Shit every single person is saying: We're in the trenches

No, not every single person in the world, but every person trying to date. You know what I mean.

I was watching a TikTok the other day of a tourist in Australia asking how dating in Australia works because she was baffled by the lack of effort from Aussie men. (Welcome my good sis!)

"If you say one wrong thing you're left on read and the amount of dates that have been organised and the guy has never texted me again has never happened anywhere else in this world," she continued.

The video got a huge amount of comments, with many women exchanging stories of how hard it is to date in Australia.

"Dating isn't a thing here," someone commented. "You hook up and if you vibe you keep hooking up until eventually no one leaves and then you’re a couple."

"We are truly in the trenches here in Australia," another person sympathised.

As we near the end of 2023, being in the trenches is a phrase I’m seeing thrown around a lot: within the group chats of my single friends, from girls, from guys, from people in Facebook groups, comments on social media — we’re all battling hard trying to find a meaningful connection. And failing. And then we all have the same complaints.

It’s something I’ve talked about a lot in previous editions: dating apps are an empty vessel for validation and attention, designed to keep the user around using the app, but sometimes, just sometimes, you get lucky. I’m in enough Facebook groups to know that in amongst the filth, there have been some gems. People meeting their forever partners on Tinder, Hinge, or Bumble, and encouraging other women to stick with it because it’ll happen when you “least expect it”. Which is a nice sentiment, but one that lies within the minority.

When you’re on and off the apps for years, willing to put yourself out there again and again, it gets draining, especially as you watch people around you find happiness. It gets frustrating. I’m at the point I’d rather slam my hand in an Uber door and watch my fingernail fall off again than go on another first date with someone I met on an app and politely “get to know each other” for an hour or two before saying goodnight and leaving, knowing that the moment they said “Yeah, my ex, she was crazy” it was all over.

I took a massive break from being a consistent user of the apps this year and focused on (or maybe, got distracted by) IRL connections, and while the attachments were deeper and felt more organic, it didn’t do much to dissuade the notion of being in the trenches. I still have a lot of respect for the men I formed connections with this year but the connections proved a lot to me: the importance of timing, the importance of finding someone who’s on the same emotional wavelength as you, the importance of emotional and physical compatibility, the importance of communication, the importance of having aligned values.

Of course, we’re in the fucking trenches. Finding all of that in someone, on an app, while you have to swipe through a million profiles that say “not sure what I’m looking for” makes things feel impossible.

So if you’re ending 2023 exhausted from swiping, exhausted from failed romances, feeling inappropriately pissed off when a guy you’ve never met sends you an upside-down face emoji to try and get your attention on Instagram, then welcome: I’m in the same club as you.

At the end of the day, in dating, we may be in the trenches, but as I try to remind myself there’s much, much more to life. Like this year I don’t have to give a single thought about splitting up Christmas time between two families, nor do I have to navigate different friends’ NYE parties to go to, and on the super hot Sydney nights I can lay out in the middle of the bed, fan blasting in my face, feeling quite smug there’s not some sweaty man laying next to me, (even though splitting the rent would be nice).

I have more to say on dating in 2023, so I’ll try and save that for an end-of-year wrap. Stay tuned…

Some screenshots to laugh at (or cry at) in the meantime.

1. The one that nearly made me want to join a convent.

I think this is it. This is the kind of comment I will forever show people when they ask me how the apps are going.

This is how a man in his 30s opens a conversation. He wants to eat my nose ring because in his eyes, I’d look better without it.

This is being in the trenches.

2. When a Sunday date doesn’t work, but a post-tonsilectomy date will.

I was chatting with someone and we were in the process of teeing up a date. He was hellbent on doing it on a Saturday. Trying to find a free Saturday in silly season is like me trying to find my dignity after a night of tequila. It’s impossible.

Anyway, I had suggested a Sunday as I was meant to be going in for a surgery, but for some reason that wasn’t flying with him.

No Sunday afternoon drink because he wanted to make “more of an effort” but he’d happily come around after I had a surgery? Make it make sense!

3. Nope-al.

This guy who liked me on Hinge had a prompt about “in 2023 I want to get to Nepal” so I endeavoured to find out if he made it.

It’s like when a waiter says “enjoy your food” and you say “you too!”

4. “First of all I need to connect…”

A girl in the Life Uncut group put this one forward of a guy who stated on his Hinge profile that he was looking for a longterm commitment/life partner.

Our parents may have lived by “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage” but in the modern-day era we get “first comes connection, then comes deflection, then comes the need for some deep, deep reflection.”

5. 🤤

Not the drooling face.

Don’t do that!

Stay tuned for my 2023 Dating Wrapped. And if you have your own horrifying screenshots, remember to send them my way over at Shit Straight Men Say.