Dating apps promise more choices. Finding a relationship may depend less on expanding the pool, more on rebuilding the social conditions that allow relationships to develop.
Dating has never offered more opportunity. Open an app and there are thousands of people available to meet. You can filter by age, location, interests, education, appearance, religion, politics - almost anything. It sounds like an engineering solution to dating:
Increase the number of possibilities.
Improve the filtering.
Find the best match.
What if that's solving the wrong problem?
Maybe the difficulty people have finding relationships isn't caused by too few potential partners. Maybe the problem is we've removed the conditions under which people get to know one another.
That was one of the more interesting ideas that emerged from a recent conversation I had about modern dating:
Relationships don't begin with matching.
They begin with repeated human contact.
Dating Apps Optimize the Introduction
Dating apps are good at one thing: introducing strangers. That's useful.
An introduction isn't a relationship.
A profile compresses a person into photographs, a biography, and characteristics. We then make consequential decisions based on limited information.
Swipe left.
Swipe right.
Interested.
Not interested.
People don't encounter each other that way in real life.
You see someone at work. Then again at a coffee shop. You talk after a group activity. You meet their friends. You discover that they're funny. You see how they treat other people. Something you didn't initially notice becomes attractive. The person gradually becomes a person.
Dating apps reverse that process.
They ask us to decide whether someone is worth knowing, before we know them.
The Missing Ingredient May Be Repeated Proximity
One phrase from the conversation stood out to me: "You have to have frequent proximity with the same people over time." That's a different way to think about meeting someone.
Instead of asking:
Where can I find single people?
Ask:
Where can I repeatedly encounter people?
Those aren't the same question.
Consider a dance class.
You don't walk into the room, inspect everyone, and choose a partner for life.
You show up.
Then you show up again.
You learn people's names. You talk. You become familiar. Someone invites the group for coffee afterward. One person introduces you to another person. Eventually you're part of a social network rather than an individual searching for a stranger.
The same mechanism can happen through hiking groups, cycling clubs, volunteering, classes, neighborhood hangouts, recreational sports, community organizations, or almost anything else that puts roughly the same people together repeatedly.
You Don't Need to Find Someone Who Likes Everything You Like
We're often told:
“Do what you love and you'll meet someone who shares your interests.”
That can turn hobbies into another compatibility filter.
I like hiking - I should find someone who likes hiking.
If I like cycling - my partner should cycle.
If I love photography - I should meet another photographer.
That's not why shared activities are valuable.
An activity gives two strangers a reason to repeatedly occupy the same space and something to talk about.
That's enough.
You might join a cycling group and decide you don't particularly like cycling. It doesn't matter. The activity created the initial social environment. Relationships can continue after the original activity disappears.
The hobby isn't a compatibility test.
It's the social infrastructure.
Build a Social Life, Not a Dating Pipeline
This may be one of the biggest differences between meeting people online and meeting them through ordinary life.
Suppose you meet someone for coffee and there isn't romantic chemistry.
On a dating app, that's considered a failed match.
Delete.
Next.
Imagine the same encounter inside a real social network.
You have coffee.
You're not attracted to each other.
You're honest about it.
You like talking.
A month later, she invites you to a party.
You meet her friend.
Her friend introduces you to someone else.
Suddenly the "failed date" wasn't a failure.
It expanded your world.
That's why approaching every social interaction with the immediate objective of finding a romantic partner is counterproductive.
You're not looking for a person.
You're building a network of people.
Networks compound.
The 45-Minute Date
Make early dates short.
Instead of committing to dinner, a movie, and several hours with someone you barely know, meet for coffee for 45 minutes.
Make the purpose clear:
It's a date.
The word matters.
If there's chemistry, schedule another.
If there isn't, say so. Politely.
The advantage isn't convenience. A short date reduces the stakes. You're not trying to determine whether you've found your future spouse. You're answering a much smaller question:
Would I like to spend more time with this person?
That's easy to answer.
Clarity Beats Ambiguity
Modern dating contains ambiguity:
"We should hang out sometime."
"Let's grab coffee."
"Want to come over?"
What does that mean?
Friendship?
Dating?
Sex?
