Oh, the “modern dating scene.” What a time to be alive. Coincidentally, this was the title of an old blog post I wrote and a running inside joke within my friend group. When friends or foes bring up dating around us Gen-Z folk, we all collectively sigh in unison. No one’s prancing around with arms stretched like a bird, screaming “oh it’s great, oh I love dating in 2025!” Instead, dating is seen as a burden, where people are either failing at courtship or stuck in temporary arrangements lasting five months before they break up over text.
To say failing at courtship is to avoid nuance, too, because there are many different ways to fail in doing so. There’s the grass-deprived computer science major who spends his twilight hours programming his animated AI waifu to tell him his C code is the most efficient. There’s the alcohol-obsessed sophomore hoping to find her wholesome gentleman in the desolate dumpster behind the city club. And don’t forget the optimistic gal swiping through the endless torrent of dating apps just to find that all her matches are simply looking to disappoint God. All these archetypes fail but fail in different ways, sometimes through no fault of their own, but at the hands of the demon that puppeteers the “modern dating scene.”
What’s gone wrong? Finding a romantic partner used to be the highlight of youth—the unique opportunity in life to find your Prince Charming, your Cinderella—someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. But we’ve somehow gone astray. The clock has struck twelve and its glamorous facade has turned to ash. The internet has morphed into a wasteland with endless heaps of resentment toward the other sex. College students are struggling just to find any meaningful connection. Girlfriends and boyfriends everywhere are cheating like humanity has reached its last exam. And divorce rates are hitting Maryland’s average summer humidity. Things are not looking up.
Somehow, dating has become a shadow of its former self. We’ll analyze the method to the madness—how warped social expectations turned relationships from something sacred into something disposable, and why the blueprint many follow today is rigged from the start.
Relationships with the Wrong Expectations
To most kids in grade school, dating represents the search to find someone to make kissy faces with, hold hands with, or have fun with. Even in college, its essence remains the same. This is not a bad start. We’re all looking for our romantic awakening in one way or another, and there’s no better advertisement than the possibility of that first 💋.
The problem seems to be that some people—a lot of people—reach adulthood and don’t realize that relationships extend past the idea of lips touching and hand holding. They go in hoping for butterflies in their tummy forever and feel empty once they escape. The road in a long-term relationship is coarse and treacherous. There are low lows and high highs, with no peak in sight. Why do you think we never saw Cinderella’s happily ever after? It’s because there was none. Did we really want to witness their fifth fight about who should do the dishes? Did we want to hear her complain about how Prince Charming couldn’t tell her and her ugly stepsisters apart?
Relationships are initially and temporarily all fun and all roses, and then it’s time for the seriousness. The fun and roses persist, but now sprinkled in with the tough job of growing together, making each other better, and navigating the suffering that is life.
It’s hard to know this in advance, so many people entering the dating scene search for the superficial. The person who shares their interests, their hobbies. The ones that provide good conversation, provide the kisses, provide the hand, and provide the fun. These qualities optimize stage one of any relationship well but wear thin when the sunny day turns dark. The once fluttery conversations barely spark in the night. The butterflies are gone. The ten-thousandth peck to the lips just doesn’t hit the same. In maturity you can light a candle to find new adventure. In immaturity you lost what you bargained for, and the product no longer matches its packaging.
When we dilute relationships to their honeymoon-esque facades, we lose sight of the bigger picture—that relationships are deeper and more than their advertisements can really show. They’ll have kinks and cracks, hidden gems and hidden flaws; but in the end, they’re a part of your life and you feel you could never replace them. However, many people only engage with the ad and never the product.
In youth, this is the situationship. This is the hop from one casual relationship to the next. This is the hookup, the cheating, and the friends with benefits. When you look for someone to satisfy your immediate desires, they unfailingly become temporary. The novelty of someone new is always out there and can provide you with that fresh desire in a way a long-term partner never can. Who is surprised when they settle for a situationship or seek a friend with benefits? They can use them for their pleasure without the typical baggage of another human mind. Who is surprised when someone jumps from one relationship to the next, bored once their ex has expired past their desirability?
To hope for a relationship is to hope for something more than hedonistic gratification, to hope for something more stable, long-term, and truly good. At first, we all seek that gratification, but when it begins to decline, we tame our desire with something new, and that something new is commitment.
Commitment
What happens when we reply with “yes” to a simple “will you be my girlfriend?” It represents the blooming of a new pairing, a new relationship, and a new adventure. More importantly, it is the social handshake of the first act of commitment. Why not do all the things couples do pre-relationship? This is a touchy subject nowadays because often, the social contract is signed after the lips have touched and after the bed has been shaken. Regardless, the answer is that once the handshake has occurred, the contract signed, the emotional connection built, you tell the other person that you both have formed a union where you cannot simply just walk away. You sit at the bedrock where a new path toward something greater begins.
