The Dating Delusion: When Preferences Become Performance

 Modern love is not failing because people have high standards. It is collapsing under the weight of confused needs, aesthetic entitlement, and emotional laziness pretending to be growth.

Modern dating is no longer about love. It is performance art dressed in situationships, curated bios, and delusional wishlists that read more like HR job descriptions than invitations for connection. What once was a messy and beautiful dance of vulnerability and discovery has turned into a gladiator match of filtered self-branding and emotionally avoidant negotiations. The dating pool has not dried up. It has been poisoned by contradictions. People want companionship but worship independence. They seek honesty but cannot handle discomfort. They desire depth but operate with the emotional literacy of a teaspoon.

The terrifying part is not that people want too much. It is that they no longer know what they need. Needs have been buried beneath performance anxiety and algorithmic expectations. One study in Psychology Today found that the most common reasons for relationship breakdowns among millennials and Gen Z include emotional unavailability, communication dysfunction, and unrealistic expectations. This is not tragic because it is surprising. It is tragic because it is self-inflicted. Yet instead of reckoning with this reality, many hide behind astrology memes, generic trauma narratives, and pseudo-spiritual blame shifting.

The so-called high standard is not the real issue. It is the smokescreen. People call them standards when in fact they are camouflage for fear. She wants a man who is six foot three, emotionally fluent, spiritually awakened, financially elite, family-oriented, and miraculously still single. He wants a woman who looks like an Instagram model, submits like a mid-century housewife, earns like a tech executive, and never questions his emotional inconsistency. These are not preferences. These are fantasies curated by dysfunction and mass media consumption.

If anything, real standards are frighteningly low. Ghosting is routine. Bread-crumbing is expected. Saying good morning is treated like a romantic achievement. Conversations rarely breach the surface of recycled opinions and template flirtation. Dating is terrifying not because people are asking for too much but because they have forgotten how to offer anything meaningful in return. As Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel once observed, we have not merely created a market economy. We have allowed ourselves to become a market society. In that market, love is just another consumable product and people are trapped performing for affection like unpaid interns at the altar of validation.

Modern dating is terrifying because everyone is auditioning and no one is truly watching.

The Inflation of Desire and the Bankruptcy of Self-Awareness

The modern dating landscape resembles a stock market crash with lipstick. Everyone is buying high on the illusion of perfection and selling low on the reality of being human. The average individual is not looking for a partner. They are shopping for an identity accessory. She does not want a man. She wants a lifestyle upgrade. He does not want a woman. He wants an ego massage that occasionally moans. In this circus, love has become the emotional NFT. High value, zero substance, and guaranteed disappointment.

We are witnessing an unprecedented inflation of desire. People want more without knowing why they want it. They are hungry but cannot name the dish. A society addicted to visual stimulation and performative metrics cannot help but overvalue the exterior and undervalue the interior. A man with a six-pack is trusted more than one with emotional consistency. A woman with the symmetry of an AI-generated face is seen as more worthy than one who actually knows what she believes in. The irony is that behind these unreasonable expectations lies a generation that barely knows how to hold a conversation without looking at a screen every twelve seconds (Twenge, 2023).

According to a 2021 Pew Research study, the most common reasons people cite for being single are not external circumstances but personal choice, high expectations, and difficulty in meeting someone who meets their criteria. Translation: the bar has been raised by people who are not even sure what they are measuring (Pew Research Center, 2021). The delusion is bipartisan. A man earning thirty thousand a year thinks he deserves a woman who has no past, no opinions, and no demands. A woman with unresolved childhood trauma and a Pinterest vision board thinks she deserves a man who reads Rumi in the morning, builds empires by noon, and makes her soul climax at dinner.

This is not love. It is entitlement parading as self-worth. It is narcissism baptised in the holy water of self-care rhetoric. The internet has told us we deserve everything. It forgot to mention that deserving requires doing. The mantra of modern romance is clear. Expect more. Offer less. Ghost faster. Blame cleaner. Repeat (Perel, 2020).

The tragedy is not just individual. It is societal. We have commodified attraction and outsourced compatibility to algorithms that only measure proximity, not purpose (Ansari and Klinenberg, 2015). We are pairing based on vibes, which in reality means nothing more than shared music taste and trauma responses. No one is asking the hard questions. What do you believe in? How do you suffer? What do you forgive? Can you hold space for pain without making it about you? Instead, we filter, match, text, meet, ghost, and recycle.

