he wasn’t going to get a job at Q, maybe they could support him anyway.

They were a company that operated partly in the gaming industry.

Maybe they could step in as financiers.

If he approached them that way, any chance of getting a job there was over – he knew that, but they probably were anyway.

He had nothing to lose.

He sat down at the computer and wrote his final email about the capital application.

If this didn’t work out, his dream would die then and there.

Nikki.

Nikki had put school on the shelf.

There was no chance for her to succeed there and she had begun to prepare herself for a different life.

Fredric had promised her that he would arrange a job for her as soon as possible.

She had given up her student room and moved into his apartment that he had in a nearby town.

There they lived and over the next few months their love grew, and she enjoyed her life as a housewife during the transition period when she knew that there would soon be a change.

Sometimes she sent Joachim a thought.

It gnawed at her that he had put him on the edge of the pot.

And that thorn still ached.

She hoped it would go away, but the more time passed, the more she realized that she had deeply let him down.

What she had ruined was his career.

But that, she thought, she could probably repair.

That the experiment had died wasn’t important.

It was what it would lead to that was important.

So, she brought it up with Fredric, who promised he would use his network to try to help Joachim.

Maybe he could even find an entrance to Q?

Time passed and months passed.

Slowly Nikki began to wonder when Fredric would help her arrange a job.

Finally, she went out and looked for her own jobs as a waitress or cleaning.

She had always known that art would not take her far in the first place.

The room in Paris she had written about on social media long ago was gone with her absence.

Instead, it became an apartment with her future husband.

A future husband who seemed to be dragging out the idea of helping her poor ex-partner.

The time in the apartment was slow but eventually she got a part-time job as a waitress.

Fredric kept showing new signs that he would arrange a better job for her, but it seemed to be a long way off.

There were constantly new meetings, but the meetings seemed to bring money because he showered her with gifts and trips.

She enjoyed it but at the same time she felt that she was missing something.

And what she missed was the time with Joachim and their collaboration.

She didn’t miss the dating.

She didn’t miss the project as such either.

It had changed her and made her understand more deeply that she was looking for someone to build something with.

That was the idea that she would do with Fredric but as things seemed to develop, she saw more that Fredric was building something, and she watched.

If there was something that had been in what she and Joachim had, it was that she was involved in his creation and the more she thought about it the more she felt she longed for it.

And actually, a longing for Joachim.

Without her thinking about it, he had become a good friend.

A good friend that she had actually let down.

So, after a month or so of pondering, she plucked up the courage and dialed his number.

And he actually answered.

Maybe intimacy was never supposed to feel this disposable.