why is dating so hard

Why Dating Has Become So Hard. You can blame the dating apps. You can blame Tinder, and Bumble, and Hinge, and all the choices that people have. Because for the very, very first time in history, men and women have a ridiculous amount of choices available to them. Men and women go out on a date and if just one thing isn't right, well, in the olden days, it used to be very simple. You know, let me figure out this person a little bit more. Let me see if this person's really great. Maybe this thing that I don't like tonight might have just been because they're nervous or excited. But now? We evaluate each other immediately. Wait, she's got a lazy eye. I don't like that, I'm going to back on the dating app and I am going to swipe for somebody who's perfect. You see the dating apps were actually created because people in general are always searching for perfection. They've been marketed the “perfect partner.“ There is no perfect. The thing that you need to realize is that this paradox choice that we have is just that. A paradox of choice. It's too much stimulus in our world nowadays. There are too many speakers to look for when we're looking for a pair of wireless speakers. Should we get bluetooth?

Or should we get airplay? Or should we get this? When we shop for cars, it seems like everybody, or every car manufacturer, has the same cars. The one line, two line, the three line, the four line, the five line. Are any of them even any different? But what we're doing here is just choosing the perfect car we want. We're doing it with dating. We really are under the illusion that there is somebody that we can find who’s going to be perfect. Because we can literally pick people apart the minute we meet them, because we know with all the options or apparent options that we have, we can go home that night and find what we perceive to be better. The reason why they're not happening? Well, it's because we truly believe that we have an abundance of people we can meet. And at the same time, people are staying home and they're lonelier than ever before. And that is the cold hard truth. Less relationships are formed now than they were ten years ago. Because of the dating apps, because of all the people that are, apparently, free and single. The next time you're on a dating app, think to yourself: when I go out with this new person tonight, maybe I'll give them a little bit of a chance. Who knows, something good may come from it. For Guys? (Updated For 2021) As a dating coach who works with men, I’ve heard one question asked many, many times. Frustrated, lonely, and disappointed, my clients (and many male friends, family and strangers) ask, for guys?

First, I like to remind everyone that dating is difficult for everyone these days. Women have just as many complaints. Some of the complaints overlap, but there are certainly difficulties that are unique to both sexes. This article is going to focus on why dating is so difficult for guys, as I examine the challenges that uniquely impact men. I have no desire to revel in bad energy, negativity, or toxicity, so I’m not “blame” women as some authors do (nor blame men). This also isn’t meant to be a pity party to justify whining or blaming. The solution to any challenging issue is to see the obstacle clearly, take responsibility, and change what you can that is within your control (this is Stoicism 101). If you just want to whine, complain, or blame without taking any personal action, then you are in the wrong place. I want to start out by saying that yes, dating is objectively hard for guys right now, and is harder than in the past. A recent survey, for example, revealed that 28% of men under 30 are essentially dateless and sexless, and not by choice. The number of women in this scenario was only 18%, suggesting that men seem to have it harder than women in this regard. Also, to show you how bad things are in 2020, in 2008 only 10% of men reported being celibate in this way. This is an almost 300% increase in just a decade!

Online Dating Sucks. Online dating seems like a video game. You get on the app, do what you’re supposed to do (photo, profile, swiping, etc.) and you happily reach the goal (a great relationship). If you can get through 8 levels of Super Mario Brothers, then you can certainly make online dating work!

Anyone who’s tried online dating knows this is total bullshit. Online dating is more like a slot machine. You want the big prize and that’s why you play. But, the odds of getting it aren’t great. While you think you’ll win the lottery (a relationship or maybe sex), your experience is more like that sad woman who spends all day at the casino, chucking quarters in the slot machine while hunched over dead inside, to end the day breaking even at best. Women swipe right (like) on only 4.5 percent of guys on Tinder (Men swipe right 62 percent of the time)!!