We are not in a dating crisis. We are in a self-awareness drought. And like any drought, it is not that the water is gone. It is that no one wants to dig deep enough to find it. People are not incapable of love. They are terrified of the work it requires. Vulnerability is now considered cringe. Emotional intimacy is called clingy. Stability is mistaken for boredom. In this warped context, true love appears too quiet to be noticed and too demanding to be entertained (Brown, 2012).

The inflation of desire without the backing of genuine self-awareness has turned modern dating into a house of cards built on narcissism, fear, and cultural mimicry. The moment you ask someone what they truly want, they will show you a checklist. The moment you ask them what they are truly willing to give, they will show you a meme. Until we teach people how to think critically about themselves and others, this carousel of confusion will keep spinning, powered by dopamine hits and an aversion to depth.

Modern dating is terrifying because everyone wants love but only if it does not require self-awareness.

Ghosting, Breadcrumbing, and the Olympics of Avoidance

Modern dating has become a full-contact sport where everyone’s wearing emotional Kevlar and the goal is not connection but escape. We are no longer trying to meet people. We are trying to dodge them with style. In this romantic obstacle course, ghosting has become the gold standard. Breadcrumbing is the silver. Emotional unavailability wins bronze. The actual art of sustained intimacy has been buried somewhere beneath the latest batch of filtered selfies and passive-aggressive story reposts.

Let us begin with ghosting. A psychological disappearing act worthy of Houdini, except now the magician vanishes after three weeks of texting good morning, sharing playlists, and pretending to care. One minute you are talking about your dreams. The next, you are left on read, wondering if your Wi-Fi is broken or your soul is just inherently unlovable. According to LeFebvre (2017), ghosting is more prevalent among younger generations and has profound impacts on self-esteem and mental well-being. In other words, we are breaking hearts with silence and calling it self-care.

Then comes breadcrumbing. That is when someone sprinkles just enough interest to keep you emotionally invested but never enough to actually commit. It is manipulation disguised as flirting. It is a hostage situation with emojis. This behavior is not accidental. It is strategic. People want the benefits of your attention without the cost of your expectations. Research by Timmermans and De Caluwé (2017) confirms that breadcrumbing is used as a form of power play and emotional insurance. The modern dater is not in search of a soulmate. They are hoarding options like doomsday preppers hoard canned beans.

Now enter orbiting. The Olympic event where someone stops texting you but continues to watch your every story, like a creepy ex with a telescope. It is emotional surveillance disguised as curiosity. It is the digital equivalent of peeking through your ex’s window every night and justifying it with the phrase “I was just checking in.” This act of orbiting reflects an inability to fully detach and is often tied to narcissistic traits (Pew Research Center, 2020). They do not want you. But they do not want anyone else to have you either.

What we are witnessing is the gamification of emotional sabotage. People are not avoiding relationships because they are not ready. They are avoiding them because they have rebranded cowardice as boundaries. Accountability is seen as oppression. Vulnerability is mocked as desperation. And consistency is dismissed as boring. In a world that glorifies toxic independence and rewards emotional aloofness, the idea of showing up honestly has become the most radical act of all (Brown, 2012).

This is not dating. It is a tactical retreat from emotional labor. It is weaponized ambiguity. People are playing chess with other people's feelings while pretending it is just Tinder. The term “talking stage” itself is a linguistic joke. It means nothing. It is a purgatory designed to extract companionship without the commitment. A study by Lykins et al. (2022) shows that more people report being in prolonged ambiguous stages of courtship, often lasting months, with no clarity and no closure. That is not a relationship. That is a psychological hostage crisis.

At the core of this avoidance is fear. Fear of being known. Fear of not being enough. Fear of giving more than one receives. But instead of confronting this fear, we turn dating into a series of carefully timed exits. We ghost instead of explain. We breadcrumb instead of reject. We orbit instead of move on. All to avoid the terrifying possibility of real emotional presence.

Modern dating is terrifying not because people are cruel but because they have perfected cruelty under the guise of caution. It is not the heartbreak that breaks us anymore. It is the erosion of meaning, the slow death of clarity, and the normalization of indifference as a love language.

