If you've been feeling like the future of dating is doomed, you're not alone.
In approximately 3 years of mainstream existence, dating apps have turned traditional courtship on its head. It's a brave new world out there, but if you're single, you may have been led to believe that we've left the good old days behind for a dystopian dating future where sexting is the modern equivalent of a love letter. I'm here to tell you not to believe the hype.
"Hookup Culture" and "The Dating Apocalypse" are nothing but overused buzzwords created by enlightened millennial bloggers who claim that an entire generation has somehow singlehandedly killed romance with their dating ineptitude. While in reality, young people pursuing casual relationships is hardly a new concept - can we take a moment to imagine what Woodstock would have been like with Tinder on the loose?
Since then of course, technology has been the obvious gamechanger. Dating in 2015 involves optimizing our encounters for maximum efficiency and sharing our new experiences on any number of social platforms, so the emotional highs and lows should be expected to be more frequent, and more highly publicized. The point isn't that love hurts, because it always has. What matters is that modern love is far from being a lost cause.
These are the only two things you need to remember to avoid buying into the arrival of the dark days of dating:
Be realistic.
A surprisingly high percentage of people who sign up for online dating sites tap out because there are no wedding bells within the first week. Would you swear off dating because you didn't walk directly into your soulmate on the street within a week of deciding you're ready to meet someone? Probably (hopefully) not.
PlentyOfFish has found that the best way to maximize your chances of finding someone you're compatible with is to be realistic in what you're looking for. When it come to dating, many women are disregarding the fact that certain men are looking for casual relationships, and pressure them for something more serious. These women are statistically less likely to leave the site in a relationship. Basically, it pays off to identify what you're looking for, and stay in that lane. Women who want to be in a relationship or get married are 7 percent more likely to be part of a successful relationship, and men who want to be in a relationship or get married are over 30 percent more likely to be part of a successful relationship.
Ignore the noise.
Unfortunately, single people are subjected to a constant stream of unwelcome information from family members, married friends, complete strangers and every corner of the internet. On any given day you can find a story about an online dater who was matched with her brother, a guy who scammed women into providing him with free pizza dinners for a month, and a New Yorker who hacked online dating using math to finally find a man - it's exhausting. Then we have the lifestyle articles, and the relationship experts preaching "Do's and Dont's"...it makes for a dizzying combination of conflicting views, doesn't it? Not to mention the recent Vanity Fair article about "The Dating Apocalypse", which highlights a group of 20-something finance-types who claim to sleep with ten women a week. Because, you know, modern technology. Meanwhile, you're a good guy and can't even get a message back?
That stuff is not real life, so don't feel bad. This is a group of kids who've seen American Psycho too many times and want to pretend they're Patrick Bateman. So try ignoring the advice (except for mine of course), forget the number of messages in your inbox, tell your ego to take a seat for a minute and just message that hot guy with the puppy - it could be love.
It may be a huge dating pool out there, but when it comes to the hysteria that still seems to surround online dating, I assure you, it's not that deep.