I was at dinner with some friends the other evening. We were all lamenting the dating scene for our post college grads. My D says that the dating apps, for the most part, usually do not lead to meaningful relationships. Of her nine high school girl friends only 2 have serious boyfriends/married. She does have a few friends that have met their significant others on the apps but for the most part it is a dead end. She is in her mid-20s and most of the guys do not seem to want serious relationships. Just wondering what others have noticed? It seems like dating is a lot more difficult today than it was 20-30 years ago.
Well, it may either be more difficult or more DIFFERENT than 20-30 years ago (or 40+ 
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Funny, just had this conversation with my two daughters age 27 and 36 this weekend. The older one is married almost a year to someone she met on a dating app (dated for 5ish years before marrying?) and the younger one has a BF of about 9 months she met on a dating app.
That said, they said that things have evolved and for the most part there is a lot of swiping whatever is the direction of “I’ll pass” on dating apps. That the intent of many on dating apps these days is NOT great or they are sort of just more interested in having conversations - not in person! Texting and such. Not everyone of course but their consensus is that you might be better relying on visiting the local bar to find a date.
That said though, both have good/current partners that they did meet through dating apps. And most of their dating history has been through dating apps.
I will also say that I think mid-20’s is “young” these days for dating/serious relationships- I think more and more young adults see the 20’s as “their decade” for themselves - nothing wrong with that! And then when they hit 30 they might think more about finding someone to settle down with.
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My mid-20s daughter had most of her dating experience through apps. When she was looking, she approached the search the same way as a job search. She subscribed to many apps at the same time and used the paid versions. She always dated with the intent of a serious relationship. She also tried social groups to find the right man, but that was mostly unsuccessful. Guys mature much later, so it’s challenging to find someone with serious intentions in their 20s and sometimes even in their 30s. One of her main criteria was always her potential partner’s family and their family dynamic, which is often a good predictor of how a guy will treat his partner.
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This thread is gonna blow up with theories, but here is mine: many 20 somethings are insufficiently engaged in their community. A dating app doesn’t fix that. I think that age group needs to find a place to contribute, give it some time, and often you meet someone through that either indirectly or directly. Volunteering, for many reasons, is not something this age group does.
Offered from the extremely anecdotal sample of my extended family’s large cohort of this age group. Yes, many met their SO in an educational setting — but it was as volunteers or members of a group. The ones who didn’t all met their SO as adults, volunteering.
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For sure 
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I hope as people weigh in, they will generally share the type of area (coast v flyover, city v suburb v rural (or at least population of area)) where their adult kids are. Because I’m curious if that has an impact.
My ds would absolutely like to find a SO. He will be 28 in June. He has only had one girlfriend (and only for about six months) that I know of. I get precious little info from him about his dating, and he doesn’t like my asking. He is on dating apps.
Most of ds’s closest high school guy friends are married. A couple are now having children. But, we are from the South, and I think people marry younger here. Though, interestingly, very few of his female high school friends are married. A couple of his college friends are married or engaged. But they did not meet their SOs in college.
From the information I glean, I think fewer and fewer women have any interest in getting married and having children. I was talking with a friend about this yesterday. It seems weird to characterize this as a, “goal,” of mine, but I suppose it was.
Women have more and more professional and career options these days. I recently watched a podcast with two sisters, and they were talking about asking potential employers if their healthcare covered egg freezing. Sheesh! When I started working, my health insurance didn’t cover The Pill!
I’m not saying any of that is good or bad. It’s just different than it was 40 years ago. Most of my friends wanted to get married and have kids at some point.
Theory-wise: I think there is too much emphasis on sameness rather than compatibility. Yes, couples should align on big things (faith, family, finances) but beyond that look for ways you balance each other. Your spouse isn’t supposed to meet all of your needs. That’s why you also need friends. They aren’t supposed to be exactly like you in all ways. They aren’t going to be perfect (neither are you). Expectations are too high. I feel like young people think everything has to be, “perfect,” (which, of course, they never are) before they get married. It all seems so transactional and planned. Life is messy and uncertain.
I also don’t understand the long periods of dating/living together before getting married. Ds’s former co-worker/friend and his girlfriend have been dating for five years. Living together for at least two. Just get married! Ds will say that weddings cost a lot of money. To which I respond, “They don’t have to.”
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This is what I mean by everyhing seeming so transactional. Again, not saying this is good or bad - it’s just how it is.
I think nuclear family dynamics are an excellent criterion for considering a relationship with someone. You marry the whole family.
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My D lives in a big city in the south.
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I apologize for the length of this but, over the years I’ve been on CC with a datable son, I’ve wondered (worried?) how finding love would turn out for him in this world where technology plays either a significant matchmaker role or a detriment to true connection.
TLDR: I think finding deep connection is much harder today than it was for us, and I think technology complicates the dance. But it’s not impossible, it just seems to take longer.