The Death of Genuine Attraction: When Preferences Become Prejudices

Modern dating has weaponized preference. What used to be a sweet “I like tall guys” has evolved into a full-blown caste system where people are sorted, dismissed, and discarded like damaged produce. Attraction is no longer a spark. It is an Excel filter applied with ruthless efficiency. People swipe left not because of lack of compatibility but because someone’s name starts with Q or their nose does not conform to a TikTok trend. What we call preference is increasingly just prejudice with better branding. The death of genuine attraction is not poetic. It is systematic. And when preferences become prejudices, love becomes a luxury reserved only for the algorithmically approved.

Consider the obsession with height. “Must be six feet and above” is a requirement more enforced than traffic laws in Nairobi. It is not just shallow. It is hilariously inconsistent. The same people who demand height rarely ask themselves if they are emotionally tall enough to handle vulnerability or intimacy. According to Fales et al. (2016), physical height in men correlates weakly with relationship satisfaction but strongly with perceived desirability. Translation: the taller you are, the more people project their daddy issues onto you. It is not about love. It is about optics. People want partners who photograph well, not partners who show up well.

Then there is the fetishization Olympics. Interracial dating apps are a minefield of people hunting for “exotic” partners like they are ordering off a cultural menu. “Looking for my chocolate queen” is not a compliment. It is colonizer poetry disguised as flirtation. Racial preference often disguises racist ideology. A 2018 study by Hutson et al. revealed that online dating users frequently exhibit racial exclusion in their swiping patterns, which reinforces systemic biases under the illusion of personal taste. Preferences are not born in a vacuum. They are socialized. If your “type” conveniently aligns with colonial beauty standards, it is time to interrogate who taught you what is lovable.

But wait. There is more. The aesthetic economy of dating now prioritizes angles over empathy. You are not dating a person. You are dating their highlight reel. People are judged by their ability to curate a grid, not by how they treat a waiter. A symmetrical face gets more chances than an honest heart. Welcome to the era where Photoshop is foreplay. The journal Body Image reports that exposure to idealized images online directly correlates with decreased self-worth and unrealistic expectations in romantic settings (Fardouly and Vartanian). In other words, your standards are not high. They are algorithmically distorted.

Even worse, “knowing your worth” has turned into a covert campaign of entitlement. Everyone thinks they are the prize. No one believes they are the problem. The result is a dating pool filled with people who want loyalty but cannot define commitment, who demand honesty but practice ghosting, who crave deep connection but cannot sit through a conversation without checking their phone. The standards are high, yes, but only for others. Self-reflection is the one filter nobody wants to apply.

Here is the hard truth. When preferences become non-negotiable filters, they stop being preferences. They become exclusions. And those exclusions often mirror societal hierarchies that have nothing to do with love and everything to do with power. People do not date what they want. They date what they are told to want. Then they project their failures onto others, claiming that “no one is good enough” when the real issue is that everyone is seen as a product.

Genuine attraction has become extinct. Not because people are unattractive but because attention spans are shorter than the time it takes to ask someone how their day was. We are not falling in love. We are assembling trophy cabinets. Dating apps have turned romance into a capitalist hunt for the shiniest option. What we call love is often just branding. What we call chemistry is often just lust dressed up in trauma response.

Modern dating is not a search for connection. It is a competitive sport of aesthetic supremacy where only those who conform to the preferred algorithm survive. Real attraction is now a revolutionary act.

The Algorithm is the New Matchmaker, and It Hates Your Soul

Once upon a time, people met through friends, community, religion, war, or boredom. There was no science behind it. No neuroscience, no compatibility quizzes, no algorithms. Just proximity, timing, and luck. Love was accidental and awkward. That was its charm. But in modern dating, the algorithm has become the high priest of romance. It decides who you meet, what you like, how you flirt, and when to swipe away your own future. We do not find love anymore. We scroll past it.

The dating app industry does not want you to fall in love. It wants you to keep using the app. It is not in their interest to solve your loneliness. It is profitable to extend it. According to a 2023 study published in Psychological Inquiry, the design of dating platforms actively promotes choice overload and short-term interactions rather than sustained emotional bonding (Finkel and Eastwick). In simpler terms, the more you swipe, the more they win. They do not care about your soulmate. They care about your screen time.

