This is the Biggest Problem With Dating Apps

Have you tried every mainstream dating app just to discover that they are all pretty much identical in outcome? Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel… it doesn’t seem to matter which one you use you just don’t seem to be able to meet “the one”?

Maybe you have friends who met their significant other online, leading you to think the problem is you and not the app? Let me tell you something. It is not you. While it may be easy to think that the common denominator across all dating apps is you. I’m here to tell you there’s a different common denominator responsible keeping you from a successful relationship.

Each dating app has a slightly different hook: Tinder is infamously the hook up app; Bumble, girls message first; Grindr is LGBTQIA2S+ friendly; Hinge is “designed to be deleted”; and so on. With all these different dating app options at least one of them has to work, right? One of them is going to pair you with the love of your life and you’ll meet up and ride off into the sunset…

Not exactly. Ultimately, all dating apps work the same way. You sign up/verify your identity, and build your profile. You upload your sexiest and cutest(or quirkiest) photos and maybe answer a few questions. Or, you type up an about you so potential matches can get a quick sense of whether they might be interested. Then you start swiping, scrolling, and liking.

Chances are you get matched with a few people, especially if you recently joined the app (I think the matches slow down the longer you are on there). Some of your matches strike up a conversation with you, or you with them. Maybe you start planning a date or two. You are so close to meeting the one.

You might go on a few first dates. If you’re lucky, the first dates go well and maybe you go on a second date. But they never stick and you can’t figure out why…

So you find yourself trapped in this vicious cycle of swiping, scrolling, liking. Of getting-to-know-you conversations and first dates, which all seem vaguely similar and never seem to go deeper than the surface.

You’re craving a connection and exhausted from all the meaningless conversation. You start to think there’s no good people on dating apps, or simply feel void of a connection with the ones that seem half-decent. Consider this:

Unless you’re in college, or some other social pool where you are regularly meeting and interacting with eligible singles, chances are meeting someone organically only comes up once in a while. When you meet that person and you both express interest you might agree to go out with them to get to know them better. You don’t have a pool of other people in your back pocket who you are simultaneously getting to know. You’re focused on exploring this single new connection.

Dating apps are not designed in a way where you can explore a single connection at a time. Yet some of us demand a monogamous relationship develop from using one.

In theory, it’s not impossible to gain a worthwhile committed relationships from an app, but the overall design of the app is playing against this. We criticize daters today for always thinking there is something better out there, and for returning to the apps and swiping through their pool of available options. However, who can blame them?

The apps literally give you a pool of “available” people, and lead you to believe there are always options. Yet most of the options will never turn into anything more. And certainly, not the monogamous, healthy, supportive relationships you know you deserve.

So stop being frustrated with yourself, and stop being frustrated with the people on the apps. It’s an environment set up for failure. If you do end up meeting a great partner on there, power to you. But if not maybe it’s time to consider other ways of meeting people, or spend some more time focused on yourself.

If you’re doing things that make you happy, you’ll attract the right people (or special person) into your life. At the end of the day, you don’t need an app to give you an endless feed of available singles who probably aren’t right for you anyway!

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