If you open up the Notes app on any female Gen-Z-er’s phone, you’ll most likely find an entry that contains a list of names. This is the chronological catalogue of every sexual encounter that she has experienced. The List probably won’t have a title. The number of names can vary drastically. Some might make the stylistic choice to pair names with coded emojis that indicate certain sexual acts, while others choose a more anonymous design that includes only first names. Starting in middle school for some, and high school for most, there was a mounting anxiety about the volume of experienced sexual encounters. It manifested itself in these lists, and it all led to The Big Question: are you a virgin?

Once in college, virginity became a topic of the past, but the ritual of young women discussing all things sex continued. A few days ago, my two roommates and I converged on my bed for our Sunday Morning Debrief, a time to gossip about the previous night’s parties and share personal updates. Coffee mugs in hand, we first lamented one roommate’s steady hookup, and if she wanted it to become a relationship. Then, we shrieked in excitement about the minutiae of my other roommates’ excellent date. Finally, the conversation turned to me: with only a few days to go, we had to finalize the details of my wedding.

It was to be a traditional Jewish wedding, and an intimate one, with only thirty-five guests at the ceremony. I was deeply involved with the planning, including the construction of the chuppah, the design of my dress, and ensuring that the pledges in my fiancées fraternity were prepared to hand out the pigs-in-a-blanket. 

Some questions remained: Should we crush a Solo cup during the ceremony, or use a glass instead? What should I do about the fact that my wedding dress— a long white nightgown purchased from Savers for $3.99— was see-through? And, on top of all that, I needed to tell my parents I was staging a wedding for my 22nd birthday party before they saw it on social media.

“It’s hilarious,” my friend, Natalie, insisted. That was reassurance enough. I really did want a wedding-birthday party, even if I didn’t have a fiancée, or a boyfriend, for that matter. 

The wedding was born of an off-hand remark. I had once participated in a Vegas-wedding themed party, and I described the event to my friends when bemoaning the state of stale party themes. Run down by the pre-spring break slog, I had no energy to plan a birthday. Then, a week out from it, my friends informed me that they had been secretly planning my wedding. As thrilled as I was at this development, I was more touched that they had registered my excitement at the idea of a performance art party. The wedding would be satire enacted, my humor and personality distilled into an event.

The starring roles had already been doled out: Me, the doe-eyed bride. My dashing best friend Noah as the groom, who landed the role partially because he owned a blue velvet tuxedo. We assigned the rest of the essential parts— an elaborate dramatis personae of my beloved roommates and closest friends. Of my four best friends, one would be the Bridesmaid-zilla, another the Mother-of-the-bride, and the last two the dueling Grandmothers. My posh English friend, Teddy, would walk me down the aisle as my father; a boisterous Turkish Jewish friend would play the rabbi. Andrea, who recently crushed her MCAT, would play the Slutty Cousin. We even had an actual past romantic partner play the Scorned Lover.

Invitations went out, and the RSVPs poured in with enthusiastic excitement for the high concept birthday-party-pregame. Scrolling through the responses, it dawned on me that I had all a senior in college could want— graduating in May with honors, and a job lined up that will allow me to be financially independent from my parents—due to, not in spite of, a liberal arts education. Most importantly, I had friends who understood my essence so perfectly that they were willing to show up in character and in costume without a moment’s pause: they just knew the event was “me.” At times, my love for them is visceral.

But still, I had a nagging feeling that my dream college experience was incomplete. I had not yet fallen in love.

Once I had sex in college, I stopped caring about who else did. I no longer looked with envy at the people who had, and I did not need to find validation by parsing out those who had not. I find myself, instead, tallying up those who have yet to find love. Unlike the open conversation about virginity, I keep this interest a secret. Wanting to have sex meant liberation, but wanting to fall in love felt like a regression to the time of 1950s housewives. We’re supposed to be the most evolved generation in all things sex: don’t talk to us about binaries; don’t judge us for our choices. Against this sophistication, I feel like a failure to feminists everywhere if I voice that, on top of a successful career, I also want plain, old love. 

I, too, have a List in the Notes app on my phone. Pondering my loveless love life, I pulled it up for the first time in months. Having moved past much of the anxiety around having sex, I don’t keep it regularly updated, so I added what I needed and looked at the sum total: Drunken hookups, trysts with people that fizzled as quickly as they started, several who got back with their ex-girlfriends. I’m sexually liberated, but I don’t like one person on that list half as much as I adore any one of the guests at my birthday-wedding. 

