Originally published in July 2021
Every now and then, I lose my shit. I see someone publicly ranting and moaning about the perils of online dating, and I physically cannot prevent myself from pointing out the obvious: If you’re single, dating apps are optional. (If you’re married, dating apps are off-limits, but it’s not like that’s stopping anyone.) We don’t have to use dating apps, they are not required like rent and taxes, but for some reason, the single community still sees them as mandatory. And anytime I point out that instead of getting angry, frustrated, or upset at dating apps (again), we’re allowed to just delete them, I’m always met with the same response: “But then…how will I meet someone?!”
Let’s ignore that we’re ignoring that we haven’t met someone yet, because we came by this blindside very, very honestly. We ignore the fact that online dating and dating apps aren’t working for us because we keep seeing them work for other people.
“Well, she met her boyfriend on an app, so apps work!” This is the logic. We take something that happened to someone else and assume that very same thing will happen to us. We believe this so blindly that we rarely if ever acknowledge that in perhaps years of giving dating apps chances to “work,” they never have. In addition to giving dating apps chances, we also give them our money. We hear about someone else’s win, and we keep pumping money into the same slot machine they used, hoping that we’ll win too.
I’ve long sung the praises of listening to people’s “how we met” stories. I think they’re important to hear, because I think (especially when dating apps are not involved) they remind us of the infinite nature of the world. There are literally limitless ways people can come together and meet, and each time we hear a “how we met” story, we’re reminded of the possibility that we can meet our partners in an endless number of ways. Notice I want us to hear these “how we met” stories as reminders, not as instructions. I never want a single person to ask someone how they met their partner and then try to recreate that scenario for themselves, because that’s impossible. It’s also the act of someone who’s ashamed of their singlehood and who has never stopped the dating grind long enough to ask themselves why.
The exact thing that brought to other people together never has to be the thing that connects you with your partner. Personally, I’m kind of happy about this. I think I deserve a bespoke experience, I think you do, too.
Dating app “success stories” are incredibly unfair, and incredibly misleading. First of all, it’s a real kick to the shins when someone actually partners via a dating app. After all we’ve been through in the digital dating space, all the lewd messages, the dismissiveness, the disappointment, the ghosting, the time wasters, the misogynists, the agists, the sizeists, all of it—hearing that someone actually met a real partner online is a bit of a what-the-fuck. My theory on this is that even a broken clock is right twice a day. If you put millions of people in the same space…yeah, eventually some of them are going to fall in love. We’re human, it happens—but I’m going to need to be a lot kinder to myself and to my future than to hang my hopes on being an algorithmic accident.
Remember: When you meet someone, dating apps stop making money off of you. Why would they want that? Dating apps are incentivized to keep you single as long as possible. They are not on your team, they never were.
So how are “success stories” misleading? I mean, we certainly hear of enough people meeting online, shouldn’t we have enough anecdotal evidence to keep swiping our lives away? Maybe we know four or five couples in our personal lives who met online. We let those couples we know blind us to the millions, literally millions of singles on dating apps who aren’t in couples. Worst still, we let the existence of these couples distance us from our own experiences online, and we let something good that happened to someone else guide us back to a place where bad things are happening to us. We want to believe that these fucking apps work so badly that we let other people’s anecdotes replace our own personal data.
I online dated for ten years, without even one relationship resulting from my effort, my time, and my money. Not one. And I never acknowledged that maybe dating apps just don’t work for me, in favor of clinging to the stories where it worked for someone else. Dating apps don’t ever have to work for you. That’s a reality we need to face as singles, and it’s a reality that’s completely okay. Just because you aren’t finding “success” online, that doesn’t also mean you’ll never, ever meet a partner any way else. Don’t let a digital space that’s built to keep you single make you believe that you’re unlovable in real life. Do not give an optional industry that much power over you.
