Fighting the Hopelessness of Modern Dating

To all my single people out there, I feel you. Oh, lordy, do I feel you. Dating in the twenty-first century can feel entirely fucking impossible for so many reasons, and since hope isn’t a feeling (it’s something we have to create for ourselves), it’s pretty understandable that hopelessness creeps in when we’re trying to find our person.

First, there’s the inherently dehumanizing nature of dating apps. Swipe, filter, sort! Let’s all go online shopping for a partner! And let’s all consequently forget to treat them as people instead of an unlimited supply of commodities… sigh.

Another culprit is the truly contemporary notion of romance – the way in which we’re now looking for deep intimacy and partnership for the first time in history. It’s not that romantic love didn’t exist before the second half of the 20th century. We’ve got plenty of poetry and drama indicating passion and romance have always been a thing. But let’s be honest, Shakespeare’s lovers were all, for the most part, pretty superficial and circumstantially connected. It’s not like Romeo and Juliet had a chance to realize that teenage love doesn’t factor in household responsibilities. And they pretty fucking clearly needed to work on their communication skills and emotional reactivity.

But even if we’re zooming out and looking for heathy, non-instantaneous love, the idea of finding “our person” in a sea of potential matches is relatively new. Marriage used to be a matter of companionship and stability rather than love and romance. And even that is more of a twentieth century development. For the several thousand years prior, marriage was a lot more transactional, more pragmatic, and definitely deeply patriarchal. 

So, contemporary dating has a lot of shit making it hard on us. It’s easy to forget, but we’re all still adjusting to life with the internet, for fuck’s sake! So it’s not surprising that finding love in these conditions can feel damn near impossible. 

True Partnership Is Absolutely Possible

Now, let’s be clear. I’m 100% on board with holding out for true partnership and intimacy. I believe that each and every one of us deserves to be deeply seen, valued, appreciated, and fully met in partnership. We just have to hold out for the right fit. And that takes time.

Finding the “right” person is just kind of like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle that’s always evolving. Some folks are absolutely the right piece for us at a certain time and place in our lives, but that may not last as our puzzle evolves. Or, more often, it may actually have been a totally inappropriate piece we were trying to shove into place because we were so tired of looking for the “right” one that we settled for the “okay-enough-for-now” one and ended up with a rather janky puzzle… 

So, I don’t know if there’s only one right person in the world for each of us. That belief can be both helpful and damaging, depending on our headspace at the time. But I do think that there are a limited number of people who really are a good fit for us. And the older we get and better we get to know ourselves, the more we heal our trauma, learn to practice healthy boundaries, and cultivate a strong sense of self and self-worth, the more clear it becomes when someone isn’t a fit. But in order to find our way to hope, we have to believe that true partnership is possible – no matter how discouraging it can get while we hunt for it.

Dating Is All About Fit – Which Takes Time to Find

Despite what online dating might make it seem like, people aren’t shoes. We don’t come in standard sizes. We aren’t designed to fit a wide range of feet. (And by feet, I mean people here.) Some of us have high arches and narrow feet. Some of us pronate and have bunions. So, generally speaking, we can’t just walk into a store (or a dating app), scan the aisle, pull a pair off the shelf that looks good, and then walk out in perfectly fitting shoes. We usually have to try a bunch of pairs on, and we may even have to hit up another store.

So it goes with dating. Finding a relationship that actually fits us well is generally going to be hard to find. Not impossible. Just difficult. But I fundamentally believe it’s out there and accessible if we want it badly enough to be patient. Sometimes for a long fucking time.

Because the truth is, if what we want is companionship, a level of simplicity, and a mediocre or unsatisfying sex life – we can probably get that. We can all find *somebody* to spend time with if we’re willing to make major concessions about what that looks like. 

No matter who you are or how you feel about yourself, I’m pretty certain you could find somebody to watch movies with, or have sex with, or spend time with in some capacity IF you’re not especially picky about depth of connection or amount of things in common or being treated especially well. Most of us could probably find somebody who isn’t actively horrible to us – if that’s all we wanted. (To pick up the shoe analogy again, we can all find a pair of shoes that looks good enough but also gives us blisters).

But I think most of us want more than that. We want to feel fully met. And meeting our match – a person who both gets us and appreciates us, and who we like and value in return – that’s a rarity. When things are rare, they are by definition hard to come by.

So, it makes a lot of sense that when we’ve been at this for a while, when we’ve trudged through seemingly endless online dating profiles, been on dozens if not hundreds of first dates… it can start to feel really fucking hopeless.

Choosing Hope Over Hopelessness

Hopelessness is an awful feeling. But the good news is that we can actively choose to find our way to hope. It takes effort, but hope is always possible – because, as I said in my post a while back, hope isn’t a feeling. Hope is a mental process that is always available if we’re willing to put the effort into getting there.

We just need three components to access hope: a goal, a pathway, and a sense of agency.

When it comes to dating, the latter two can be really, really hard to wrap our heads around. But, dear ones, as I also said in that post – hope is a choice we can make. Hopelessness is a feeling, but we don’t have to live in it forever. 

So. Let’s walk through the process of finding just a smidgen of hope when it comes to dating.

Step One: The Goal (Clarifying Your Dating Intentions)

You may be thinking, “my goal is obvious – I want to meet somebody!” 

Okay, great! But what does that actually mean? 