There was a interesting related thread a while back, Do college “kids” not date anymore, where we talked about how it appears college kids are missing out on what was, for us, the best time for/pool of potential mates and how much harder it seems to find suitable partners in the wider uncurated world.
DH and I met in undergrad, and it was the thunderbolt for both of us. Instant and intense, we never looked back. In his early years of dating, our son was looking for that same immediate two-way electricity, though we were clear that that type of connection is not common or necessary for a long lasting love. He kept wanting it and looking for it, though. I think looking for “magic” may have preempted some early opportunities. I’m glad that more and more movies and stories are less Cinderella-like and more Harry-and-Sally like.
Like @seal16’s daughter, our son always dated intent on a serious relationship. He had a steady all through HS but, inherent in the boarding school contract, is the certainty that all will disperse solo for far-flung colleges. Then, he chose an even less fruitful college pool. The lop-sided male:female ratio of a service academy and the perils of “cadating” within one’s company if the relationship went south meant that finding his life partner would have to wait until even later.
I posted in that linked thread that once he graduated and moved to his post, he started looking seriously for love and marriage. We’d talked with him often over the years about relationships, commitment, love, stability, marriage, children, responsibility, etc. All of these were important to him. He was never interested in hooking up. I know that one of the things he was NOT interested in was a young woman who couldn’t put down her phone and hold up her end of an interesting, intelligent, lasting conversation. That eliminated or ended a lot of first dates for him. It’s not like he doesn’t have and use his own phone, but he’s pretty strict on where and how it fits into his life (mostly, it’s critical to his job), and he and we are not texters. He said once that he had to pass on a young woman based on her excessive use of emojis.
I know it’s not PC to talk about looks, but our son often complained that many of the more beautiful women he dated were just too high maintenance and fussy about things that don’t matter to him. Eventually, he’d invite the young woman on a run and notice if she showed up in makeup or fancy/coordinated athletic wear. Let’s just say that, over the years, we saw a distinctive change in the type of woman he was interested in.
I do think that technology and social media have changed how young people interact and find each other, and I do think it’s harder to make meaningful connections when the messages out there are so mixed and contradictory. I know that our son was open to meeting young women through online apps and did, but he preferred to meet them through friends or just chatting in whatever venue he happened to be in. For example, he dated his Starbucks barista for a while as well a young woman he met at Publix.
Some characteristics that helped him though–he isn’t shy, he isn’t afraid of rejection, and he wasn’t willing to settle. He just kept chatting and putting himself out there, dating a lot but never trying to make a relationship work that wasn’t right. Eventually, he met a young woman through friends who could go toe-to-toe with him, could handle his intensity with humor, and slipped easily into the rhythm of his military life but, more importantly, clearly loved and adored him. They dated for three years and married recently at 26. She is “The One.” And we love her, too.
I have noticed something about his military cohort – they are all in their 20s, and they are all married. They are a tight-knit community that works hard, plays together, and supports each other. But, they are all couples. I’m not sure what that dynamic is.
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My D just ended a fairly long relationship with her college boyfriend two months ago. She’s taking a break from dating but is worried about meeting someone new. She’s in a small city in the SE and it seems to her that “everyone” is already married and or paired off. She’s only 24 and most of her peers are around the same age so I take that with a grain of salt, but that’s what she reports.
She’s had terrible luck in the past with dating apps so is trying to join new activities to try to expand her circle. So far she’s joined a boxing gym, submitted paperwork to volunteer at an animal shelter, and is going to get more active in the local young professionals group and the hiking club. She may also look into the community theater. Hopefully she’ll meet someone through these connections.
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I agree with almost everything that’s been posted. I will add that in my observation, we are now viewing a cohort which came of age during the “divorce is normalized” era. I absolutely do not think that people should stick with an unhappy marriage for the sake of the kids (as our own parents mostly did) or because the woman had zero options for supporting herself (like my grandparents). So I am not in any way casting judgement on divorce, I think it’s great that we no longer demonize people whose marriages have ended, etc.
BUT- there is fall out from what I have observed IRL. Kids who grew up shuttling from Mom’s to Dad’s-- even with two very loving and stable homes- seem to have an idealized view of what makes a “good marriage”. Kids who grew up with one parent seemingly on the back foot all the time (one party found another relationship quickly, the other ended up serially dating for years) have a mismatched view of how to make a marriage work. And I won’t even mention the kids whose adolescent years were spent listening to Parent A criticizing everything Parent B did- and then on the weekend the dynamic got reversed.
So I see these young adults with really, really, really high (and some might say ridiculous) expectations for a life partner. When few marriages ended in divorce, the children of those relationships had lots and lots of stable marriages in their lives to observe, model, etc. Now? Mom and dad are divorced. All your aunts and uncles are either divorced or in the throes of ending a marriage. Your close friends spent their childhoods doing the “Dad’s weekend” shuffle just like you did. And so ALL of you agree (not vocally of course, but tacitly) that when you marry it will be FOREVER and he will be prince charming and never lose his temper or lose his job. And she will be the answer to your prayers and dreams and keep an immaculate house when she’s not doing brain surgery at her hospital.