Stop letting other people’s “success” with one method of finding partnership invalidate the experience you yourself are having with it. Just because she found someone online, that doesn’t mean you will, as evidenced by the fact that you haven’t yet. It sounds horrifically harsh, I understand that. But I wish someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and woken me up out of a dating app nightmare a decade ago. I’m not saying you’ll never met someone. I’m saying that dating apps are never under any obligation to make sure that you do. And in the meantime, how are they making you feel? What are they adding to your life? How are the apps you’re paying actually serving you? Ask yourselves these questions, and then ask yourself if dating apps really deserve access to your actual life.
If you’re considering deleting your dating apps, the question isn’t “But then…how will I meet someone?!” The question is why do you want to meet someone so badly that you put up with the treatment you receive on dating apps? How fucking amazing do you think a relationship is that it’s worth endless time spent in dating app abuse? I don’t think there’s any relationship that’s worth what I lived through for a decade. But I do think that somewhere in my future there’s a relationship I won’t have to suffer for first. I’m also really grateful that I’ve taken the time to appreciate my singlehood so that my future relationships will have to be just as good as my single time, if not better. I’m no longer afraid of “how will I meet someone?” I’m afraid of relationships that are less than I deserve.
We’ve exposed ourselves to so much abuse through online dating, and exalted couplehood so much in our society, that we’ve put ourselves in a situation where we view relationships as things that will “save us” from the hell of dating apps. A hell that dating apps fucking invented. We feel so incomplete and unfinished without a relationship, and so convinced that online dating is the way to find one, that we’ve positioned ourselves exactly where dating apps making money off of us want us to be: addicted. Dating apps held themselves out as a solution to singlehood while simultaneously making dating itself worse than it used to be. Tell me there’s not a class action lawsuit in here somewhere.
Dating apps hide their crimes under a false veil of abundance—they’ve become the societally accepted go-to for dating, so we assume that that’s where all the single people are. “Online dating is how everyone meets now,” right? But we completely ignore the fact that we haven’t met someone yet, despite maybe years of putting up with online dating’s bullshit. Do dating apps feel abundant to you? Or are you swiping through the same faces on every app for years on end? If it’s how “everyone meets now,” shouldn’t it be an ever-revolving door of new people, because people are constantly meeting each other and deleting the apps?
We never have to wait for a relationship to save us from the hell of modern dating—we’ve become so consumed by a digital dating dependency that we forget we’re allowed to save ourselves. You are allowed to delete your dating apps and meet someone in literally any other way possible. It doesn’t mean you’ll be “single longer,” because dating apps haven’t shortened your single time yet, have they? The fuckers. Deleting your dating apps is not “giving up.” I view it as precisely the opposite. I view it as finally understanding that you deserve a lot more, and a lot better, than what dating apps actually deliver.
Relationships are wonderful things, but they’re not more important than how we feel. They’re not more important than how we’re treated by others. And they’re not more important than our beliefs about our own lovability. The lovability of us is inherent. The validity of us concrete. Please do not let a grueling experience in a dating app space that’s designed to keep you single so it can make more money off you ever say anything about how worthy you are of love.
Yes, people meet online all the time. But I don’t care about “people,” I care about you. What are you experiencing on dating apps? How long have you been experiencing it for? How much have you lifted up the idea of a relationship? Is it what you really need, or is it just a relief from the hell of dating apps that you assume you’ve earned by now? You do deserve wonderful, loving relationships in your life, and I believe that we will all have them at some point in our stories—probably at many points in our stories. Just be cautious of how other people’s stories are affecting you and your choices. You can’t recreate what someone else found, but you can create a life that’s unburdened from what you’re going through on dating apps. I did, two and a half years ago, and this is the most I’ve ever loved being alive.
Reclaiming ownership of our time, our money, and the way we feel—that’s the success story. Someone appreciating their singlehood for all its freedoms and gifts, rather than desperately scratching at any possible way to end it—that’s a success story. And all of us understanding that life and love aren’t limited to little squares on our phones full of “horror stories,”—that’s the win, for me.