I Went to a Bumble IRL Event And Finally Understood Why Modern Dating is a Mess
I interviewed over 50 single people and asked them about their biggest struggles in modern dating. Men and women had very different responses.
About a month ago, I decided I had finally healed from my last breakup a year ago and waded back into the cesspool known as online dating.
I chose Bumble. Although I find their women “make the first move” premise flawed, they are the only dating app that cares about safety. If you send dick pics or gross sexually inept messages on Bumble, you will get booted. It’s a low bar.
A month later, I have yet to message a single person.
My reticence is not because I have given up on love. (I will never give up on love.) But as an artist, I need to smell, feel, and take in someone’s presence.
So when Bumble invited me to their IRL (in real life) event, I envisioned a room full of hopeful singles with their blistered swiping thumbs on the mend.
Plus, this was the perfect research opportunity. I could finally get answers to the question that tortures many single people — Why is dating so much harder lately?
The event is at a swanky rooftop bar in the heart of Boston. At the entrance, the maître d’hôtel greets me with a bemused smile. He looks like he is quietly predicting who will get kicked off our rooftop island. I don’t blame him. I would do the same if a bunch of horny single people descended upon my workplace.
I get in line at the bar behind two pretty dark-haired women. Their arms are folded over their stylish cropped tops, and they cover their mouths as they giggle even though they are speaking Korean. With each conspiratorial laugh, they move closer to each other like a calf huddling next to its mother’s udder. I wonder how to penetrate their fortification.
I lightly touch one girl’s shoulder, introduce myself, and apologize for interrupting their conversation. They both smile back and seem relieved their first scary stranger is speaking to them.
“I write for a love and relationship column. I was wondering if I could ask you three quick questions about modern dating?”
After interviewing them, I turn to a twenty-something man behind me in line and ask the same questions. He wears heart-shaped sunglasses and a bright tropical shirt that belies his unapproachable, cocksure body language. He describes himself as a “serial dater looking for his soulmate.” I tease him that those two descriptions might be at odds, but he doesn’t see the contradiction.
Throughout the night, I approach hopeful singles with the same introduction.
In the allotted three hours (plus a couple of hours of after-party discussions), I interviewed 58 single people — 26 single women and 32 single men.
Question #1: Do you meet more people online, in person, or both?
It will shock no one that respondents overwhelmingly answered “online.” This question was just a softball warmup question. Obviously, since I was at a Bumble event, most of the attendees were using dating apps. What surprised me is only three people answered “both.” All of them women.
Question #2: Do you think dating has become harder or easier in the last three years?
This is my second softball question. 9 out of 10 respondents answered harder. But if dating were easy, they wouldn’t be at a singles event clutching candy-colored cocktails while trying to look confident.
Question #3: What is your biggest struggle with modern dating?
This was the question I got dressed up for. Since it was an open-ended question, I expected responses to vary. But they didn’t. Answers only varied by gender.
Women’s responses were all over the place, but they circled one underlying theme — men were not putting in the effort. The complaints will sound familiar. Too much texting and not enough dating. Men acting flakey — i.e., canceling dates, ghosting, or not knowing what they want from dating. Too many men want hookups and not a commitment. And so on and so on.
Oddly, men gave the same response over and over again —too many choices. When I asked them to elaborate, they complained that women have too many choices, so they reject someone too quickly. One guy responded, “If you are not tall, good-looking, and earn a six-figure salary, you are destined for the swipe-left pile.”
And, of course, a few trotted out the tired 80/20 Pareto principle. Men believe 80% of women pursue only the top 20% of men, leaving the rest sexless and sad. (As previously discussed, the data does not support this hypergamous nonsense.)
Either way, a problematic theme emerged. Women believe men are not putting in enough effort, and men believe they shouldn’t put in the effort if they are going to get rejected.
After a few too many cocktails, I staggered into my Uber and let the silence envelop me. An unsettling feeling arose.
Romance isn’t just dead. Romance is a decomposing corpse that maggot-feeding dating apps are feeding on.
How do we fix this mess?
Out of all the articles I have written in the last three years, I recall three articles I didn’t expect to dogwhistle the trolls.
How people give lazy compliments focusing on shallow traits.
How we need to have basic etiquette in dating and stop being so damn lazy.
Lazy, lazy, lazy. This is the problem with modern dating. But the incels and bitter feminists sharpen their claws when you ask them to put in some effort. And the sense of entitlement is only getting worse.
Now, brace yourself. Both men and women are going to get my finger-wagging lecture…
First, both sides must stop the endless texting, breadcrumbing, ghosting, classless flirting, and general disrespect. Go read an etiquette book because I am convinced some of you were left on a hillside to be raised by jackals.
Women need to stop dismissing men for shallow flaws that make them feel objectified. Sure, men want to feel desired, but not when they haven’t even made it to a first date.
Case in point. I can’t believe dating app profiles still include a man’s height. Imagine if they required a woman’s weight to be listed. The feminists would pour the tar. But our society tolerates sizing men up on physical attributes they can’t change.
Ladies, stop treating men like providers. You can provide for yourself (and still need a partner.) The wage gap has closed with Gen Z. Yes, we still have work to do with closing the motherhood gap, and Conservatives are definitely gunning for our reproductive rights.
But there’s a simple solution — find an egalitarian-minded man who will share household responsibilities. They are out there.
Men need to take a page from their grandparents. Stop juggling multiple women and throwing your coffee date shit at the proverbial wall. Put on some clean underwear and plan a goddamn date that might make a half-decent love story to tell your grandchildren.
I recently dated a guy for about six weeks. My friends nicknamed him “Pillow Princess.” (And no, we never slept together.) He got that name because I planned every freakin date — concerts, gallery openings, comedy shows, picnics, burlesque shows, and an ill-conceived goat yoga date. (Don’t judge. I love goats.) He would ask me out and then plan nothing, so I was left doing all the heavy romance lifting.
I am so tired of being the events coordinator for men who are too lazy to use their Google machines. Not to mention, it gets expensive to pay for all these activities on an artist’s salary.
And I liked him. He was charming and devilishly handsome. But his laziness emasculated him and made me feel unworthy. (I suspect he was juggling a lot of dates by the number of Bumble alerts the goats saw.)
My Grandma Ella always said, “If it feels like you are trying too hard, you probably are.” I was trying way too hard. And yes, I could have asked him to step up, but that’s a conversation you have a year into a relationship. We were not even out of the gate. You just can’t make some ponies run.
When I broke up with him, he seemed nonplussed and asked why. I told him the truth. He was lazy. He didn’t even fight me on that one. He had no fight in him.
And as Ovid knew too well, love never favors the lazy.
My mother met my father at a party. When he didn’t ask for her number, she went to the library daily, hoping to run into him. Yep, she basically stalked him. No one would put that kind of effort in today.
They have been happily married for 54 years.
Someday, when my kids are older, I will tell readers how I met my ex-husband of 11 years. Let’s just say it’s a damn good love story with enough romantic machinations to rival an Austen novel.
I may have failed my marriage, but I refuse to admit defeat. Italians like to say, “Fortune favors the bold.”
That’s how we save modern love — courage.
“Gamble everything for love if you are a true human being. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.” — Rumi
Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. For past articles grouped by subject, see my Table of Contents.
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