How does the reality of dating compete with these fantasies?
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I’m wondering about the link between the difficulty our kids are having finding meaningful relationships and the discussions we’re having on the Males Under 35 and Gender divide amongst 18-29 year olds threads? In addition to @blossom’s comment about unrealistic expectations, if young males are struggling with their identities and the genders are dividing ideologically, is it any wonder that young people to finding it difficult to make that right match with so many factors working against them.
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I’ve said before that we should set up a CC dating service! Our 30-something son has never really dated and does not feel comfortable enough with himself to try. Plus he’s somewhat self-centered. But smart, good looking, and gainfully employed. He’d really need some kind of organized group where he could get to know people gradually without pressure. He’s been in Meetup groups but nothing since moving to Seattle. I’ve encouraged him to join a synagogue but haven’t been successful.
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I’ve said that many times here, too, @Marilyn. At least with a CC service, our kids would be sure of getting first-rate in-laws.
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I read a study that said women swipe right for the same 5-10 percent of men on dating apps. This gives these men a very high sense of self worth according to the study and can create a serious ego problem.
Men are much more generous with swiping right.
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I think there’s a combination of factors at play.
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Some of the dating apps (especially in larger locations) make it seem as though there’s a fairly limitless pool of people and so one selects the ones that seem “just right” and eliminate anyone that’s a bit too this or that. And for some the “just right” is really their ideal. So a small number of “ideal” people get lots of demand (and thus may not be as tempted to settle down as quickly since they have so many possibilities available to them) and then most “regular” people get very little demand. (@Leigh22 mentioned some of this phenomenon while I was typing!)
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Even beyond the apps, many people are looking for someone to be their “everything” as @Hoggirl was mentioning. They want someone with the same political beliefs who enjoys tennis and salsa dancing and has the same religious practices and is a vegetarian who likes suspense films and wants vacations in nature rather than in cities and, and, and… Rather than figuring out what the essentials for them are in a life partner (particularly core values), and then figuring that they’ll play tennis with some non-romantic friends, have vegetarian family meals with meat on the side, and compromise on the type of vacations (or take nature vacations with college friends and city vacations with their partner), they’re looking for someone who matches everything.
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Historically, there’s been a trend of women (though certainly not all women) who would date laterally or up to them in terms of class/earnings. As women are earning more and rising as a group, the number of men that are lateral or higher than them has diminished, which means that women with those expectations have a smaller pool to select from than previously.
Of family members in this age range:
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24 y.o. male living in suburban east coast state is married, and I suspect that religious beliefs played a key role in marrying younger than later. They met through a community activity, I believe.
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24 y.o. male living in a popular west coast metro is single but has been dating the same person for about 6 years now. They met in high school.
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27 y.o. male living in a popular west coast metro is single and has been on dating apps with virtually no success. I’m pretty sure he has never had a girlfriend.
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30 y.o. male living in a suburban east coast state is single. I’m not entirely sure of his dating history, but he is not married.
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There are two college-aged females, both of whom have dated, and one of whom has had a relatively longer relationship with someone, but since they’re still in college, I don’t think they’re the group that folks are asking about in this thread.
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My D is very athletic and has met a lot of “friends” through running groups etc. However, the guys in her age group seem only to want hook-up relationships at this point in their lives. She is not into that which has impacted her dating life.
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This is interesting to me, because both my kids were dumped at one time or another because they were “too serious” and the women just wanted “somebody fun and no strings attached”. There’s also the dreaded Friend Zone – their FZ relationships were inevitably stuck there because the Friend was constantly checking the horizon for perfection. I expect there are lots of reasons it’s hard to find a SO, probably as many as there are singles looking for permanence.
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I have seen this as a slightly higher percentage (20%) but the premise remains the same.
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Younger cohort, but in my son’s parent facebook group (for a small engineering school with a predominantly male population) a parent recently posted about how her daughter was so frustrated to not be able to find any guys to date. She (daughter) had thought that by going to a school in New England she’d have more liberal guys, or at least well trained guys who weren’t expecting some kind of tradwife. Which then prompted literally dozens of parents, I think all moms, to be like DO YOU WANT TO DATE MY SON? He’s a good boy who cooks and cleans!
It was pretty funny to watch, but what it came down to, in this instance, was that a lot of the boys were, as described by their mothers, shy and probably too nervous to speak up. And it sounds like this young woman, at least, is definitely a speak up first strong personality. But just watching all these parents lament the ability of their children to find dates was somewhat surprising to me.
Now, my son goes to this same school, is a junior, and hasn’t had a date since he’s been there. He’s not particularly shy, and is an attractive kid. But his activities haven’t been the best for meeting people either because they were single gender activities (sports, fraternity), or they took so much time he couldn’t do much else.
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