Hello friends, if you’ll allow me, I would like to rant for a moment about the state of dating in an urban setting.
I don’t want to immediately say things were better decades ago, but as someone who is monogamous, vanilla, just wants a steady partner, it feels impossible to date with the current apps. I am in hobby groups, I’m on Bumble, Hinge etc., I meet new people. Yet I can’t seem to find anyone. I’m despairing friends, I’m despairing.
I feel like I’m picking people off an algorithm. The room for surprise and delight has been cut off. Now there is only space for cold hard data. Lots of pretty people with good education and it’s so hard to see them as people and not just another part of an ever growing list. Another dot in the scatter plot.
People who are in LTRs, how’d you find your partner? What keeps you together?
Other single folk, how are you finding dating to be in your current locale? What things have brought success or failure in your mind? How do you define success or failure?
I have more than one partner, I met them both in hobby spaces, not dating spaces. Dating online has become easier in some aspects and harder in others.
Over my experience, the apps have shittified too and are basically useless for connection. One person I met on an MMO, the other I met in an online support group.
We stay together because we love each other but we are also each other’s chosen family. We have a deep respect and friendship before hand.
We’re also all also neurodivergent as shit and queer so we just don’t have any real games and talk bluntly with one another, for good or ill.
One relationship is over ten years old the other is almost five. It was about finding who wants the same thing in life and it really required being able to be honest with myself about who I am and what I offer.
It isn’t easy. We are way past new relationship energy. But the work in a relationship that is worth is never feels like a poor investment.