Something properly switched in my brain recently when it came to dating apps. I know I’ve hypothesised many times before — are the apps actually bad or are the people on them bad? Can they be used more mindfully instead of just as a boredom filler on a Friday night? Are people now lazier than ever when it comes to dating because the apps have given us the next best-thing mindset?
One thing I hadn’t ruminated on until very recently was the oversaturation of apps and app usage, and how that is now coming into play more and more in the dating world.
I think the thing single people are now grappling with is the fact that the apps aren’t shiny and new anymore. 10 years ago they were a novelty. Five years ago they were still fun or exciting to use, and it felt easier to find more like-minded people. In COVID they were a great way to connect. Now in 2023, they’re a staple in people’s lives, a mindless scroll, a minefield of matches that stack up, and only 20-40% you probably talk to longer than a day or two. Sometimes after a break (or breakup), it’s fun to download Hinge, Bumble, or Tinder for 48 hours, be thoughtful about your matches so you’re only matching with people you WANT to speak to, then somehow still end up with stacks of messages you can’t be bothered replying to or vice versa.
Dating apps have become another bit of admin for us all to navigate. The shine has worn off. Opening Hinge now is the same feeling I used to get when I opened my 40,000-strong email inbox at the youth media company I worked at. The thought of downloading or managing three dating apps like I used to makes me recoil. I am so bored of the notion of swiping through men with no bios and zero personality that I have finally, quite simply, stopped.
We’re constantly stuck in a Catch-22 situation. People on the apps don’t make the effort because they’re also over making all the effort. Dates aren’t thought-out, or planned, or specialised in any way because there’s a strong chance of cancellation, ghosting, or the person disappointing you IRL. We now screen people: coffee meetings, FaceTimes, an ongoing chat until both of us figure out when we can meet up. Red flags are more apparent than ever which is a good and bad thing. We take a promising dating app chat to Instagram only to get sent a dick pic in the early hours of the morning. We take a promising dating app match to text, only for the person to bombard us with constant “good morning beautiful” messages that feel like spam and develop the ick instantly. We’ve all set ourselves up for complete and utter failure.
I realised a couple of important things on my journey when I was doing a month of dating in March, but the most important lesson for me was that I have fun on dates because I know how to have fun. Most dates I’ve been on this year were fine because I enjoy my own company. I realised this because after my Feeld dates I felt nothing for anyone — if contact died off, I didn’t notice. If I left a date, I wasn’t thinking of that person on the train home. I was exhausted after dating in March because I realised no one really knows what they want and the pressure of apps makes us feel like we need to box people in: are they potential relationship material? Maybe just a situationship? Absolutely friendzoned! Or maybe a one-night stand if the night escalated.
Tinder recently released some research that said women are leading the “situationship” trend and I was pretty surprised at that. It was sold as women on the app empowering themselves by asking for a casual, yet defined, relationship centred around transparency and freedom, with Gen Z and millennial women posting nearly 4x more about situationships than Gen Z and millennial men.
I can tell you why they’re posting about situationships 4x more. Because situationships are a complete mental fuck-around and just another bit of admin brought on by using dating apps.
In my world, and in my friends’ dating world, no one seems to be all that keen on the situationship or find it overly empowering. In fact, for the most part it seems like another dating trap most people fall into because of the lack of accountability attached to it. The situationship seems like a dressed-up way of saying friends with benefits. FWB is cute in your 20s. It’s less cute when a man in his mid-30s is propositioning it to you by saying “wanna come watch the footy, then fuck?” Like, oh yeah, I definitely want to waste my time in the prime of my life watching an 80-minute game and then not having an orgasm.
A blockage in my own dating life has been thinking I’ve done the internal work, but in doing so, I also subconsciously thought when I was ready for love it would just find me, which was maybe the reason I’d go on and off the apps every couple of months, thinking “this time, it’ll work! Because I am ready! Again!”
Last year, I was dating with a shiny, hopeful, wide-eyed look, knowing I was finally a person who could back myself, love myself, and be quite happy on my own, but knowing I’d like someone to share a life with. I think that started to put unconscious pressure again on the relationships I cultivated around me. I’d analyse other people’s relationships and silently observe what I did and didn’t want. I’d ask dates early on if they wanted kids, not necessarily because I want them but because I want the option to have them if I met the right person. I dated a lot of different people in an attempt to find an elusive spark. I tried a slow burn situation because I remembered once my therapist told me that’s what I’d need to succeed — getting to know someone over time so I didn’t flip-flop between being avoidant and anxious. I stuck to it because I thought that’s what must be right, when instead I realised months later I wasn’t getting the effort or respect I deserved and instead had wound up anxiously attached to someone who just wasn’t that into me.
