18 Reasons Why It’s So Hard to Find a Partner Today

Fight to keep hold of your relationship because there’s a dumpster fire dating scene filled with diarrhoea waiting for you…

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why finding a partner is tough. There have been many big changes to society and culture over the last few decades — many of which have been exacerbated by COVID-19. And the dating scene is feeling the squeeze.

This is why dating has become so hard.

1. Dating apps are messy

Nobody is immune to the ups and downs of dating apps. Regardless of looks, status, and all that jazz — everyone I know has been treated terribly at some point or just found them deeply frustrating.

People use dating apps for different reasons:

• Some want a life partner.
• Some want hookups.
• Some are lonely and want to chat.
• Some are looking to boost their Instagram/OnlyFans following.
• Some just want a quick validation fix.
• Some are trying to scam you.
• Some are just curious to see what’s out there.

Plus, there are far more men on dating apps than women, and unless you’re in the top 20% of men (in terms of attractiveness) it can be a hard slog.

Dating app statistics:

• Tinder is 78% men.
• Women swipe right (“like”) on only 4.5 % of guys on Tinder, whereas men swipe right 62% of the time.
• Women believe 80% of men’s profiles are “unattractive” in some way.

I could go on with these stats…

2. Porn is screwing people up

There’s plenty of evidence to support that porn is incredibly addictive and slowly scuppers your mental and sexual health. Spend a few minutes reading about the dangers of porn on Fight The New Drug if this is news to you.

Porn is too accessible: whatever you fancy, enter your keywords and you can watch unlimited free videos anywhere with an internet connection. And millions of people do this every day! Look up the most-visited websites in the world. (Spoiler alert: porn sites everywhere.)

Why porn’s a problem:

• People are more likely to divorce after watching porn.
• Porn is a common source of erectile dysfunction.
• Porn is detrimental to mental health.
• Porn affects libido.

I just never felt healthy when dating in my twenties; everything felt off. That soon changed when I gave up porn. It slowly killed my arousal for real women over time, and I believe it’s doing the same thing to many men and women today.

3. Social media and OnlyFans complicate things

“Status”… some people put a lot of stock into social media. One of my sister’s friends was showing her mates a guy that was flirting with her at work. She was considering going out with him. Her friends agreed he was cute but one said “What! He only has 200 followers!”. The girl that said this was in her mid-thirties. That comment raised a red flag and the girl never bothered going out with “Mr 200 followers”.

You could say that’s just one opinion from a shallow person but this is the problem: social media makes us shallow (…oh and depressed but you knew that already.). Social media puts pressure on you to seem more extroverted, fit, healthy, outgoing, and sexually attractive.

Everyone’s in the shop window — on the world stage. Attractive girls get DMs from guys all the time, some offering to fly them across the world to parties. I bet that’s fun… this doesn’t make it any easier to find a partner though does it? Some are spoilt for choice.

I read Will Storr’s book, Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed, and in it, he featured a story of a 20-year-old Instagram model who took over 200 selfies a day and regularly went to bars where she raked in guys’ phone numbers all night. But she never met up with them; she was addicted to the validation.

This is my opinion but I believe women getting addicted to validation is just as destructive as men getting addicted to porn. It’s never enough. When you’re addicted to either, it’s going to make it harder to get into a relationship. Finding someone to date and turning it into a relationship takes time, and it’s not always straightforward. It’s hard to commit to dating when a quick validation/porn fix is in your pocket at all times.

4. “The rules” have changed

Have you watched any old movies lately? So many times I’ve watched films from the 80s or 90s and the “romantic guy” in the film would be called a creepy predator in today’s world. It’s insane how different things are today. These men wouldn’t be called romantic now…

I was watching an episode of Below Deck, a docusoap about yachties, (my guilty pleasure) and one of the stewards said that her parents have been happily married for years. She said that her dad kept asking out her mum after being rejected… multiple times! He even said to her at one point “I won’t take no for an answer!”. Can you imagine someone saying that today? Acting like that isn’t acceptable — it’s flat-out harassment. The rules have changed.

5. Everyone’s “rule book” is different

I know women that complain about how annoying men are for not approaching them or asking them out in real life — even after they deliberately catch a man’s eye from across the room multiple times (as they try to signal, “Oi you, come and say hello to me!”). Or worse, they have been flirting with each other all night but the man never escalates… leaving the woman to say “So… are you going to ask for my number then?”, which she doesn’t want to do. She’d rather the man ask her for hers.