This is the moment where commitment comes to life. Otherwise, why even enter a relationship? Commitment is the duty to one another, in the presence of pleasure and in the presence of pain. And as such, it should be an acknowledgment that you will work past the honeymoon and past the superficial desire. It’s the only way to label what you have as more than a situationship and more than a temporary, hedonistic arrangement.
In college, I met those who dated around, going through the motions of courtship but stopping short at commitment. They clawed at as many stage ones as they could find, only seeking intimacy to satiate their desire. They left a trail of bodies in their wake, either victims who hoped for more or fellow travelers on the same hollow journey. With these people, their lives intersected at one point and will never intersect again, devoid of meaning and devoid of purpose. Some simply didn’t know better and learned from their mistake, in hope of never making the same mistake again. The Deeper Implications of Commitment
But what does commitment entail? Other than the duty to one another first and foremost, commitment also means you fight each other’s demons together, and you do not easily give up. With long-term commitment comes the opportunity to truly show your inner self, your quirks, strengths, weaknesses, and fatal flaws. It comes with the baggage of sin: you and your partner’s intolerance, selfishness, superiority, jealousy, and spite. Both of you will lower your guard, opening your soul and insecurity in a display of solace to one another, both beautiful and terrible alike. You will know your partner like you have never known a friend before, to appreciate who they are, and to truly understand that we are all flawed. And in light of that true self and insecurity, you cannot easily run away, for you know you are great and flawed in the same way.
Commitment is also an oath that you cannot easily walk away for someone “better.” For what is better? Who is it that you deem better? You only know their face, their advertisement. You know not the demons that lurk inside, the demons you encountered in your partner only once their opening act melted away. The new interest at your doorstep may have gemstones your partner knows not, but your partner knows gemstones that you no longer see, for you have been blinded by time and ingratitude.
Do you really think you found the best person in the world for you in your limited exposure to the world? There are countless people who may tickle your fancy, who may even be a better match than the one you have found, but the commitment is a choice you made. Every beauty fades and every good quality becomes familiar. Every single relationship encounters darkness eventually: the celebrities, your family, your parents, your friends—perfection does not exist, for we are all flawed. The light is the commitment you make—your choice that you cannot recklessly cast your partner aside for someone you deem better. For if you follow this logic, there is no reason they cannot do the same to you. And if either of you can, then your commitment means naught, and has always meant naught, from its inception.
Marriage
What happens when we reply with “yes” to a simple “will you be my wife?” As before, it represents the blooming of a new pairing, a new relationship, and a new adventure. But moreover, it represents a new pairing as one flesh, in the ultimate and final act of commitment. In the first act of commitment, leeway exists when values collide and disaster breaks out, where in that disaster, there is a way out. But in marriage, there is no more way out, for you are one, staying together until each other’s final end. It is the vow where no matter the turmoil, no matter the strife, you are by each other’s side. It is the acknowledgment that you will see sky and you will see rain, that you will see sun and you will see storm. It is the final vow of responsibility, not only to your partner but also to yourself, that you are not running away.
In any relationship, you will manifest your worst qualities all of the time, for your true self has shown—qualities that no one in their right mind, if they knew from the start, would ever choose to be with you. But you have those qualities, and they do, too. And only once you establish that you truly cannot leave can you finally sit down and amend those worst qualities, where the alternative is that you will be at each other’s throats for the rest of eternity. You make a leap of faith that you can handle what they have in store for you. Only in that faith can you find the courage to turn around and face that hell.
Otherwise, why marriage and why commitment? If you can easily leave your marriage, then why ever move past boyfriend and girlfriend? If you can discard your commitment, then why not leave when clouds darken the sky? Why not date around forever trying to find your perfect match, the angel that only exists in your mind? You’ve seen your family, your friends’ families, and the relationships made in heaven amongst the celebrities and the elite, and have you ever found that perfect relationship? You have not, and you never will. Only with this uncomfortable truth in your heart can you put your hand in commitment and truly grow.
The one story I love to remind myself of is an article I read about a celebrity’s recent divorce, who exclaimed, “I have yet to meet the one” at the ripe age of sixty. Through countless marriages lasting forty years, she must have encountered those demons time and time again and ran away—every single time—without a second thought. She chased the thrill hoping to find a new person to fancy. There was never “the one.” In the face of commitment, she and her exes chose to run.
Love
Ah, love, the bringer of joy. Love, the bringer of doom. Everyone while dating asks themselves: what is love? Is it affection? Is it lust? Is it a strong like?
I love my cat. I love my friends. I love my girlfriend. I love my family. Are those all the same kinds of love? I don’t think so.
