As someone who graduated from college and recently finished up grad school, I will say that this culture seems pretty dominant when you are on a college campus. It’s not because you have to wait for an arbitrary date before having feelings for someone. In my experience, most teenagers don’t have enough sexual freedom before coming to college, and when they finally do get on campus, they go crazy to wild extremes in terms of alcohol and hookups. There is no curfew, no parents asking questions and a severe lack of responsibility. And for those who don’t want to partake in hookup culture, they tend to stay in and stick to their groups because the dominant culture is intimidating to them. Meaning everyone you meet seems to be in it only for the hookups. When I went to grad school 2 years ago, one of the earliest realization is that people are a lot more chill and relaxed because they have all of this out of their system already. People are much more interested in forming close friendships and dating seriously. So I would say, keep trying! You might meet your unicorn at college or maybe after. :)