The illusion of abundance is the bait. Thousands of profiles, endless options, the suggestion that the next swipe might be the one. This abundance creates paralysis. You do not choose anyone because you are haunted by the fear of choosing poorly. What if the next one is better? What if you could upgrade? What if this person is perfect but has the wrong music taste? So you keep swiping until your thumbs are sore and your heart is numb. You are not dating. You are shopping for a partner you will never unwrap.

The algorithm does not care who you are. It cares who you react to. If you click on a certain look, it will give you more of that look. If you pause on a certain photo, it will flood your feed with clones. Your digital desire becomes a loop. The more predictable your preferences, the more boring your matches. Individuality is punished. Homogeneity is rewarded. Over time, you are not just seeing the same people. You are becoming the same person.

Even the metrics of attraction have been weaponized. A 2022 analysis of app data published in Nature Human Behaviour revealed that most users pursue the most conventionally attractive ten percent of profiles while ignoring the rest (Bruch and Newman). It is not love. It is digital feudalism. Everyone chasing the same few faces while being ignored by the masses they ignore in return. This creates a hierarchy of desirability where confidence is inflated in the few and shattered in the many. The dating pool becomes a pyramid scheme of attention, and most people are paying in self-esteem.

The algorithm does not just match you. It modifies you. It trains you to perform attraction, to become more photogenic, more witty, more marketable. Your bio becomes a sales pitch. Your pictures become a campaign. You are not being yourself. You are branding your loneliness. And if you do not adapt, you vanish. You become invisible in the digital mating market. That is why authenticity is now considered a luxury. Nobody can afford to be real when the algorithm only rewards the artificial.

And yet, people still pretend they are in control. They say they are just being selective. They claim they have standards. But the truth is, they are participants in a game they do not understand, manipulated by code they cannot see, hoping that a system built to exploit them might miraculously deliver them salvation. It is not standards that have risen. It is automation. Dating apps have made it harder to find love by making it easier to avoid it.

This is the irony. In a world where everyone is connected, intimacy is rare. The more options we have, the less effort we make. The more faces we see, the less we remember. The more we talk, the less we listen. Romance has become a user experience, not a human experience. You do not fall in love anymore. You log in. And sometimes you forget to log out.

The Economics of Love. Are You Worth the Price Tag or the Receipt?

Love used to be a risk. Now it is a transaction. You are no longer evaluated by charm or decency. You are priced by aesthetics, class, earning potential, and how well you can fake wholesomeness on the internet. What was once intimacy has now become inventory. And no one is buying if you do not match the filter-fueled fantasy of emotional capitalism.

Dating is no longer the chemistry of souls. It is a curated stock exchange of people masquerading as brands. The modern dating pool has become a spreadsheet. Every message is a pitch. Every date is a performance. Every kiss comes with the question, “So what are we?” followed closely by the silent whisper, “And how much is this going to cost me?” Love has been itemized, emotionally budgeted, and emotionally bankrupt.

According to Eva Illouz, relationships today have adopted the principles of economic rationality where choice and desire mimic the logic of market behavior (Illouz 112). People do not fall in love anymore. They evaluate prospects. They do not risk heartbreak. They minimize losses. Vulnerability is no longer beautiful. It is expensive. You are expected to be emotionally intelligent, financially stable, aesthetically pleasing, sexually adventurous, mentally balanced, physically fit, and spiritually healing. But do not be needy. And do not cost too much.

Dating apps have poured rocket fuel on this economic madness. Swiping is just Tinder's version of quality control. Left means below market value. Right means potentially profitable. And the bio? That is your pitch deck. You are not a person. You are a product with strategic packaging. “Sapiosexual” has replaced “funny.” “Adventurous” has replaced “responsible.” “Entrepreneur” has replaced “jobless.” If you have a passport and an opinion, you are considered premium. If you also have a six-pack and a skincare routine, you are divine. But if you dare to have debt or trauma or dreams too fragile to monetize, you are toxic.

The scariest part is how people willingly play this game. Men project wealth they do not have to attract women they cannot afford. Women curate perfection they cannot sustain to impress men they cannot trust. Everyone becomes a PR version of themselves. People do not date to connect. They date to convince. Love becomes a strategy. Intimacy becomes a liability. Relationships are judged by aesthetics, not substance. You do not need compatibility. You need optics.