I don’t have a good answer to the question because I don’t know if it has a simple answer. I can tell you what love does. I would happily get run over by a bus to save the people I love. I would fight a war for them. I would toil away endlessly for them. When I look death in the eye, I will think of them.
Love is more than affection. I have affection for pets, objects, and ideas. I don’t always feel affection toward those I love.
Love is more than lust. Love persists when lust does not.
Love is more than like. I do not always like the people I love. I dislike my parents all of the time. I dislike them when they nag, when they argue, when they yell, and sometimes for no reason at all. I become upset with my girlfriend and feel transitory bouts of dislike. But in dislike I still love.
Romantic Love
But what about romantic love? At its forefront, you find affection and you find lust. You find intimacy, and you find joy. It’s the love we find in fairy tales, in love stories, and in dating. It’s the love most people search for at the beginning, and the love that some people chase forever. It’s a temporary love, but love nonetheless.
Just like with your parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, that romantic love fades away toward something more vague. It becomes the commitment you made toward your partner, it’s your acceptance to face their demons, and it’s your willingness to get run over by that bus for them. It’s your duty and your time, your fond memories and your struggles. The “I love you” you exclaimed in your youthful affection becomes something much greater.
Oh, Modern Dating
In essence, many of the problems in dating today come from naive understanding of the purpose of relationships. Too often, dating is seen as an avenue purely for fun, to fulfill one’s desire for intimacy and companionship. Though this may be the most seductive illusion, indefinitely basking in its simplicity does not allow for a fruitful and lasting bond.
Like most, I bought into it at first. I saw having a girlfriend as the peak of the mountain, where ascending its slope was the entire journey. I was content thinking I had reached the top, only to see another peak emerge from the fog. A taller peak, a longer journey ahead. I was fortunate to push through the fear, determined to press on to what lay ahead. Only through my struggle with uncomfortable truths and inner turmoil did I learn what each step meant. And only in hindsight can I clearly see how far I had climbed.
When I look at the casual hookups and situationships and short-term relationships of today, I can’t help but think that these people, like me, only saw the first peak. Once the mountain revealed herself in full, they all turned back in fear. They fear the first sign of trouble: the jagged slopes, the rough terrain, and steep slope. They’re afraid of the fog that covers the path ahead. And in doing so, they reduce each partner into temporary pleasure, each one fading into the distance as they start over.
It’s not the end of the world. Some pairs are really not meant to be. Some unshakable devils only emerge with time. But every ascension up the slope becomes more familiar. The thrill dampens; the excitement fades. At each arrival to the first peak, we again consider whether the journey ahead is worth it. We begin to notice the cracks in perfection, within our lover and within ourselves. And with each arrival we think, maybe the next face can help us climb a little bit higher.
The first peak may arrive early or may arrive late, but it will arrive just the same, no matter the face. In our hearts, we must decide to push on.
Yet that decision has never been more complicated. Social dynamics have always ruled over the dating scene—that much is obvious. The relationship between men and women has shifted drastically for all sorts of reasons: industrialization, birth control, and feminism, just to name a few. What the last decade has uniquely brought, the ultimate new and technological marvel to save all of us, is…the dating app?
Dating Apps
In the wake of the world wide web came the dating apps. We replaced meet-cutes at the local bar with the cold glow of our phones, where real conversation dies in favor of the illusion of a real connection. We suddenly unlocked the power to—with a swipe of our grubby little fingers—categorize hoards of potential admirers into yeses or nos.
Take someone like Alex: on the dating app, he’s reduced to his bare essence: some hand-selected pictures that he doesn’t realize women don’t like, and some corny responses to prompts that no one will even read. Some women might look at his goofy smile with his dog and convince themselves that it’s just the camera angle, while others will mourn that the profile doesn’t belong to his hotter friend. When he finally gets a match from that one cute girl he saw at school, he thinks he might have a chance. He’ll send a corny message like “hey,” only to be left waiting while the crickets chirp in the distance. On the off chance he has something interesting to start a conversation with, he realizes half the girls seem to vanish once he’s exhausted his spicy pickup lines, while the others respond once per millennium and no progress toward a date is made. For the few unlucky souls that give him a chance on the first date, he’ll worry more about whether he should pay the bill than what he actually has to say. He’ll force himself to be a “chill guy” as the magnitude 9.1 earthquake knocks down the walls so he doesn’t give his date the ick. And after the date, he’ll find that her messages slowly stop coming in. He’ll stare at his “are you free for a second date this weekend?” message until the day he dies.
After a few heartbreaks, he’ll simply update his favorite drink in his bio to be “matcha,” put a Labubu as his profile picture, round his height up a couple of feet, and change his favorite activity to “listening to feminist literature.” A couple months later, he’ll delete the app and say it simply wasn’t for him.
