Pratik Ratadiya > Essays

Why is Modern Dating Hard?

Note: This essay is primarily for people navigating dating apps and arranged matchmaking. If you met someone organically or are flexible, some of this may feel foreign, though perhaps not entirely.

Now that I have crossed my mid-20s, everyone around me is looking to date and marry soon. A lot of them have done everything society has asked of them, but are still struggling to find a good partner. In the Internet age, you can now meet more people than ever before. Dating and matchmaking apps keep the intent clear and straightforward. What explains the struggle then?

1. Pareto expectations: What is the number one problem for guys? “I do not get matches”. What is the number one problem for girls? “The guy I liked did not commit to me/ended up with someone else”. What explains this imbalance? Girls are looking for a combination of good income, height, better-than-average looks, high emotional quotient, a similar or better lifestyle, and good alignment on values. More women are in the workforce than ever before, thus raising their bar for money. Among men aged 25-30, only 1-10% of Indians earn more than 20 LPA, and only 5-8% of Americans earn more than 150K a year. At most, 10% guys meet all the expectations set by 70-80% of women. Such a skewed statistic brings a new problem for girls: the guys who are in demand find many options and become non-committal in nature. They can be picky, narcissistic, and set their own hefty expectations. This often leaves many girls feeling disrespected or traumatized by being ghosted, strung along, or simply deprioritized. All this while, these women have probably ignored the remaining 90% of guys who are trying their best to win over them. Most of these guys eventually conclude that dating is a waste of time. When someone does show genuine interest, they are already half-checked out, and the cycle continues. So, the top 10% people from both groups often get what they want, or are happy to reject and keep waiting for the right one. The remaining 90% girls are likely to get disappointed by the guys they believed in. The remaining 90% of guys are swiping hundred times to probably get one match, and wonder why they are not getting love.

Ask your single female friend how many pending requests she has across her social media. Ask a highly successful or good-looking friend of yours how many matches he has received. Only one guy and one girl are going to get a yes from these people. All the rejects are going to keep questioning themselves and have self-doubt about what they were missing. Most likely, a probability 101 lesson.

2. Social media sets the expectations: Earlier, your expectations for a partner were influenced by marriages around you, the culture of your city, and the usual norms in your identity groups (race, religion, ethnicity). Now, growing up with social media gets you exposure to marriages and relationships across the world. A girl from a tier-2 city in India yearns for the way American boyfriends treat their partners. Guys are commenting “dream wife” on a video where the woman does a surprise dance for her husband returning from work. Social media algorithms want you to see highly polarizing content, not nuance and sound dialogue. A viral video says, “My husband surprises me with one mystery international trip every year. Remember if he wanted to, he will”, and not “He has a top 1% income and earns enough where this cost means nothing to him”. “A trad wife is always better than a working woman. You want a caretaker, not an egotistic woman”, and not “I run a high-wealth business, so unpaid domestic work carries no long-term cost to our family”. “We spend the evening cuddling each other, look how romantic!”, and not “We are both undergoing marriage therapy, but need to record these clips so the brand endorsement income does not stop coming our way”. The audience rarely gets to see the behind-the-scenes reality. Algorithms do not want you to watch the mundane relationships of the overwhelming majority, but focus on the small set of people who would seek validation from the outer world that their love life is better than the rest.

3. Dating on present profile and not future potential: In the previous generation, a woman was okay marrying a guy because she (or her family) thought he had the “potential” to do something in life. A guy chose a woman even if she did not know some things, because he (or his family) believed she had a good persona and could learn things post-marriage. Today, dating on “potential” in arranged or dating apps is a rarity. People often want somebody who is already established or suited to traditional norms. “If I am not meeting my partner organically, at least let me find a successful person!” This naturally removes a lot of options. “6 ft, 6 figures, in finance” is a famous meme amongst American girls, a condition satisfied by less than 0.5% of men of this age group. How many girls are okay with marrying a guy today who is struggling at work? How many guys are okay with being with a girl who has no clarity on what she wants to do in life?

4. Willingness to adjust: All that said, how willing are you to adjust your expectations knowing these odds? Many people still believe that they can outperform these odds and deserve to get “the special one”. It is completely okay to think this way, but also important to set your patience accordingly. If you ever talk to people who had late or sudden arranged marriages, they would tell you one of two things: “By the time I got married, my idea of a good partner became more grounded than when I originally started ”, or that “I remained patient and did not get disappointed until I found the one”. The ability to adapt will decide how quickly you exit this game. There are people in their 30s who are ready to marry but are single, only because they will not adjust their requirements. This is partly why people who met organically tend to navigate these tensions more easily: they built the attachment before they built the checklist.

5. 1990s expectations in a 2020s world: A female friend who works at a hedge fund rejected a guy after their first date because he did not open the Uber door for her. A friend who makes 35 LPA in Bangalore wants a high-earning wife who also takes care of the meals because he needs “ghar ka khaana” (the homely flavor) for dinner. One family in my community does not allow women in their house to go out for work, but wants a graduate-degree bride. One girl’s family is looking for the guy’s family to fund her new business, but also wants a commitment that the couple will live separately from his parents. The previous generation lived in a patriarchal, conservative world where very few women participated in the workforce and lacked financial literacy. But most of the 90s kids grew up being told that everybody is equal, no gender is weak, and that nobody deserves special favors or biases because of their gender. However, people are still happy to cherry-pick things from the past that worked in their favor, while also wanting the benefits of the modern world. We need to hold ourselves truly accountable in a relationship and not expect favors that were bestowed upon us in the past to still be the norm. Both girls and guys are equally frustrated by this problem, but in different flavors.

Given these symptoms, how can we solve this dating problem? The people who seem to find their way through are either genuinely patient or genuinely flexible, ideally both. The uncomfortable truth is that most of us enter this process believing we are the exception to the odds. A few of us are. For the rest, it is a hard lesson or a harder wait.

P.S. A few random musings when writing this essay

A special thanks to all the people in my network who directly and indirectly contributed to this essay by sharing their partner search stories. What’s your experience?