Women judge 80 percent of male profiles as “unattractive” in some way 70 percent of Tinder users reported never going on a date If the average man, under average conditions, wants to be 99% certain he’ll receive a reply to a message online he will need to send 114 messages (women only have to send 25). Yes, read that again. The top 10% of men clean up, monopolizing the attention of most women, while the bottom 50% of men are fighting for the attention of less than 5% of women, at least on the Hinge app. In one study, when an attractive women swiped right on all men, she got 600 matches in 4 hours. Yes, read that again. This shows how competitive these apps are for men. This makes sense, because Tinder is 78% men, and other dating apps are similarly male-dominated. Real World Dating Sucks (For Many Men) If online dating is a virtual raging dumpster fire, then you can meet people in the “real world” right? Well, yes and no. While it’s much easier to form a connection in person (and there is much less competition), many people have very few resources or avenues to find a date this way. The Western world today is more disconnected than ever. Most people don’t know their neighbors, have few friends, and wouldn’t even know where to find community events. Many men simple don’t have friends. The likelihood of being friendless triples if you’re a man from his 20s to late middle age. Many men only have a couple of friends, but 11 percent of single men have zero friends. Yet, how do people meet romantic partners? It’s through friends. By far. It’s not even close. One study showed that 39 percent of couples met through friends, although this number is going down. So, if men don’t have a friend group or few community connections, where do you meet women?

Well it involves randomly approaching women, whether at bars or even the grocery. And, while this is possible (and I do it), it’s not exactly easy. It’s no wonder people ask for guys? As a result, many guys just “check out.” #MeToo Movement. For those unaware, the #MeToo movement is an anti-sexual assault and anti-sexual harassment campaign that focused especially on eradicating those behaviors in the workplace. One positive aspect of the movement is that it has drawn attention to toxic workplace behaviors of some men. However, from a dating perspective, it’s also created additional dating hurdles and challenges for good men who have never engaged in harassing behaviors. The #MeToo movement has made many men reluctant to engage women, even in an appropriate manner, in environments where they previously would have. In addition, many workplaces tightened rules which make trying to date there dangerous for one’s career. Many couples in the past met in the workplace (one study says 15 percent). In the current climate, those numbers will certainly decline and both men and women will have lost another avenue to potentially meet their life partner. This will inevitably cause more men to rely on online dating, which as I just mentioned, sucks. She’s Just Not That Into You. It’s been shown over and over again that men consistently overestimate how much women are actually attracted to them (interestingly, women underestimate). Guys think women are into them, when the women are not. Men also tend to overestimate their own attractiveness. I always joke that most women I know can have thirty guys messaging them and still wonder “am I attractive?” whereas a guy can have one woman smile at him in a month and he thinks he’s God’s gift to women, as he is using his 10-year-old T-shirt as a napkin to wipe barbecue sauce off his face. First, many guys think they are a “catch” when they clearly aren’t. Even what they might think are selling points (e.g. having a job, “only” being 30 pounds overweight, above average height, having their own place) really just make them average or invisible to most women. It’s like “hey baby, I have the bare minimum society expects of me going for me…let’s chat and then go get a Little Caesar’s Pizza…on me!” Second, guys look at the behavior of women in their lives like smiling, laughing, and even talking to them as a green light for a date. They perceive friendliness (and sometimes forced friendliness like a cashier) as romantic interest when it clearly isn’t. Women Have Many Options. If you spent a year desperately looking for work and sending in resumes, then got one job offer, you’d be over the moon and instantly take it. However, if you were flooded with employers calling you daily, not only would you not send out a bunch of resumes, but you would sit back, take your time and pick the best. Beautiful women have options. They have countless men “sliding into their DMs,” hundreds of likes on Instagram photos, matches numbering in the hundreds and even thousands on Tinder and Bumble, and get hit on while walking down the street. Yet, in the end, they might have a crush on their boss and stay in most weekends with their cat because they don’t even like most of the men in their lives (see previous point). Don’t believe me?

