A Visual Guide to Modern Romance

So you’re young, single, and ready to get down in the big city. Whether you are meeting people online or at the pumpkin patch, you have probably found yourself in a number of situations that your mother would find quite alarming.

This is a handy visual guide to help you navigate the strange, occasionally sweaty terrain that is your love life. While these are certainly not scientific terms, they are, in fact, 100% accurate because you saw them on the internet. Let’s get started.

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Online Dating Fatigue

Definition: Burnout from going on way too many online dates.

Symptoms: A contact list brimming with entries like “Matt – snaggletooth”, “Gillian – that ginger,” and “Jeremiah – never again”

Man Child

Definition: A small, needy child trapped in the body of a grown man.

Symptoms: Extreme moodiness, orders fried meats for every meal and thinks it’s cute, perpetually recovering from a relationship that ended five years ago

Nut Buster

Definition: An alpha female who emasculates men through verbal and emotional abuse

Symptoms: Dramatically shrunken and/or missing balls within one mile radius of her presence

Porn Addict

Definition: An individual whose consumption of porn interferes with his/her romantic relationships

Symptoms: Sudden, fleeting sexual obsessions: two plumbers and a wrench, whips at pizza parties, rabbits pooping into fishtanks, etc. Total apathy to that last thing you did when you were together (even though it took two years of therapy for you to recover emotionally and physically).

Fancy Boy

Definition: A straight man who is prettier than you could ever hope to be.

Symptoms: gets his nails did on the weekends, gives you unsolicited fashion advice, and not-so-jokingly refers to himself as “high maintenance.”

Personal Calendar

Definition: a pocket-sized calendar that is your sole method for keeping track of the date (bonus: helps you avoid unplanned pregnancy!).

Symptoms: Nausea, mood swings, tender boobs

Internet Voyeur

Definition: A sensitive, perverted individual who lustily communicates with old acquaintances and strangers on the internet.

Symptoms: Deluges of Facebook likes, emoji winks, and the occasional pornographically-detailed email of how the two of you are made for each other.

Modern Romance is a weekly illustration series by Donna Choi, a designer & illustrator based in Brooklyn. For more, visit yourmodernromance.com.