Social media has turned romance into a marketing campaign. Nobody shares the arguments. They only share the anniversary dinner. They do not show the silent treatments, the unresolved resentments, or the emotional absences. They show matching outfits in Santorini and captions about soulmates. That is not love. That is propaganda. The problem is not that people want too much. It is that they want the wrong things, status instead of sincerity, luxury instead of loyalty, exclusivity instead of empathy.

Everyone is tired. Tired of pretending to be a better version of themselves to qualify for people who are also pretending. Tired of comparing dates like purchase options. Tired of translating affection into analytics. But no one is brave enough to stop. Because to reject this system is to risk being alone. And that, in our hyper-performative generation, is the ultimate failure.

So maybe the real question is not whether needs are high or standards are high. The real question is who convinced us that love must look like a five-star product launch and why we all agreed to be for sale.

Intimacy as a Performance. Are You in Love or Just Good at Acting?

We used to crave connection. Now we rehearse it. In today’s dating ecosystem, intimacy is no longer organic. It is scripted. Performative affection has replaced vulnerable connection. People no longer fall in love. They fall into character. If you are not playing a role, you are considered emotionally illiterate or socially bankrupt.

Modern romance has become a theatrical production with painfully predictable acts. The “talking stage” is act one. It is full of banter, emojis, and pre-screened truths. The “situationship” is act two. It comes with vague labels, curated vulnerability, and silent competition. Then act three arrives. The public reveal. Instagram posts. Couple reels. Coordinated outfits. An award-winning display of something that might pass for love if the audience squints hard enough.

Erving Goffman called this decades ago in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. People present idealized versions of themselves in social situations, tailoring behavior to the expectations of their audience (Goffman 22). Today, that performance bleeds into romance. No one is themselves anymore. They are what they think their partner wants them to be. They call it compatibility. But it is compliance wearing good lighting.

It is no wonder everyone feels replaceable. Because everyone is playing roles that are inherently replicable. If you date a woman today, you are not dating her. You are dating her publicist. If you date a man, you are not dating him. You are dating the version of him that survives cancel culture and still gets likes. You do not get to know people. You get to know what they want to be seen as. And when the script fails, the relationship collapses.

Authenticity is terrifying because it has no script. And yet, it is the one thing modern dating is starving for. People perform loyalty while checking who else liked their photo. They perform maturity while ghosting anyone who triggers their childhood insecurities. They perform depth by quoting Rupi Kaur over a glass of wine while refusing to go to therapy. And this is not because people are evil. It is because sincerity no longer feels safe.

Vulnerability is now ammunition. The more someone knows about you, the more strategic they become. Your childhood trauma becomes an emotional blueprint they can walk all over. Your past mistakes become memes they send to their friends in private chats. So people have learned to perform safety instead of creating it. They become agreeable, likable, Instagrammable and profoundly exhausted.

Worse still is how this performative love gets rewarded. The better you are at performing connection, the more followers you get. The more aesthetic your relationship, the more sponsorship deals and online praise you receive. It is now possible to monetize your romance while being emotionally vacant. Influencer couples are not in love. They are in brand alignment. They do not fight. They go on healing retreats. They do not break up. They grow apart with love and light. Their intimacy is so rehearsed, even their pain is marketable.

This performative instinct seeps into everyday couples. Real pain is replaced by relationship clichés. We are just figuring things out. It is a journey. We are taking space. In reality, they are miserable, incompatible, but too afraid to drop the act. Because breaking up means failure. And failure cannot be romanticized. So they stay together, clapping for each other’s performances, hoping the audience never notices the lack of real emotion.

If you are looking for real love in a world that rewards performance, you are going to be lonely for a while. But at least you will be free. Free from the exhausting loop of applause with no intimacy, of closeness with no honesty, of sex with no soul. Better to be real and alone than acting your way through affection and calling it love.

When Desperation Dresses in Gucci and Calls It “Standards”

Modern dating resembles a minefield disguised as a buffet. Everyone claims to be hungry for connection yet walks around holding a checklist that resembles a UN peace treaty. The terror does not stem from the absence of love but from the abundance of options and illusions. What once required emotional risk and investment now demands branding. And what people used to call vulnerability now wears the language of weakness. One has to wonder, have the standards really risen or is it the collective fear of being exposed that has?