In that sense, dating apps are also a huge distraction for us because we use them in a bid to find a connection, a distraction, or a hookup, instead of focusing on the uncomfortable parts of ourselves and what maybe doesn’t make all of us ready for a relationship. Sure, there’s a chance you might meet a great person you click with from an app and fall in love with and that’s amazing. But it’s kinda like winning the lotto. The statistics aren’t exactly backing us all.
Take where I’m at now in my life: I’m 32 and I’ve been on the apps for five years. In that time, I’ve caught proper feelings for one person, an anxiety attachment for another, a few solid friendships, a string of weird dates, and a few horror ones. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, a lot of soul-searching, and shed a lot of past relationship baggage. But I also haven’t been able to build something that has lasted past the three-month mark. The odds aren’t exactly in my favour and I’ve given it a red-hot crack. So now I fluctuate constantly between thinking I want something and “putting myself out there” and being tired of the whole cycle, as do many other single people I know. And I don’t think it’s healthy for us in the slightest.
I live in a huge city with ample dating opportunities but I haven’t been able to find the person I am looking for. I always said to people I’d move out of Sydney once I met someone, but I’d enjoy the meeting of people along the way (which, to be fair, I have). Then in my fantasy land, I’d meet this elusive “right” person, who for some reason would also be ready to leave the city at the exact same time as me and start a new life somewhere else. Overseas, in a coastal city, roadtripping around Australia, there was never a set place in mind — it just was never Sydney. (And I guess for some reason I was really rich in this fantasy and could throw everything away to go do a year trip around the world or whatever.)
At the same time, I fear leaving a city like Sydney, with all its supposed ample opportunities because if I can’t find someone I like in a city like this, does the problem actually lie deeper within me? I found myself changing the goalposts. It stopped being “when I meet someone” and it started being “once I turn 35 I’ll leave Sydney.” Now it’s turning to “when my next lease is up, maybe it’s time for somewhere new.” But then is it actually easier to meet people in other cities? Or is it just the fact that dating app culture has burned all of us out? I also can’t deny the better romantic connections I’ve had in the last 12 months have been with people I know and met off the apps.
Dating in your 30s is really hard: you’re watching friends settle down around you, or even if you’re happy and content to be single, there’s the overwhelming pressure that you’re missing out on something that other people seem to so easily find. At the same time, others who are coupled up are envious of you and the freedom you have. The grass is always greener on the other side.
The one good thing the apps have taught me over the years however is that I’ll never have the feeling of FOMO of not being on them. I won’t be the married friend taking control of her single friend’s Tinder after a few wines to “find her some matches” but really be perving what’s on the other side. I’d like to think when I do end up with someone, I’ll have a greater appreciation for them for all the Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder princes and frogs I’ve met along the way.
Even if dating in your 30s is hard, I also know that being single in my 30s has given me the chance to really hone in on what and who I’m looking for, with a freedom that’s hard to denounce.
For now, I’ve decided to simply give up on trying to control what’s next. For work, for my love life, for where I should be at the age of 32, for my “five-year” plan, for the pressure I’ve put on myself to try and achieve more whether that’s writing a book, or not being enough outside of my career, or not knowing when I want to move out of Sydney, and whatever else I freak out about in the pursuit of “happiness”. I also think I’m actually putting the right steps in place to make the changes, and I’m not good at giving myself credit for any of that. I quit full-time media and left the toxicity and stress of the environment it became. I went cold turkey on the apps for a while and had a proper reset. And while I’ve been back on and off the apps since (obviously, the Feeld saga), they don’t have the power to dictate my happiness based on quick swipes of validation anymore. I really do believe I’d make a great partner for someone but the apps and getting stuck in the everyday admin of them weren’t leading me down the right path. I was simply just letting myself get distracted by them because they had become another addiction, another piece of admin to tick off my list, another quick dopamine hit.
So I’m reframing my thinking: at 32 I can book spontaneous weekends away, or splurge way too much on Europe flights, and travel around and go on dates and meet new people and really use the next six, or 12, or 18 months to hone into what I really want instead of folding to the societal pressure of career or familial benchmarks.
Would I love to find someone along the way? Obviously. Is it going to be from a guy who sends me a rose on Hinge, then leaves me on read for 3-5 days before half-heartedly suggesting we go for a drink before I forget to reply to him, and then we repeat the cycle like everyone in an office job saying “sorry I missed your email!”? I really don’t think so.