Networking?
Nobody wants to appear overly interested, People conceal the information the other person needs. One of the recurring themes in our conversation was the value of being frank about intentions. If you're asking someone on a date, call it a date.
If you're romantically interested, make that clear.
If you're not interested, make that clear.
The alternative is ambiguity. Ambiguity creates problems.
This is relevant to the dreaded "friend zone." The problem is not friendship.The problem is unspoken intentions - someone behaves as a friend, while secretly hoping the relationship becomes romantic. They avoid saying anything, as they fear losing what they have. Now the relationship is operating on two different sets of assumptions.
When you are clear, you risk rejection.
When you are ambiguous you postpone that risk.
Rejection Isn't What We Think It Is
Approaching someone in ordinary life may feel harder than swiping on an app because rejection happens in front of you. You say hello. They aren't interested. That's uncomfortable.
There's another way to frame what just happened. A stranger who doesn't want to talk to you isn't necessarily rejecting you. They don't know you well enough to reject you. Rather, they are declining to have an interaction. They might be married, having a terrible day, or be late for work. You simply don't know.
If you're looking for one compatible person, mathematically, most have to be the wrong one for you. Once you expect that, a "no" stops being evidence that something went wrong, and becomes just an ordinary possible outcome of interacting with other people.
Start by Talking to People
Some make meeting people unnecessarily complicated.
What's the right opening line?
How do I demonstrate confidence?
How long should I wait before asking for a number?
The answer is:
Talk to people.
Not only people you're attracted to. Talk to the person making your coffee. Talk to someone standing next to you. Say hello to a stranger. Have one small conversation each day. The objective isn't to get a date. It's to become comfortable interacting with people you don't know.
Eventually, when you see someone you want to meet, saying hello won't feel like some extraordinary event. It's simply something you do - talk to people.
Technology May Be Replacing the Skills Dating Requires
What happens when digital interaction doesn't merely supplement real-world social interaction, it replaces it?
Social media substitutes for socializing.
Texting substitute sfor conversation.
Pornography substitutes for sexual interaction.
Dating apps can substitute for approaching someone.
Short-form entertainment can consume hours that once might have involved leaving the house and encountering other people. The substitutes aren't bad. There's a problem hiding underneath them: Skills deteriorate when we stop practicing them.
Talking to strangers is a skill.
Reading someone's reaction is a skill.
Handling rejection is a skill.
Expressing attraction is a skill.
Ending a date kindly is a skill.
Building friendships is a skill.
None can be fully learned by swiping. Younger people, particularly men, may have fewer opportunities to develop those abilities as so much social and romantic life occurs through screens.
Dating Isn't the Problem
What problem are dating apps actually solving?
If the problem is: "I don't have access to enough single people," an app is a solution.
If the underlying problem is: “I don't have a social environment in which relationships naturally develop, ” adding a thousand profiles doesn't necessarily solve it. You might need something different entirely :
Repeated proximity.
Shared experiences.
Friends of friends.
Conversation.
Social confidence.
A willingness to express interest.
A willingness to hear no.
You may need enough time around real people for attraction and relationships to develop in ways that can't be captured or emulated in a profile. The solution to modern dating might be surprisingly old-fashioned:
Get out of the house. Go somewhere you enjoy. Go back again. Talk to people. Build friendships. Meet their friends. When you meet someone you like, don't leave them guessing.
About the Conversation
This article grew out of my conversation with Matt Cook on The Daniel Stih Podcast. Matt has worked with tens of thousands of men, women, and couples through his relationship and health work. Our discussion ranged from dating apps and meeting people in everyday life to rejection, friendship, attraction, intimacy, and maintaining long-term relationships.
What interested me most wasn't a particular dating technique. It was the larger question underneath the conversation:
Have we been trying to solve modern dating by giving people more matches when what many people actually need are more opportunities to form relationships?
Listen or Watch the episode:
Links for Matt Cook:
https://mattcook.substack.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@RealMattCook
About the Author
Daniel Stih is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. Through engineering, investigations, and interdisciplinary research, he explores how people define problems, interpret evidence, and make conclusions when there's uncertainty. Learn more in Why I Think This Way.