Needs are human. We crave intimacy, safety, affection, and validation. That much has not changed since prehistoric times. But the way we demand them has. The problem is not that people want too much but that they confuse protection with purpose. According to Bauman (2003), modern relationships are becoming increasingly “liquid,” constantly shifting and dissolving, shaped more by individual consumerism than collective bonding. Relationships are now trial runs, not commitments. And in this romantic supermarket, the shopper always feels entitled to a refund.

What people label as “high standards” are often smoke screens for hyper-curated fear. A man is now required to be emotionally available but not too expressive, wealthy but not capitalist, assertive but not overbearing, supportive but not soft. A woman is expected to radiate confidence while camouflaging all emotional baggage under skincare routines and therapy catchphrases. If the expectations feel contradictory, it is because they are. The system is engineered not to produce intimacy but to maintain the illusion of control (Illouz, 2012).

In truth, many are not seeking a partner but a prop. A symbol of status, security, or self-worth. Someone who validates the image they are trying to maintain. This is why modern dating feels terrifying. It demands constant performance and ruthless self-curation. Giddens (1992) argues that intimacy in late modernity has shifted from deep bonds to what he calls the “pure relationship,” maintained only if both parties find it satisfying. The moment difficulty arises, people exit with the emotional detachment of unsubscribing from a newsletter.

Social media further complicates the situation. People are not dating to connect but to display connection. The private becomes public currency. Online dating apps turn people into consumable profiles, flattening complex humans into swipeable commodities (Turkle, 2011). Ghosting, breadcrumbing, and orbiting are now part of the vocabulary, not because people are more cruel but because detachment has been gamified. Ending something with silence now feels more humane than confrontation. Ironically, the more options technology offers, the more emotionally illiterate we become.

Modern dating is terrifying because it does not invite people to be loved , it invites them to audition for it. It is not about being chosen, it is about being the least replaceable. A warped competition where the currency is attention and the prize is momentary relevance. People stay single not because they are too picky but because they are too performative. We claim to value authenticity yet punish it with indifference. We want someone to choose us but only if the choosing never makes us feel insecure.

The solution does not lie in lowering standards or exaggerating needs but in abandoning the illusion of perfection. Real connection is not built on résumés or curated profiles. It is built in the mess of disagreement, the silence of hard days, and the vulnerability of unfiltered presence. As hooks (2000) noted, love is not a feeling but an action. It is not found, it is practiced. It is not guaranteed, it is risked. Until we unlearn the romantic delusions of individualistic perfection, dating will remain a terrifying masquerade, not because love is extinct but because we are terrified of being seen without costume.

Conclusion: Love Is Dead. Or Maybe We Just Buried It Under Our Own Lies.

Modern dating is not terrifying because people have changed. It is terrifying because the blueprint has changed, and nobody told us. What used to be about connection has now become a highly digitalized talent show where the best actor wins, the most mysterious player scores, and the most emotionally unavailable person becomes the most desired. We are not dating anymore. We are conducting auditions for roles we are not even qualified to cast. The scariest part is not that people ghost. It is that they stay long enough to build emotional leverage, only to vanish the minute you become human.

People say needs have risen. Others say standards have risen. Both are incorrect. The real issue is that authenticity has plummeted. People are so disconnected from themselves that they do not even know what they need, let alone what they should require from others. So they chase aesthetics. They chase vibes. They chase trends packaged as romantic preferences. They want someone emotionally mature but are themselves emotionally absent. They want someone loyal while entertaining four backups on the side. They want deep conversations while posting shallow captions. What they want does not exist. But the algorithm keeps feeding the delusion. And the dating pool keeps drowning in its own sewage.

We no longer date to love. We date to win. We date to validate. We date to look like we are winning at love, which is the cruelest paradox of our generation. People would rather suffer in silence next to an attractive partner than be seen single but emotionally whole. It is no longer enough to be in love. You have to look like love. You have to curate it, post it, brand it, and keep it online even when it is dying offline. There is no dignity in privacy anymore. If your love cannot be screenshotted, then it is not real. If your affection is not comment-worthy, then it is not valuable. This is not romance. It is performance art with no depth and high stakes.