And I also know women that get infuriated as they keep getting approached by men wherever they go: the gym, the supermarket, nights out — literally everywhere they go. It drives them nuts. So unless it’s on a dating app, which most people seem to hate, men and women are operating with different rules. It’s a mess.

6. Women are scared of men

And rightly so. There are some horrible, horrible men out there and you don’t need to look far on your phone to read about the latest horror story. Drink spiking, assault, sexual assault — women have to screen men before dating them, which of course, makes dating a lot more daunting for women. As for meeting strangers off the internet — that makes it even harder.

7. Men are scared of women

Men are worried about being labelled as predators or creeps. They don’t want a reputation or to be shamed for accidentally upsetting a woman or making them feel uncomfortable. One joke may sweep one girl off her feet and have her laughing in stitches yet the same joke will make another girl run like the wind (away from you). We know ladies… you don’t like boring guys! So occasionally we might say/do something really stupid.

You can’t scroll ten minutes on the web without reading “toxic masculinity” , and I feel men are way more cautious — leading to a drop in interactions. I read Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds a while back and this was a theme: he said that on business trips, some men demanded that their hotel rooms were on different floors — or different hotels altogether — from the women that were on the trip too. Why? Because they are worried about being accused of inappropriate behaviour, so they thought it would be easier to distance themselves entirely. Crazy.

8. The rise of polyamory, sex parties, “throuples”, and open relationships

The world has changed so much over the last few decades. Few things are “for life” anymore. It used to be the norm to get a job for life, a partner for life, one bank account for life, one local takeaway for life — but that’s not the case today. We’re in love with abundance.

We job-hop all the time, we have multiple bank accounts, we can order food from any place in our city, and now it’s becoming increasingly common to have multiple partners. If you are not interested in this, it can be another obstacle that appears soon after dating someone you’re into.

9. We’re living in our own little worlds

I don’t know whether this is just me but I’m having a harder time connecting with new people I meet these days. It’s hard to find people that you get on with because we’re all in our little worlds. We pick and choose our entertainment and our algorithms sync to our taste. If you don’t like something, it’s easy to avoid it.

Our Netflix home screen is different, the recommended videos on our YouTube homepage are different, and the ads targeting us are different. We are all in our own echo chambers.

10. We’re socially awkward

It’s easy to appear like an extroverted hot-shot online but is it that really you? We all know someone with a loud online persona but they’re incredibly shy in real life.

Everyone seems so anxious. You can click with someone via text but in person, they are a hundred miles away from the character that came across via text messages. It’s no wonder why though is it? We spend so much time behind screens now that we’re bound to become more socially awkward.

11. We’re smarter, wiser, and more defensive

Pop psychology is everywhere. Almost everyone I know listens to podcasts, where they listen to experts for hours on end. In the US, 50% of all homes are fans of podcasts. We’re listening to world-leading psychologists, data scientists, and many others that have helped wisen us up to the world and the people within it.

We know the tricks people play, the red flags, and so much more. We know the person we’re dating is probably got 1 to 6 other dates lined up, so we protect ourselves and move a little slower.

12. Mens’ testosterone levels are decreasing

Sedentary lifestyle, plastics in the environment, medications, mental health — just a few of the reasons why experts suspect men’s testosterone levels keep dropping lower and lower. This is really bad news. Testosterone seems to be a dirty word for some, but it shouldn’t be as it’s key for men’s health — especially sexual health! So everyone should be alarmed that men’s testosterone levels are a far cry from what they used to be.

Low testosterone symptoms:

• Low sex drive
• Difficulty with erection
• Low semen volume
• Hair loss
• Fatigue
• Loss of muscle mass
• Increased body fat
• Decreased bone mass
• Mood changes
• Affected memory
• Smaller testicle size
• Low blood count.

Young adults are having less sex, especially young men — lower testosterone must be a factor.

I got a small taste of low testosterone myself during a stressful few years; it was horrible. After burning out BADLY, my SHBG (Sex Hormone Binding Globulin) levels shot up to a ridiculously high level. And this is not a good thing because it binds to your free testosterone. So in other words, I had next to no testosterone: I felt weak, slow, stupid, lazy, shy, and horribly unproductive at work. (Dating was the last thing on my mind when this was happening.)

Having visited my doctor and googled my socks off, I made some changes to my diet and lifestyle. My SHBG went down and free testosterone went up — I felt like a new man.

