Dating and Mating in the Digital Age

Oh boy do I have a lot to say about dating culture in current society. Fortunately, my perspective comes from being a therapist and not someone actually trying to date. My husband and I will be celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary tomorrow, and we have been together for 26 years. We were so young when we got together, oy! We met at the gym, which if you know either of us makes sense. Both of us have been gym rats since we were about 13-14 years old. But meeting at the gym or in IRL at all anymore does not seem to happen often.

I have nothing but empathy for anyone who wants to find a partner these days. It's really tough out there! I see it through my clients who are unhappily single, my single clients who have more or less given up and are becoming a single parent by choice (through donors, surrogacy, etc.) and in the couples counselling I do.

There are a lot of dating challenges now that did not exist in my pre-husband days. The most obvious one is online dating. The first problem with it is just that it makes dating like shopping with a shopping list. I see clients make very foolish rules around the people they will and will not consider swiping on. Things like height, or a very rigid age range may be filters that keep people from finding someone wonderful!

The other problem with dating websites is, as Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher, famously said, "the medium is the message." For #%*& sakes, you cannot connect with someone via text or messaging! So the minute you match with someone, meet in person for coffee or a walk (low stakes and safely in public) and see if there is anything there. If not, do not waste your time, and move on.

Online dating also creates maximizer mentality. Maximizers are individuals who have difficulty making decisions because they are fixated on avoiding regret and finding perfection. For example, if they need a new toaster, they will exhaustively research toasters for months looking for the best product at the best deal. When they finally do get a toaster, no matter how good it is, they are more likely to be dissatisfied with it than people we call Satisficers, because they keep wondering if there was a better toaster or better deal they could have found. Satisficers, in contract, will find something that meets their general criteria, buy that toaster, and not really think about it again. When you apply this to the dating world, maximizers are terrified to commit to anyone because they always worry there may be someone 'better' out there. When you have seemingly endless options through dating websites, this just exacerbates Maximizers' anxiety. When my maximizer clients ask me how they can know for sure about someone my answer is, "You can't". We don't get guarantees so if you need certainty, frankly, you will have to be single for the rest of your life."

Now I cannot discuss dating without addressing the growing divide between heterosexual men and women. The Zietgeist narrative is that straight women now are too picky because they are often more educated and have better employment compared to their male peers and this is driving men to become incels and/or part of the manosphere. I want to address some of the things that I see in a clinical setting that challenge some of these assumptions.

• A lot has been discussed in the media about how up to 30% of cis females consider themselves Queer or identify as part of the LGBTQ community in some way and this is seen as women giving up on or rejecting straight men. But, the statistics on behaviour show that regardless of how women identify only an extremely small proportion actually have anything but heteronormative relationships. I think it may be more virtue signalling than anything else as we do know that women are increasingly identifying with the political left and men with the political right.

• In my therapy space, I do not see women saying that they cannot find a partner because the available partners are not educated enough nor highly employed enough. What I see often, is that my educated, successful female clients get dumped by guys who do not feel they are ready to settle down and commit to someone, especially when that someone has more of their shit together than they do. I find that most men still think they need to fill the traditional role of 'breadwinner' before they can be in a serious relationship and build a life with someone, even if that someone is not asking that of them! Chris Williamson, host of the podcast Modern Wisdom, often brings on guests to discuss the plight of men today (some I adore like Richard Reeves!), and he constantly uses the data showing that if a man loses his job he is more likely to end up divorced compared to a woman who loses her job as evidence that women still value men primarily for their resources. I suspect this statistic has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact that people often experience anxiety and depression when they lose a job and men are more likely to externalize their suffering through substance use, aggression, etc.

This all might sound very sad but there are a few things that give me hope. One is that there are amazing people out there. I have clients male and female, straight and Queer who are wonderful and are looking for someone wonderful. I always tell them that you just cannot ever give up. We also have to get off devices and get out and do things where you can meet people IRL. And there does seem to be a growing appetite for that. If humanity is lucky, there will be a revolt against tech and social media, everyone will throw their smart phone in the closest body of water (or toilet) and we will save ourselves from becoming the next fallen civilization.