Check out the photo on the right, taken from a real Tinder account by us… 25,000 likes on Tinder. Also refer back to the study I mentioned above where women can get hundreds of likes in a few hours. In one fascinating experiment on OKCupid involving fake profiles, even some of the “least attractive” female profiles got more messages than the most attractive men. The least attractive man got zero messages over a four month period. The least attractive woman received eleven. So, even the “not so beautiful” women have some options, even if they might not take them. The ugly and below average guys might not even have the chance to be rejected. But, aren’t the sex ratios even? Isn’t there one guy for every girl? Well, kind of. But, that’s like saying there’s enough money in the world for everyone to have a certain amount. The sexual economy works a lot like the actual economy: extreme inequality. As I mentioned earlier, in the 18-30 age bracket, 28 percent of men are involuntarily celibate while only 18 percent of women reported this. If you ask: “ for guys?” part of the reason is because a lot of men want to get laid and aren’t. Those numbers clearly show some men are monopolizing more than one woman, while other guys are getting nothing. Also, when you look at the data from the online dating app Hinge I also referenced earlier, the top 1 percent of men received 16 percent of female likes. In addition, the bottom 50 percent of men got 4.3 percent of female likes. These stats are absolutely insane and blow any notion of equality in dating out of the water. The “one percenters” of attraction clean up just like the “one percenters” of wealth. To make this clearer, based roughly on the data above, imagine going to a party with 100 single men and single women. In the room, one guy has 16 women talking to him, 9 other guys are talking to 36 women, and you have 50 guys standing around with 4 women showing interest in them. The point here is that there are a lot of guys out there competing for the attention of women. And, most of them are getting lost in the noise. Even if you are an amazing, attractive guy (for real, not perceived), she might not even see your message because of all the losers crowding her inbox! Modern Men Just Aren’t Measuring Up. Another reason dating is hard for men is because modern men just aren’t as attractive and dateable as in the past. Women typically date men who are higher in social, educational, and financial status. They also are generally attracted to men who are assertive, muscular, dominant, and ambitious. At the very least, men with these traits end up dating a lot of women, largely because men with these traits are bold and take risks. And, modern guys just aren’t very dateable based on all of this. For example, more young men live with their parents than young women do. Men are less educated than women, and rates of obesity among men are skyrocketing. All of these factors mean that among men, testosterone levels are at all time lows. Men with higher testosterone are more likely to have the traits that women find attractive. While this means higher T guys will clean up in the dating world, it also means that dating is more challenging for the average guy (this also explains why more men are sexless than in the past). In short, a lot of men are more boys than men, and let’s be honest, society encourages this at all points in a guy’s life including being in an educational system that punishes creativity and students that won’t sit still for 8 hours. I was sitting at a restaurant a few days ago and this 20-something-ish guy was going off about some topic. He sounded whiny, took life way too seriously, and came across like a middle-schooler in almost every way. The woman with him looked bored and even talked louder and looked my direction as if to say “help, this boy is bothering me!” Also, I should add, that not only have the number of people on the autism spectrum increased in recent years, but more men than women are on the spectrum, which means a greater percentage of men (especially young men) will struggle with the mental and emotional processing necessary to make romantic connections. The Solution? I know this sounds like bad news, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. So we know online dating is tough, women are picky with options, it’s tough out there, and guys just aren’t measuring up. So let’s imagine you’re training for a marathon, and you twist your ankle at one point while training, your running buddy flakes on you a lot, and it rains for 10 days straight leading up to it. You can choose one of two paths: you quit and then bitch about it, or you rise to the occasion in each of those cases. Any guy can improve himself in a multitude of ways. Most aspects of your life can be transformed to be the man a woman craves and desires.’ This can include losing weight and getting in shape (muscularity is very important), developing a more assertive personality, changing your body language, learning to flirt, projecting and getting power and more! For many guys it may mean practicing and developing various social skills that men in the past found came more naturally. Remember no one is owed a date. Just because you think you’re awesome doesn’t mean a woman should date you or give you attention. If you truly want to date the women of your dreams, become the man who is worthy of their time and attention. Will it involve hard work?

Probably!

But, how badly do you want it?

