Has The Digital Age Ruined Dating?

The verdict is in—it has been unanimously agreed upon that regardless of race, religion, creed, color, or gender, dating in the digital age is horrible. Many of us lament this fact at every chance we get, gathering around our various social campfires, regaling one another with cautionary tales and familiar horror stories. Where crushes once sparked a kaleidoscope of stomach-fluttering butterflies, now, with game playing on expert mode, crafting each text message becomes a fight to the death to see who can appear the “chillest” and least invested.

You can bring your kinks to dinner and lay them on the table before your entrée comes, but monogamy has become a clandestine yearning—a humiliating secret best kept tucked under your hoop skirt, lest you drive away potential admirers. We avoid emotional investment like the plague, and the risk of wounding or being wounded often leads to the preemptive pre-wound (i.e., cutting a growing relationship off before anything has a chance to bloom). Most often, whether newly single or a long-standing veteran, the quest for companionship feels like an impossible journey through a world on fire.

We seem to identify the cause of this problem as a pathological, deeply rooted issue with “everyone else”—presumably, the unhealed, morally bankrupt masses rising from the second circle of hell to torture those in honest, faithful pursuit of a relationship, both mentally and spiritually, for not but their own amusement. While this very well may be true, it seems more likely that we have collectively created this scourge of disconnection—stuck in the cycle of criticizing behaviors we cannot help but perpetuate ourselves.

We moan and groan about those games, and yet, if our paramour takes a cool fifteen to respond to our last carefully queried “Hbu?” we’ll counter-sue with an icy “lol” forty-five minutes later in retribution until by a natural progression, a single conversation spans six months. We long for what the ancients once called a “meet-cute,” and yet, we can’t lift our eyes from the tantalizing light of our phone screens for more than a moment, resigned to complete and utter reliance on the tempered glass barrier that our social media personas provide.

Fear of both rejection and connection has created a need for this, but now, the pursuit of love often finds us sitting on the sofa, hunched over a microwaveable chicken tikka masala, as we shovel forkfuls into our mouth by the light of whatever comfort TV show we’re re-watching for the umpteenth time, while repetitively swiping our tired thumbs left, left, left, through an endless parade of dating app hopefuls. We scoff and chuckle darkly to ourselves, maybe even taking a screenshot or two to share with our friends to ridicule and denigrate the array of hobbits, ghouls, and goblins that have been presented to us, feeling haughty with each denial and utterly depressed by our prospects at the same time.

These aforementioned creatures are, of course, relegated to the common people’s apps—more elite virtual dating platforms present an entirely different issue. Carefully curated to ensure that only the crème de la crème makes the grade, everyone is so beautiful that it spawns decision paralysis. The fear of choosing and settling down with just one person when someone more famous, with more followers, and a higher social credit score could be just around the bend is such an arresting anxiety that deciding who to make plans with on a Friday night becomes more like sorting through LinkedIn job applications.

On the off chance that we do catch ourselves a live one, maybe even progressing past the talking stage into the real world, our fascination with “doing the work” will have us diagnosing their various flaws and idiosyncrasies in no time, often leading to an emotional shootout of weaponized therapy-speak in which both parties will walk away feeling like the more sane and superior party. Statistically, less than 5% of the U.S. population are diagnosed narcissists, and less than 4% are sociopaths, yet we seem confident that everyone we’ve ever dated falls within one or both of these camps.

Life in the digital age is difficult, no doubt—it’s a constant battle between reality and illusion, authenticity and self-protective bravado. It’s a struggle that has put us all on guard, fortifying our armor and sharpening our spears, as each devastating false start leaves us bracing for the next encounter. These new courtship rituals have become so deeply ingrained that while it’s easy to see the system’s faults, we’re often blind to the part we play. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” falsely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, is a simple commandment but a powerful one in action.

If we long for the genuine article, the real deal when it comes to love, then the first step is to swear off the behaviors we find so abhorrent in others, understanding that using the tactics and elaborate ploys that we have been victimized by ourselves will only uphold the present structure and keep us locked in our predicament. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” correctly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, serves as an important reminder, too.

Be the suitor you wish to be courted by in the world—be honest and brave, forthright and genuine, self-reflective and empathetic. Leave others changed by the courage of your vulnerability, instead of damaged by the depths of your projected wounds. It is not as we would like to believe an issue with “everyone else”—we are all responsible for the terrifying, barren wasteland of modern romance we find ourselves trudging through today, but that means that we can be the ones to regenerate it, too.