• Are you clear on what you need in a relationship? 
• Are you clear on what partnership really means to you? 
• What’s important to you in a relationship?
• What are your dealbreakers? 
• What kinds of things do you want to do/share with a partner?
• What are your love languages and what do you need in order to feel loved and appreciated? 

Whether you believe in manifesting or not, getting clear on your answers to these questions will at the very least help you filter. And when it comes to dating, filtering is half the battle! (I’ll have to write a separate post on that since this is already getting way too long).

So. Get clear on your dating goal. What kind of person/relationship are you actually looking for? That’s your goal.

Step Two: The Pathway (There Are Probably More Than You Think)

Y’all, I have tried allllll the dating apps over the years. At least, all the popular ones and a few of the more offbeat ones. And having been through these gauntlets, it’s pretty easy to fall into hopelessness when it seems like none of them will work.

Here’s my rundown of what to expect/my experiences of the dating apps I’ve tried:

• Hinge: largely a lot of grown ups who have some sense of what they’re looking for, usually an actual relationship.
• Bumble: the best of the swipey apps, some effort at feminism, a mix of folks who may or may not know what they want and may or may not be looking for something more than a hookup.
• Tinder: the Wild West of mostly just trying to get laid.
• EHarmony: an overpriced scam that preys on folks who are seriously or desperately trying to find a partner. It doesn’t let you set your own filters and tended to match me with people whose interests and educational backgrounds were woefully misaligned with who and how I am in the world. (I’m still pissed and would like my $400 back, you assholes).
• Match.com: usually folks who are looking for a relationship over a hook up, and you really kind of need to pay for it to be functional, which does filter somewhat for those more seriously looking.
• OkCupid: great place for polyamory, really open for LGBTQIA+, offers a lot (probably too much) information about potential matches. Vast range in terms of what people are looking for.
• Coffee Meets Bagel: encourages you to treat potential matches as people (you get a limited number of matches at a time), but isn’t really popular enough to get traction in most smaller cities.
• Meet Mindful: also does a nice job of encouraging you to treat potential matches as humans – even includes reminders to do that! And, at least in Portland, is used by a lot of folks who either eat super healthy or smoke a lot of weed (in both cases, not my crowd).
• Feeld: find your kink without judgment or shame, provided you’re comfortable being explicit about what you’re after. (Didn’t actually try this one for long since I’m demisexual and want a degree of emotional connection prior to physical intimacy, so it didn’t seem like my crowd).

Having tried all of the above for varying lengths of time and in a variety of different cities over the years, it can definitely seem like I’m out of options. Like it’s all so fucking pointless, why even bother? It can feel like I’m out of pathways.

Except. I haven’t actually tried ALL the apps or methods for meeting people. Haven’t tried: Chemistry, Tawkify, It’s Just Lunch, or any of the new apps that are popping up all the time. I haven’t tried speed dating or any of the MeetUp.com singles events in my area. I haven’t tried taking swing dance lessons, or joining a kickball league, or taking up pickleball, or going to events at bookstores or other places that might host something I find interesting. 

So, there are pathways I haven’t explored. Doesn’t mean I want to. Doesn’t mean that doing so will yield different results. 

But when I’m feeling hopeless because “nothing I’ve tried has worked” YET (which also isn’t true, since I’ve met at least two partners online), it’s a helpful exercise to make a list of the shit I haven’t tried. And then I can make decisions about what I’m willing to try again or do differently. 

There are a LOT of ways to meet people. I just might not want to explore them. But the pathways do exist, and if I want to find my way to hope, I have to see them for the opportunities they are.

Step Three: Agency (Remembering You Have It)

Now. This part is the bitch of finding hope around dating. Because we don’t have real agency around when or where or how or if we meet somebody. It’s not in our power to just make a partner appear. But we can choose to constantly reinforce the belief that it’s possible.

I may not be able to manifest a partner on my timeline, but I can choose to tell myself that partnership is possible. I can tell myself over and over that I am worthy of love, that I have a lot to offer, and that the universe isn’t actively fucking with me. 

Personally, I have a lot of faith that the universe is on my side – it’s just playing a long game that I don’t have the playbook for. So, when I get depressed about the fact that I’m still single, that loving someone deeply isn’t enough, that my last significant relationship didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, I get to choose the narrative.

Past me chose to make breakups and being single about my worth and my lovability. Past me got really fucking stuck in the false narrative that “if I were actually worthy of love I’d already have a partner.” Past me thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me because it hadn’t yet worked out. And that is all such bullshit!

Choose a Better Story and Choose Hope

It didn’t work out because there’s something better on my horizon. It didn’t work out because we weren’t in alignment, weren’t a good fit. And I get to choose the stories I tell myself about all that.

You can’t love someone into being the person you want them to be. You can’t love someone into changing their fundamental needs and desires to align with your own. 

You can only love yourself into processing your own trauma and showing up in relationships in ways that you can feel good about. 

No matter how long it’s been since our last partner, no matter how painful that heartbreak was, we can always choose hope. It takes courage and effort, and it definitely feels like an uphill battle at times. But fighting the hopelessness of modern dating means being your own advocate and champion. And leaning on the people around you when you can’t get to that hope on your own.

I believe love is possible for you, friend. So if you can’t believe it for yourself, just trust that I (and the people who actually know and love you) can believe it for you while you find your way back to hope.