Why Modern Dating Doesn't Work

Many of us have heard of sites like Tinder, HotOrNot, Badoo, Match.com or Bumble, a few of you may have hooked up with someone you met through the app or found your partner through the app.

How It Always Seems To Go

You swipe left, keep swiping left, eventually you find a match, after a few dead conversations, being left on read/leaving others on read, blocking a few weirdos, being ghosted/ghosting others and stalking the hot guy or girls profile, trying to find any faults we may perceive as off-putting, we finally find a match!

And you think, "great", and it is for a while, you might even meet up a few times and then weeks or months later you're back to the app looking for 'the one'. You realise most people are only on there for one thing – and no, it's not your heart!

Sometimes it's that they like you and you don't like them, sometimes it's the other way round, if this is the case, I personally try and not match with them, to avoid that whole ordeal altogether.

If you're lucky enough to still be dating someone who is your idea of perfect, years later after meeting them through a dating site, you are truly, truly lucky.

Those who are emotionally mature, and appreciate the bond between two human beings who deeply care for one another and want a long-term connection, are then left in a bit of a pickle. Surely a dating site should be for just that... dating. Apparently not.

There's more than a handful of issues with modern dating sites, besides all of the reasons mentioned above, we are way too critical of people online as opposed to in person, we are judging them based on pictures, text messages and what they allow us to see, there may be a lot more to them in person and we end up judging them too soon, you may have already spoken to the right person through a dating site, but either one of you didn't know the right things to say and as a result, never ever met.

Right person, wrong time sort of thing.

Computer Says No

A large majority of people on dating sites today are unfortunately:

• married or in a relationship
• only looking for a threesome
• only want to exchanged nudes
• will leave you on read or ghost you
• are a bot
• only want sex
• make dreadfully boring conversation or it's one-sided

and when that's not the case, then they usually are a catfish or happen to live on the other side of the earth from where you are.

Dating sites have a bunch of filters, such as location, age, height, race and so on, which are perfect and preferable for someone like me who is very fussy, especially where distance is concerned, though others may forget that when talking to us or forget to tell us that – always make sure you know how far they are from you if you like them! Nothing sucks more than being attached to someone you've never met and probably never will on the other side of the globe or country.

Lost in Translation

Perhaps you're texting a grammar nazi and they use full stops at the end of everything, in the texting world of today this is considered cold and standoffish, when in actual fact, the person on the other side of the phone may be nothing like that.

They love me, they love me not...

Race can play a factor in dating sometimes, though more and more people are beginning to appreciate the beauty of various races that around them, beauty come in many forms.

Social class and income plays a part also as heterosexual (straight) women especially, long for security and stability and will search for this in a man, which often comes in the form of money and a good job.

Looks come into dating for obvious reasons, as heterosexual men are genetically wired to be attracted to beautiful women who resemble youth and whom they consider to be sexually attractive, the rest comes later, that being said, I believe straight and bisexual men and straight and bisexual women fall in love the opposite way. Women fall in love emotionally first and men seem to fall in love sexually first or at least that's what I'm noticing.

Rejection

Sure, rejection is a normal part of life, however there comes a time when after so many rejections and so many read but un-replied messages, that it begins to affect your self-esteem and if you've been using dating sites for a while, you start to think maybe there's something wrong with you, but no one is nice enough to point out what, perhaps it's exactly because they're nice that they don't want to tell you what is wrong with you – if that is the case.

LGBTQ+ dating is even harder, I'll get to that in one of my future articles.

All I want people to take from this article, is to actually give people a chance on dating sites, don't dismiss them so quickly, and don't match with people you''re not going to bother making an effort with to try and meet up with them within a few weeks of talking so you will actually have something to talk about on the date, rather than trapping them in a talking phase for months and months and then having loads of awkward silences when you meet because you already know everything about them, however I understand the need to want to be compatible with them before going on a date.

Ghosting

These are the people I call the lowlives of modern dating, these people do not have the guts to tell you that they're not feeling it, so they'd rather dip, than spill why they're not that into you out of fear of hurting your feelings, the worst part is, they will talk to you for a but or you may have dated, them poof! Nothing!

There is also a similar term, called orbiting, where they ghost, but come back after a short period so that you don't forget about them, then repeat this a few times.

Distraction

Often, when you're talking to someone on a dating site, they're speaking to another 3 or 4 people at the same time as you. You cannot commit to getting to know one person very well when you're also talking to another few and dating sites know this, but don't care.

Idealisation

We also have a tendency to create a fantasy of someone we're talking to in our heads, a bit like what we do with our celebrity crushes and think they are this perfect person who will be in a good mood all the time, smell fantastic even in the morning, doesn't snore, has no faults and only wants to be with us, this isn't so great because when they do anything that doesn't fit into our little fantasy of them in our heads, we are almost mad at them for it, which makes no sense. It also leads to disappointment

So this is probably every single thing wrong with modern dating today, thanks for reading if you've made it this far.