13. We’re too cool

I remember when Facebook came out and it was basically a photo album of all your friends drunk in clubs. Then something changed: the cameras on our phones got better and we didn’t want to look like drunk idiots anymore.

The “influencer” era began. We all became mini-celebrities (which makes no sense as celebrities are pretty miserable). So we stopped drinking so much, took better care of ourselves, and every night out included a fashion shoot.

With more “likes”, comments, and friend requests, your ego gets a boost and it doesn’t want to be dented. So, we’re too cool, we protect ourselves from rejection. I don’t see people really putting themselves out there anymore. So many times I see a man and woman that like each other but they’re both on the defensive and nothing ever happens. The opportunity passes and they both wait for the next one. Sad.

14. We’re too busy

The cost of living is through the roof. Not too long ago, you could work your 9 to 5 and work would rarely spill over. But not anymore, checking our emails every few hours whether it’s a workday or not has become normal. Work is always on the mind, leaving less time, focus, and energy to find a partner.

Personally, every time a potential relationship goes to shit — I think, screw it… I delete my dating apps and focus on work and the gym for a few weeks, sometimes months. I’m not the only one who does this. So many of us are focused on our health, careers, and families that we take time away from the assache of a dating scene we’re tired of.

15. We’re too polarised

I remember seeing couples together that had wildly different politics; that’s hard to imagine today. “Us vs them” is more prominent than I’ve ever seen. A liberal dating a conservative? I haven’t seen much of that lately… have you? Maybe it’s just because I’m in my thirties now, but a few years ago this didn’t seem to be that big of an issue. You just wouldn’t talk about politics if you knew you were bound to disagree.

16. We have lost our focus

Colouring books for adults, meditation, yoga, silent retreats, “dopamine detoxes” — we are desperately trying to recentre ourselves as we pour so much energy into a digital world that doesn’t nourish us. Having a few uninterrupted hours is a conscious decision: turn your phone off. We’re always on standby, waiting for our phones to light us up with a little dopamine. This has an impact…

I’ve turned up to some dates feeling zombified. Having worked indoors, alone, for days on end I sometimes find it hard to turn on “human mode” when I’m sitting in front of someone new. I see this in others too; they just can’t put their phones away — waiting for the next notification. Some people can sit in front of you for an hour, yet you feel like you’re only getting 40% of them. At best.

17. Anxiety and depression are sky high

1 in 4 people in the UK experiences mental health issues at some point in the year. Dating when you’re feeling incredibly anxious or depressed is rough. The tricky thing is depression and anxiety tend to worsen when you lock yourself away from the world, so you feel like you should date to help you feel less depressed but it’s not easy. It’s difficult to let yourself go and enjoy the moment, so you may give off bad signals to people that you like.

It’s a hard one to juggle: do you forget about dating and build yourself back up? Or do you throw yourself into the dating scene and hope that your mental health improves with it? That’s one for you to decide.

I also believe that a few of the women I met on dating apps over the years had zero interest in dating me. They were lonely, that’s all. They just wanted someone to talk to. I might be wrong about that but that’s how it felt. Loneliness is a problem that isn’t getting any better: Gen Z is the loneliest generation in America.

18. “Golden penis syndrome”

Only 40.5% of college students in the United States are male, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. Men are in high demand on campus because there literally aren’t enough men for every woman to have an exclusive 1–2–1 relationship with. I’ve heard this discussed on multiple podcasts and in short, men are playing the field and aren’t settling for one woman because they know it won’t be long before they meet another one.

On the other hand, women are frustrated with the cheating, ghosting, and men calling the shots — because they can. Golden penis syndrome is rampant on dating apps too. It’s the top 20% of men that get the vast majority of matches. Again leaving women frustrated, and of course — I should think the bottom 80% of men are pretty frustrated too.

I know… it sucks.

I’m aware I just banged out 18 reasons why it’s so hard to find a partner today — but it’s always been hard. Before dating apps and our tech-obsessed world, there were plenty of blind dates, people submitting text-only ads in the local newspaper, and going out to bars multiple times a week in hope of meeting someone — now that sucks!

After all, if you want a long-term relationship — all you need to do is find one person. Just one.

In the meantime, use — and dare I say ENJOY! — the time that you have being single. Whenever I’ve stuck two fingers up to dating, I’ve directed intense focus to other areas of my life that needed work. And, ironically, this helped me when I was ready to get back on the dating scene.

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