I look at my parents in utter shock and amazement: Over a 24 year marriage and they're still together. They made it.

Someday, I'll make it too.

Then I laugh and remind myself that with a dating track record that doesn't go longer than 3 months and an unimpressive list of ex-lovers, my chances are smaller than a small fry at McDonalds.

I am not alone in the "hopeless romantic with no hope for love" boat. Too many times, I see relationships crumble or people going insane chasing a relationship that was never real in the first place. The world around me is full of hook-ups, heartbreak and relationship hell. But, it hasn't always been this way, or at least not this bad.

So here's the sitch: we, The Millennials, treat love like we treat money: easy to earn, easy to spend, easy to gamble and risky to invest in.

Easy to earn: Where did our standards go?! Nowadays, all it takes is a smooth slip into our DM's and we're goo-goo ga-ga over the next Tom, Dick and Harry that follows us on social media. What happened to chivalry? What happened to romance? Hell, what happened to manners? It has come to my attention that we are so love hungry, so desperate to find someone who looks at us like Gatsby does Daisy, who gives us butterflies like Danny does Sandy, and who will love us forever like Noah does Allie, that we settle for Tom, Knicky and Lon. Whether we are afraid we can't do better or are afraid of being alone, The Millennials have taught themselves to settle, and this is tragic.

They say that "we accept the love we think we deserve," but I don't buy that; not when I'm sitting at home every other night crying over someone. I don't deserve that- nobody does. Listen to me: you deserve to be treated with respect. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved. You deserve someone who wants to be with you. Don't let boredom or loneliness make you settle. And don't you dare let that little voice inside your head (or the voice of an insensitive jerk) tell you that you aren't enough and that you can't do better than what you have. If you aren't respected, happy, or loved, then you can do better and you deserve to do better. Overall, remember that you are enough.

Easy to spend: It's pay day! You just got a crisp new check and you're just itching to spend it and see what happiness it can buy you. But when it's gone, and the things we bought are no longer new, exciting and needed, we forget about them and go buy more things. I may be talking about money, but this is how we treat love. We find a new potential significant other and work our butts off to have them pop the question ("Do you wanna be my girlfriend/boyfriend?") and this acts as our payment. Then, we start spending, literally and figuratively. We spend every waking moment with them, thinking about them, texting them, calling them, talking about them, shopping for them- gosh, is it exhausting. At first, it's fine. You're both giving 110 percent because you want to make this work... until one of you just gets too spent. It becomes too much; too clingy, too obsessive, too needy, too many fights, too exhausting, too serious, too immature, etc. One of you becomes love broke (often too quickly) and you decide to part ways and look for a new means of "employment."

The problem is, love isn't money, and it shouldn't be exhausted or run empty. Love is a flower in the garden of your life. When you find someone special, their job is to nurture and tend to your flower and help it flourish. With the changing of the seasons, the flower may wilt and sway in the harsh winds of reality, but a good gardener will not let the flower die. Sometimes, the gardener isn't ready to tend to your garden, and that's OK. Other times, the gardener doesn't like the flower that grows, and that's OK too; part with the gardener and thank him/her for spending the time to create a beautiful flower with you. This is how we should love: carefully, passionately, creatively, and with understanding.

Easy to gamble: Right swipe. Left swipe. Left swipe. Right Swipe; NEW MATCH.

Oh my gosh, you just got a new Tinder match, and he's so so cute! Do you message him first? What do you think he's looking for? Ugh, you shouldn't have posted that selfie 10 minutes ago!

Tinder is one of the new ways The Millennials have turned to find "love" in their area. For those of you who aren't tech savvy (or live under a rock), Tinder is an online dating app that allows people 18 and older to search a radius of their choosing based on their location for "singles" in their area. I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt and imagine it was originally a dating app for busy 20-somethings on the go, ya know, a free, quick alternative to E-Harmony, Match.com, Farmers Only.com and websites of the same nature. However, as a college student at a university of over 45,000 students, you get to know the real Tinder: a free and easy way to find singles, couples and cheaters in your area that are 50 percent of the time DTF if you get them on a good day.

Tinder has become an auction house; a right swipe is your entry fee, pay the price of your most clever pickup line and you're golden. What's more, when Tinder meet-ups do happen, many of them go unfollowed; no text, no call, no Facebook friend request. When this happens, the loss you feel is minimal; you likely have ten or more matches ringing your phone off the hook and thousands more at your fingertips. It's a gamble, one that has a big immediate payout that you can receive again and again at the flick of your thumb. The catch? 95.9 percent of your matches are looking for something strictly physical.

As fun as it is to find a hottie to hit up every weekend, no strings attached, one of you is bound to feel something, and it is sure to end in heartbreak. Moral of the story: it's ok to take a gamble on someone (or two.. or three.. or seven), just make sure you understand the difference between love and lust.

Risky to invest in: Looking at it morbidly, a relationship is a cage that traps you and your significant other together while all the other singles mix and mingle around you and tease you with flirting and pokes on Facebook. Think of it as a zoo and you and your significant other are the attraction (but hopefully you smell better.) When you think about it this way it kind of seems like a drag: who really wants to be tied down when there are soooo many people other there just waiting to hook up with you. It's nothing personal against you if your crush doesn't want a relationship. In the poorly quoted words of Barney Stinson, "It's not you versus one bimbo, it's alllll the bimbos in the world versus you." Yeah, I don't like those odds either.

I find that FOMO, fear of missing out, is not limited to just concerts we can't afford or parties that we aren't invited to. The Millennials look at nearly everything with it, including relationships. Why risk wasting your precious time, money, and youth on someone when you could find someone better? Falling in love, or even just giving love a chance to blossom today has become too risky because the next best thing might be coming into your life tomorrow. (Personally, I blame Apple because it seems every time you get a new iPhone, the newer, prettier, better one comes out the next month. Like are you serious?)

Instead of banking on what could be if something happens tomorrow, we should be investing on what could be with the person who's here now. Yes, it's arisk, and 99 percent of the time ends in heartbreak. However, all you need is one, that one person to make it work, and then all the failed investments that make up the 99 percent will be forgotten because you've just hit the jackpot.

Love is not money; you get it. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to keep treating it like it is, or are you gonna cash out? For what my money's worth, I'd choose the latter, every time.