How do we find love in the digital age? Simple: delete the dating apps on your phone. Find out why online dating is ruining your love life – and what to do instead.
Ahhh, romance. That sweet, sweet feeling you get when they even so much as glance at you with their perfect eyes. There is simply nothing like the sense of being swept away from everyday life on a wave of adoration for your crush.
You know what doesn’t give you that precious feeling? Dating apps. Admit it, you have never felt that gooey, loved-up feeling when swiping past hundreds (if not thousands!) of faces.
Is love a numbers game?
Online dating apps and websites claim finding love is simply a numbers game; that you just need to be exposed to more people to find the right one. I’m here to tell you the game is rigged. True, deep connection doesn’t come from a swipe, but from investment in our most precious resource: time.
This is the simple truth: love happens as a result of quality face-to-face contact.
Dating apps don’t foster this. On the contrary, apps encourage us to treat people like objects in a transaction. In fact they are designed to make you stay on them with the promise of someone a bit better just a swipe away. Apps don’t want you to find love, because if you do, you stop using the app!
You can’t game love.
Swiping stops us from actually giving the people we match with a chance. If you’ve had any experience with online dating and apps at al, you’ll know that it’s a tiny percentage of matches you end going on an actual IRL date with.
How much of your precious time has been spent in lame conversation with people you’re never going to meet? The ONLY way to know if there’s a spark between two people is if they meet. With dating, we have to give people a chance – and dating apps actually make that harder.
You won’t find these vital components of romance on any dating app
Is it any surprise, when digital platforms allows people to lie about the looks, age, or job? Dating apps have made us ruder, flakier, and more self-involved because, let’s be real, about 90% of online dating is about the quality of your picture.
The shallow, flushable cesspool that is online dating has destroyed another aspect of romance: manners.
Don’t laugh – this is important stuff. You feel open to romance after your fiftieth ‘hey, how r u?’ message? NOPE. Apart from the obvious physical attraction, it’s mutual respect and quality conversation that really turns us on to love. Chances of getting that on an app? I’m going to estimate about 5 per cent.
How about other vital components of romance like basic emotional intelligence, eye contact and the ability to read body language? This ONLY comes from getting away from the screen, and out into the world where you might just discover that it’s the sound of their laugh you fall in love with first.
Dating apps dampen vulnerability
As a dating coach, I’ve noticed something else as a result of dating apps too. Despite Brene Brown’s Netflix special making vulnerability a mainstream topic of conversation, apps contribute to a generalised fear of dating.
People are scared to be vulnerable and really put themselves out there. After all, asking someone out in person is WAY more scary than sending a quick “want to grab coffee?” message on an app.
The truth is that love requires vulnerability – without it there is no joy, and isn’t that why we date in the first place? Online dating shelters us from taking risks and really making ourselves vulnerable to falling in love.
So I urge you to delete your apps. Go on, do it now.
If you want a true, deep connection, spend your time becoming the most confident version of you there is. So when you see someone you fancy you look them in the eye, start a genuine conversation, and not have notifications on your phone pulling your attention away.
