We're Optimizing Our Way Out Of Love

Fifteen minutes later, while I was driving home, he texted. Something vague and friendly, just enough to let me know it was him and that we should talk soon. I sent back a reply along the lines of my schedule being free when his was. And then the conversation ended.

No promises were made and no vows were exchanged. But for singles like me, the questions begin almost immediately.

Will he ask me out? Why did he send that text? Should I text him first? Will that seem clingy? Did I reply too quickly? Was I awkward when we talked?

Within minutes, a small interaction becomes mental calculus.

That impulse is not accidental. In a chronically online and chronically anxious culture, we've become unusually practiced at interpreting signals. At any moment we can search what a delayed text means, whether double texting is acceptable, or how long to wait before replying. Information, advice, and analysis are available instantly. What once might have been a passing moment now becomes something to decode.

What once might have been a passing moment now becomes something to decode.

That has changed the way many people experience dating. More and more, dating feels less like human encounter and more like a game. We've built an ecosystem in which romance has become about strategy. Not everyone is playing for the same prize, and not everyone follows the same rules. But if you're on the board, you're playing. There are instruction manuals everywhere. Blogs, podcasts, influencers, and social media threads tell us how to dress, what to say, how often to text, how much to reveal, and how to position ourselves to attract a particular kind of partner. We’re all just trying to catch our own personal rat boy.

Beneath all of it sits the same promise: if you want a certain outcome, there is a technique that can improve your odds.

According to Pew Research, about one in 10 partnered adults in the United States (those currently married, living with a partner, or in a committed relationship) met through a dating app or website. Among adults under 30, that number rises to one in five. Dating apps are now the dominant infrastructure through which Gen Z and young millennials find each other, which means the logic embedded in those platforms (swipe, match, optimize) has become the logic of courtship itself.

That promise is attractive because it makes uncertainty feel manageable. Take the familiar “hot and cold” dynamic. One day someone is deeply interested. He asks about your life, texts often, and seems genuinely engaged. The next day he disappears. The internet has advice for that too. If he takes an hour to respond, wait two. Mirror the distance. Pull back. Create scarcity. Make him wonder. In other words, outplay him.

But what does that actually produce? Two people who are either genuinely disinterested or performing disinterest. The result is dysfunction.

Worse, it teaches people to make decisions for the wrong reasons. A boundary is no longer set because someone values consistency, honesty, or mutual respect. It becomes a move designed to regain leverage or provoke pursuit.

Beneath all of it sits the same promise: if you want a certain outcome, there is a technique that can improve your odds.

In trying to reduce risk, we often lose the ability to observe people clearly.

Dating, at its best, is not about controlling outcomes. It's the gradual process of learning another person’s character. Their actions are not inherently good or bad. They are data. Someone who communicates clearly is telling you something. Someone who disappears is telling you something too.

The difficulty is that genuine knowledge requires vulnerability. You cannot truly know another person while remaining entirely protected from uncertainty, rejection, or disappointment.

And yet the data suggests that young adults are doing exactly that, protecting themselves right out of the dating market altogether. The 2026 State of Our Unions report, based on a nationally representative survey of more than 5,000 unmarried adults between 22 and 35, found that only about 30 percent of young adults are actively dating, meaning once a month or more. Nearly three-quarters of women and nearly two-thirds of men in the survey had not dated at all, or only a handful of times, in the past year.

The same survey found that more than half of respondents said past breakups had made them more reluctant to begin new relationships. Bad experiences are not producing wiser daters. They are producing fewer ones.

That helps explain the rise of what many people call the “pre-date.” It's the coffee or lunch that everyone understands is a date, but no one calls a date. It's framed as casual and low pressure, a preliminary screening before the real date happens. The pressure is still there. Only the language has been softened.

How much easier would it be if we simply said what it is? Would you like to get coffee with me? Better yet, would you like to go on a date?

Instead, ambiguity has become a tool for minimizing personal risk. That instinct has only been intensified by digital life. In increasingly depersonalized social spaces, people can remain partially hidden. They can be present enough to engage but distant enough to disappear. The emotional stakes remain real, but accountability becomes negotiable.

We scroll through endless advice, hacks, signals, and best practices, always hoping the next piece of information will make uncertainty easier to manage.

At the same time, we're living through a broader culture of anxiety. More people than ever describe themselves as anxious, diagnosed or not. That shouldn't surprise us. Many of the platforms we spend hours on are built around intermittent reward, the same psychological structure that makes slot machines compelling. We scroll through endless advice, hacks, signals, and best practices, always hoping the next piece of information will make uncertainty easier to manage.

Instead, it often makes us more vigilant, more analytical, and less at ease.

Further research published by the Institute for Family Studies, drawing on data from 50 countries and more than 6,600 partnered individuals, found that couples who met offline reported greater relationship satisfaction and higher levels of intimacy, passion, and commitment than those who met online. The differences were consistent across countries, income levels, and age groups. The researchers suggested that digital platforms may encourage a transactional approach to relationships, an orientation that turns out to be poorly suited to actually sustaining one.

So what can change?

First, we should pursue seriousness before strategy.

I recently spoke with a couple who met through a dating app. Their advice was simple. If you're looking for something meaningful, that seriousness should be reflected before the first date. A profile should be thoughtful, prompts should be considered, and intentions should be clear enough to filter out incompatibility and misaligned expectations. Not every interaction needs to be rigid. But it should be deliberate, and people ought to pursue excellence in every function of their lives.

Second, we need a more radical acceptance of reality.

Take people as they reveal themselves to be, no more and no less. If you flirt, exchange numbers, and he never texts again, he is not interested. That doesn't mean the interaction was meaningless. It simply means it was what it was. If someone reaches out often but never makes plans, he does not want to spend time with you. If someone is consistently present, attentive, and intentional, that matters too.

We need a more radical acceptance of reality.

Despite a common narrative that young adults are allergic to commitment, the data says otherwise. More than 80 percent of respondents said their primary purpose in dating was to form serious relationships and create emotional connections. Fear of commitment ranked near the bottom of reported dating barriers. The problem is not that people don't want real relationships. It's that they have lost confidence in their ability to build them, and have been handed a culture of strategy in place of one.

The more we treat dating like a game of manipulation, timing, and calculated scarcity, believing it will end in our own personal rom-com, the more we lose the very thing dating is supposed to offer: genuine knowledge of another person. To date well requires something increasingly unfashionable. It requires taking both ourselves and others seriously enough to accept reality, including rejection.

We should care enough about our own lives and outcomes to pursue excellence. But we should resist the temptation to turn every human interaction into data points and a formula.

Go out, have fun, and flirt.

Just do not confuse what cannot be controlled with something that can be solved.