Is it time to ditch technology and its rules when it comes to modern dating?

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I’ve been ghosted, ‘rizzed up’, love-bombed and breadcrumbed. I have also ghosted, stood people up, stuck by the three month rule and benched people. Unsurprisingly, none of this led me to a successful relationship.

None of this made me happy or secure, and none of this was easy. Is it me? Or is it the perils of modern dating? Is it time we ditched these modern dating trends?

Has Technology Poisoned Modern Dating? 

“We’ve turned the world of looking for love into a battlefield, and for what?”

Spend twenty minutes on TikTok and you’ll most likely hear a new dating ‘trend’, a Tinder horror story, or a rant about the Hinge algorithm’s failings. From “situationships” to “negging” and “cuffing“, it seems there is a new way to date every other day.

Trends should be something we see in fashion or interior design, not in our ever-challenging quest for love. And whether you are participating or not, actively dating, purposefully ghosting, or trying to meet the love of your life organically, there seems to be no escape from dating rhetoric. 

We’ve unknowingly created this whole language, this world of dating that seems just as scary from the outside as it is on the inside. We’re allowing ourselves to be messed about, played and used in the name of a “situationship” – or we’re closing ourselves off for the first three months of a relationship, convinced the other person will morph personalities all because of a supposed ‘rule’. We’re begging people to take us on dates as opposed to calling at 3am every Saturday, and hiding parts of ourselves convinced we will give the other person the ‘ick’ all because we drink too loudly.

We’ve turned the world of looking for love into a battlefield, and for what?  

The Asinine Rules Of Modern Dating 

Beyond this constantly developing language, we’ve also laid out a number of rules. Most potently, the “three-month rule” implies everyone should wait an arbitrary length of time before committing to someone. We’ve added these excessive and surplus stages, like ‘exclusive but not official‘, and basically obliterated the definition of dating. This leaves some to unknowingly cheat, and others to fret about simply asking a partner to put a label on the relationship after months of ‘dating’.  

“These random rules and trends […] keep us second-guessing everything”

“If they wanted to, they would”, the girlies remind each other. But this phrase only rings true if the ‘they’ in question is a mind reader, and doesn’t have any other daily commitments.

We seem to forget that in this hectic age, everyone has jobs, friends and errands to run. Unfortunately, no one is going to drop everything to come and see you if you’ve got a cold, especially when you’ve only been on four dates. Even if we want to do something, life and practicalities often get in the way. I love my boyfriend, and would love nothing more than to turn up at his house as a surprise. Yet, the small issue of having a job often gets in the way.

These random rules and trends sabotage us. They keep us second-guessing everything and cutting off someone who could have been the perfect partner over practical matters. Maybe “if they wanted to, they would” applies to a message left on delivered for 5 days, but following these rules and ideas overcomplicates the already complicated search for love.

It’s bad enough that we seem to have forgotten how to respectfully approach someone attractive on the street to ask for their number, but then we’re throwing in these new terms and rules that somehow seem designed to keep us on Tinder or Hinge, despite not actually coming from the marketing teams at these dating apps.  

How Can We Date In This Tech-Dominated Age?

Let’s strip dating back to basics. Let’s not overthink it, follow trends or abide by rules made up on a whim. Just jump in headfirst and be optimistic.  

None of these trends, rules or ideas about dating led me to anything good. What led me to my boyfriend was a connection: honesty, vulnerability and blind optimism.

That’s not to say these things haven’t let me down in the past. I’ve been battered and bruised by dating as much as the next Genzenial woman, but I’d still have experienced this pain whether I had followed these rules and trends or not. And at least I can say with confidence that I was myself and authentic (most of the time).  

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Featured image courtesy of Pratik Gupta on Unsplash. No changes have been made to this image. Image license found here.

I am a fashion writer and stylist. I love anything travel and have an obsession with Hummus. I have written for Fashion North, Luxe magazine, Sunderland Vibe and the Telegraph.

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