I’ve seen these changes, not only in myself, but in my clients. I used to be a boring, dateless “nice guy” who changed his ways and now dates beautiful women. And, the traits that help you become more attractive (charisma, boldness, dressing better, etc) will ALWAYS spill over into success in other areas, including your career. We wrote two books that can help guys out (women, if you are reading this because your brother, son, etc, is struggling, buy him a copy!). But be warned: these are books for guys who WANT to rise to the occasion and do something. If your view is that you’d rather bitch, moan, and discuss the problem of dating rather than take action, for real, please don’t buy our books because it will just be a waste of time. One is Be Popular Now, which is a general overview of social skills, charm, charisma, and dating skills for men. The other is Size Doesn’t Matter: The Short Man’s Handbook Of Dating And Relationship Success. We know that a lot of shorter guys feel stuck and at a huge dating disadvantage in modern society, and this impacts their self esteem negatively. Why Dating Is Such a Challenge. The paradox of choice could be the reason you're single. “Dating today is a nightmare” are the first words that come out of Barry Schwartz’s mouth when I ask him about today’s social landscape. Schwartz is a renowned behavioral psychologist and author of The Paradox of Choice, a life-changing book that examines how and why having too much choice makes us miserable. To illustrate, Schwartz describes a trip to Gap. What should be a fairly quick shopping trip becomes a full day of torture as you try find the perfect pair of jeans. Instead of purchasing the first item that fits well enough, you end up trying more and more styles, never stopping until you discover that best, most magical pair in the store. That’s because once you find something good, you start to believe there’s probably something even better out there, so you keep going, and going, and so on. Therein lies the paradox of choice: when variety appears to be a good thing but actually makes life more challenging. Now, substitute the jeans for a romantic partner and you have what Schwartz calls “the most consequential domain where this paradox would play out.” In every aspect of our lives, we are confronted with myriad choices, but how we make these choices is often more important than what we choose. The shopping trip shows an example of what Schwartz describes as “maximizing” behavior. “Maximizers treat relationships like clothing: I expect to try a lot on before finding the perfect fit. For a maximizer, somewhere out there is the perfect lover, the perfect friends. Even though there is nothing wrong with the current relationship, who knows what’s possible if you keep your eyes open.” In contrast to maximizers are satisficers, who are willing to settle for good enough and not worry about there being something better out there (let’s face it, there probably is). Still, satisficing doesn’t mean you should jump for joy when presented with garbage options. You can and should expect high standards, says Schwartz, “but the difference is between looking for very good versus the very best.” As you can imagine, the maximizer’s quest for perfection comes at a cost. In general, maximizers are less satisfied and more prone to depression than satisficers, which makes sense—if you refuse everything but the absolute best, you probably won’t end up with very much. Not only do satisficers experience less FOMO (fear of missing out), but they are also much happier than maximizers. Just look at the world’s best satisficers, the Danes, who according to the World Happiness Report, are ranked among the happiest people in the world. Denmark partly owes its surplus of smiles to a practice called “hygge,” which means finding joy in normal, everyday life. For example, 85 percent of Danes say they get their fuss-free hygge fix by lighting candles. They even prefer plain, unscented ones to the fancier, scented options. Danes also follow the Law of Jante, an unofficial ethos that frowns upon individual achievement and success. Jante is straight-up kryptonite to maximizers. Rather than treating life like an endless rat race, Danish children are taught to be content with being average and, well, having average things. And, in return for accepting the ordinary, they end up less anxious, less stressed, and, most importantly, less miserable than the rest of the maximizing world. For thousands of years, humans survived because they satisficed. In times of scarcity, people didn’t have the luxury of waiting around for gourmet chef-prepared wildebeest carpaccio or Apartment Therapy -worthy cave dwellings. Passing up whatever came down the pike easily meant starving or being murdered by a predator. And, when it came to mating, proximity was pretty much the only thing that mattered—even up until the last century. In Modern Romance, comedian Aziz Ansari and a team of sociologists investigate past and present dating practices and found in one 1932 study that one-third of married couples had previously lived within five blocks of each other. Even more alarming, one-eighth of these married couples had lived in the same building before they got hitched. Because people traveled so infrequently, much like the cave people before us, they often had little choice but to mate with the first eligible person they came across. After all, who knew when another potential mate would come along?

This satisficing mindset would continue to dominate how people made life choices, until the widespread rise of modern affluence and technology turned us all into jacked-up maximizers running wild in Willy Wonka’s choice factory. To quote the late Notorious B.I.G., “It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.” More money means more choices in how you spend it; and, more technology means being exposed to everything you never knew you wanted. Before, we could be happy our entire lives without having any idea what a cruffin was, but now, thanks to Yelp, we know we cannot live without them. In addition, the media has essentially turned into a propaganda machine for maximizing, demanding we buy this perfect or best [fill in the blank] in every article or blog post. An alternative doesn’t seem to exist. When is the last time you read an article titled “10 Good, Not Great Hairstyles You Need Try Now” or “How to Mostly Satisfy Him in Bed”? It’s go best or go home. The paradox of choice is most painfully obvious in the realm of dating. Especially on online dating apps, there is less being swept off your feet and more getting trampled by a utilitarian assembly line of swipes. How quickly have we thumbed left simply because the face peering back at us had an eyebrow hair out of place or because the guy seemed short even though you could only see his head? How many amazing potential mates have we missed out on because we were convinced the next profile would be better?

This ease of maximizing might explain why even though more than 20 percent of 25- to 40-four-year-olds use dating apps, only 5 percent of them are able to find committed or lasting relationships through them. If you’ve ever logged on to Tinder, then you already know it’s most popular export is instant gratification, not true love.

why is dating so hard