On some of my best days, I am brimming with self worth: What could I, a sophisticated, intellectual, funny, fun, considerate and kind young woman, see in a college boy? My love awaits me, later, after college, where the mature men are.

On my worst days, I start to question the very fabric of who I am. Does my feminism run a little too militant? Is my personal style turning people off because it’s a little too out there? Am I too sarcastic to be hot? Maybe I should just become a quiet, basic bitch. Boys seem to go for that.

Three summers ago, I decided to work at my beloved childhood sleepaway camp. Romance did not motivate me to apply for the job, but I harbored a small hope that there might be someone there for me. These dreams were quickly dashed when I arrived and was not attracted to a single colleague. I decided to return the following summer, and spent the intervening months wishing on every stray dandelion seed and rogue eyelash and lit birthday candle that there would be someone for me the second time around.  

To my disbelief, there was. He was tall, and blonde, and age appropriate. His dad wrote books about birds and his mom made documentaries. He was thoughtful. We dated that summer. I waited, patiently, watching to see if maybe, just maybe, this was the thing that was about to be— could it be?— love. The ball was in my court to just do the damn thing. I willed my emotions to hurdle summer fling territory and land gracefully in the pastures of sunny, sunny love. They wouldn’t budge. 

At the end of the summer we mutually agreed to go our separate ways. I still cling to this relationship as an example that someone did, at least, like me a lot. I hold it up like a torch to prove that I’m not a lost cause.

I was hanging out with someone who I thought was a friend, and told him about these thoughts. He told me he hoped I would fall in love soon so that I could have my first love, experience a breakup, get over him, and find someone new. Then, I could find another man to marry before I became infertile. 

A beat passed. I was horrified at his comment, and vaguely insulted. Was he saying that, at twenty-one, I had to hurry before my eggs would shrivel up and I’d be calling girlfriends desperate for a Saturday night date? On the other hand, the conversation gave credence to my free-floating anxiety. Was he right?  Is this how my timeline should look? What if I died before I ever experienced true love? My mind was racing. Filling the silence, he added:  “My mom just told me she married my Dad because she thought she had to, because that’s what she should be doing. Marriage is a sham.” 

Reflexively, motivated by an unnamed emotion I didn’t know I had, I responded: “Your parents are divorced, but my parents lived together for nine years, and then got married, and they’re still together after like, 30 years. It’s not a sham.” 

I laughed at myself. I was using my parent’s marriage as the ending of a traditional love-story, but up close it’s subversive. My parents never exchanged rings, scorning the idea of a material representation of love. They married only to appease family and to secure better legal protection for future children. I’m stuck in my room staring at a List that’s supposed to prove how free I am while my parents are actually living out a revolutionary love. Isn’t that what my generation is supposed to be doing?

One day from my wedding, I sat down to write my vows. It was a fake wedding, but I had real things to say to my groom. As I wrote, I realized I was writing with love to everyone who would be in the room, not just my groom. When I graduate, I will not yet have experienced romantic love, but at least I will have experienced a wedding surrounded by my loved ones. For now, I’m content with knowing that every guest at my birthday-wedding will have some great material for their speeches at my real one.

When cleaning up from the party I found the piece of scrap paper with my scribbled list of vows clinging to the drinks table. I tucked it into my scrapbook and pulled out my phone, searching for my List— my other List. As I stared at it, various memories popped up- the exhilaration of flirtation, the dull pain of rejection, the exciting anticipation of a night out. I hit the delete button on the bottom left: a simple trash can icon. “Delete note” my iPhone prompts, wondering if I’m sure. I hover over the screen, thumb poised a quarter inch above the button. What, if anything, does this List amount to? Shouldn’t I delete this in some grand statement about…about…about… feminism? I stared intently. Some grand understanding was about to hit now that I had seen true love in my wedding. Right?

I shifted my thumb away from '“Delete note” and instead hit cancel. I left the List be on my phone. Maybe I would delete it when I found romantic love. Maybe I would delete it when I was more mature, or just less insecure. Or when my friends and I no longer found it amusing to recall the time I went on a date with a Ferries Bueler look alike, or went out with the raging republican with a goldfish named Reagan, or the guy who told me that he has never regretted anything he’s ever said because he “lives in the moment.” Well, I live in the moment, but I also reflect. The list would stay, I would search for love, but move forward knowing that’s not always the point. How could I delete an archive? It’s sum total never amounted to love, but that didn’t mean it was worthless.