That’s Alex. He’s probably a pretty decent guy. Then, there’s Tyler. Tyler just wants to get you into his back seat. He won’t message you back for a second date, but he will invite you over to his “crib” the next time his roommates are out.
Dating apps embody the superficial nature of dating to its absolute maximum. Everyone boils themselves down to two dimensions, typically their attractiveness and their ability to craft the perfect one-liner. People cease to have depth, character, or charm. And with the limited information available, people judge based on blatantly superficial desires, partially because it’s simple, but also partially because they’re forced to.
On the app, the pool of suitors and suitresses becomes an open and free market. There’s no need to put thought into your choices for you can swipe as fast as the dopamine hits your brain. Each person becomes meaningless as the endless sea of beautiful faces hits your screen—why settle for Alex and his toothy grin when a hottie might be one swipe away?
As matches are made or not made, and as dates happen or don’t happen, people begin converging on the same formula—the same gym or beach pic, the same generic prompts, the same boring conversations, the same texting schedule, the same unwritten etiquette about when it’s acceptable to vanish from the face of the Earth. The dating app essentially becomes a game where you optimize how to date rather than focusing on discovering what you genuinely want in a partner. If all these apps do is make you focus on the chase, you never actually learn how to stop running. And as such, you would find it almost supernatural if someone on these apps made a real and lasting connection.
Hidden Behind a Screen
The underlying reason for the failure of dating apps lies in the fact that they are an “app” to begin with. Making split-second decisions about someone’s desirability behind a screen became a substitute for real-life connection. It forced people to zone in on the superficial. It made girls worship their 6-foot-2-posing, 5-foot-10 boyfriend a little more. It made people feel that dating someone one year outside their age range is criminal.
In a face-to-face setting, you simply don’t get these metrics or “answers” right off the bat. The conversation and body language become clues to their discovery. You are forced to confront the man or woman in front of you. Your heart-to-heart isn’t dictated by making a carefully choreographed opener. You’re dealing with a complete person, not a curated profile—someone whose nervousness, laughter, or awkward pauses reveal more about them than a height or an age. In good faith, you must show respect, courteousness, and tact. Your true disinterest requires you to politely decline their advance in a way that lets everyone save face.
When separated by a screen or in the veil of anonymity, the person ceases to be one. They are a shadow, a caricature that only exists within a small segment of your consciousness, that you can choose precisely when to interact with. You don’t see their face, their emotions, or their soul—you simply see a few words that flash on your phone. And so, there are no social responsibilities or consequences. You can use them to your heart’s desire without any care for them in the world. The same person who would never ignore someone speaking to them face-to-face will leave messages on read for weeks. The same person who would feel guilty canceling dinner plans an hour beforehand will ghost someone they’ve been talking to for months.
A dating app simply cannot manufacture the sincerity of a real-life connection. And there’s no doubt that everyone knows this. Almost every week, someone will come up with a new concept that will revolutionize the dating app…and somehow never makes it past its headline. And that’s because the premise that a dating app is the solution is fundamentally flawed. Each app promises to add that one new feature that prioritizes human connection over superficial swiping, but when users are given the option of long, thoughtful conversation and quickly scrolling through dozens of beautiful faces, they inevitably choose the path of least resistance. The medium itself becomes the enemy of its own stated purpose—rewarding the restless thumb over the patient heart, the quick judgment over the slow burn of getting to know someone.1 You simply cannot architect a digital space that cultivates the same presence and vulnerability that love demands; the very act of confining love to its online shadow destroys what makes it meaningful.
Al Fin
In the end, the “modern dating scene” is the dilution of relationships to their opening act—the first peak in the distance, the flowery advertisement, and the honeyed hand-holding and lip-pecking. The maturing, the struggle, and the transformative beauty are hidden behind a veneer of instant gratification and perpetual novelty. And to no surprise, many become dejected in the pursuit of what they think is love. The path toward the summit is the path through the fog. It is the path of ups and downs, twists and turns, pitfalls and steep slopes. A treacherous path but the only path toward lasting love and commitment—where two people realize the view from the top was never the final destination, but rather the journey in which they could become whole.
It’s about time we see the beauty past the chase and find wonder in the lasting bond. The wonder in the smiles, the wonder in the fights, the wonder in the pain, and the wonder in the vulnerability. It’s about time we looked up from our phones and saw that the person with a coffee in front of us cannot be swiped away with a finger, but is a person worth our full respect and consideration. Until we’re willing to climb past that first peak—to embrace the fog and steep slopes—we’ll remain forever trapped in the opening act, wondering why the curtain never rises on anything real.