Dating : Modern dating and the paradox of choice

In my mid 20s, I broke up with a long term boyfriend. We’d grown up together, having met when I was 21. In the time that we were together I had gone from anxiously writing my dissertation, to a fully fledged adult living in the big city. We had graduated, travelled together, got our first jobs, moved into our first home, relocated, got our second jobs, moved into our second home. At this time of life, if you are doing it properly, you are in a constant state of flux.

After all of this, I was finally starting to see an outline of what my adult life might look like and I wanted to put the breaks on. All of that growing we had done together and somehow we’d come out the other side as different people, a pair that didn’t quite fit as we had done 3 years previous.

The inevitable happened and we untangled our lives just as I turned 25. I looked out into the next half of my 20s and I was suddenly in it on my own.

I did what we all do fresh out of a break up and explored the options in front of me, with a view to validating my decision to leave and hopefully meeting some interesting people along the way.

If someone was to ask me what I was looking for, I could’ve told them to the letter what this unicorn of a man looks like, sounds like, thinks like. I could’ve told them all the yes factors and the big fat red lines I couldn’t cross. To find this unicorn of a man, I hold in my hand a catalogue of sorts, with an endless supply of males sprinkled around the city, just waiting for me to say hi. If this wasn’t enough, there are actual algorithms buzzing in the background curating the whole offering based on what I like and don’t like. If I wanted to, I was bemused to find out I could get a date in 30 minutes flat, with a guy I would have happily taken home to my parents. Well spoken? Check. Intelligent? Check. Good job? Check. The picture of modern dating that I have painted so far is a romantic utopia in which we all find a person that fits the bill and fall in love, right? Here is where it all falls to pieces.

We now have so much choice that the people we meet can never live up to the possibilities that await us when we start to swipe. Amazing and interesting people, that we would never have had the capabilities to meet except by chance just 30 years ago, fail to meet our burgeoning high standards. They can’t possibly make up for all of the other people we won’t meet if we were to choose them.

Recently, I met someone at a friend’s engagement party. We were getting on well, he was interesting to speak to and then he told me that he has a job with a well-known online fashion brand and he unknowingly finds himself on the no list. Why you may wonder? Fast fashion of course. How could I date somebody that perpetuates the mass production of clothing when we know it has such a detrimental effect on the environment?

On a different date, with a handsome, intelligent and engaging man, he asked me a question about immigration and my answer teed up a debate around the absurdity of the social construct of national borders. His response is curt, he didn’t have anything to add. His PhD in neuroscience meant that his view of the world was more fact-based than mine. The thought crossed my mind of whether or not I would want to date a man that sees life through a scientific lense, without a penchant for abstract debate.

The granularity to which I can disregard these perfectly lovely men is indicative of a wider problem; a paradox of choice that cripples modern daters and means we don’t make any for fear of missing out, only to disregard the next too, this time for an even more obscure reason.

Any of you who have spent time on the London dating scene will be au fait with rules here. Dating is perpetual. The end goal is seemingly amusing anecdotes for the pub, not finding a partner for life. In what other part of life do we continue to perform an activity with a tangible objective, without any intention of achieving it?

So where does it all end? For some I think the end comes with age; their friends start to make moves towards adulthood and they decide it is time to retire from the dating scene. For others it may be boredom, or perhaps they do really meet someone that blows everyone else out of the water and they can’t help but commit.

Setting the bar so high is tempting in an age when someone new is a click away, but if we are looking for love and instead getting a short story book of bad dates, it’s time to close down the apps and take a more open-minded view the next time we meet someone.