There is also an unsettling shift in how people process emotional needs. Rather than communicate, we test. Rather than open up, we bait. Emotional intelligence has been replaced by emotional warfare disguised as boundaries. People are not expressing their feelings. They are waiting for someone to decode their silence and then resenting them when they fail. What used to be an act of courage, that is, expressing affection, has now become a power play. Whoever shows love first loses. Whoever cares more is seen as weak. It is a race to see who can remain the most indifferent. And this indifference is romanticized as confidence, when in fact it is cowardice masked as empowerment.

Let us talk about standards. People say they have raised their standards. In truth, most people have just raised their levels of entitlement. Standards are consistent. Entitlement is conditional. A standard says, “I will not tolerate emotional abuse.” Entitlement says, “You must chase me, overextend yourself, and tolerate my toxicity or I will call you immature.” The dating landscape is littered with people who mistake selfishness for self-worth. They do not want partners. They want therapists, magicians, and constant reassurance machines. And when those expectations are unmet, they cry narcissist. Because taking accountability for their own dysfunction would mean doing the one thing they are terrified of, growing up.

We must also examine the role of social media in this collapse. Every app, every trend, every quote carousel tells us that we deserve better. But none of them teach us how to be better. Everyone is convinced that they are the prize. So nobody learns to nurture. Nobody learns to listen. Nobody learns to compromise. They ghost, block, or jump to the next dopamine hit. They brag about cutting people off without ever asking themselves whether they communicated in the first place. Cancel culture has infected romance. People do not work through things anymore. They discard. They replace. They post breakup aesthetics with hashtags about healing while secretly stalking their ex’s new lover.

The tragedy is that humans still crave love. They crave stability. They crave emotional safety. But they are going about it like addicts seeking quick fixes. A late-night text. A sensual photo. A toxic ex with good timing. All of it is easier than building actual emotional safety. And so the cycle repeats. People hop from one situationship to another like romantic nomads, never planting anything worth growing. They say they are protecting their peace. In truth, they are protecting their egos from intimacy. Real intimacy is not aesthetic. It is messy. It is inconvenient. It is boring sometimes. But it is also the only antidote to the epidemic of loneliness ravaging this generation like a silent famine.

And let us not forget the rise of dating apps. Swiping culture has turned people into commodities. You are not being known. You are being scanned. Your bio is not your story. It is your advertisement. And if you do not market well, you get ignored. If you market too well, you get used. The algorithms reward the attractive and the emotionally hollow. The profiles look good. The messages start off witty. But the connection dies the moment depth is required. We are not meeting people. We are colliding with avatars. The person you like today is most likely someone else's backup plan tomorrow. The illusion of abundance has ruined people's ability to choose, to commit, to build. We want perfect matches but have forgotten how to match effort.

Then there is the issue of emotional trauma. Many are walking around with childhood wounds wearing adult clothes. They were never loved right. They were never seen. They were never valued. So now they either overgive in desperation or undergive in fear. And instead of seeking healing, they seek distractions. The modern dating scene is a rehab center for the emotionally malnourished who refuse to admit they are bleeding. They call it detachment. But it is unprocessed grief. They say they do not care. But their midnight meltdowns suggest otherwise. Nobody is really over their past. They have just found more convincing masks.

Love, in its truest form, requires presence. Not just physical presence, but emotional, spiritual, and intellectual alignment. But modern dating offers none of this. What it offers is simulation. You simulate closeness. You simulate passion. You simulate commitment. Until the simulation can no longer sustain itself and the relationship collapses under the weight of its own lies. Then you post a story about moving on, repost a quote about outgrowing people, and prepare your heart for the next performance.

If we are to reclaim romance, we must first reclaim our humanity. That means choosing people for their substance, not their filters. That means listening more than posting. That means creating safety instead of testing loyalty. That means being brave enough to love even when love is not trending. It means saying no to games. No to manipulation. No to curated vulnerability. It means sitting with someone in silence and feeling heard. Holding someone when they are anxious without asking for gratitude in return. Apologizing without staging it for applause. Loving without the need for witnesses.

We must normalize the unsexy parts of connection. The awkward conversations. The boring routines. The imperfections. Because that is where love lives. Not in the captions. Not in the couple goals aesthetics. But in the tiny moments when someone chooses you even when you are not performing. The future of love depends on whether we are willing to stop acting and start existing.

Modern dating is terrifying, yes. But what is truly terrifying is how many people are sleepwalking through love, mistaking stimulation for connection and applause for intimacy. We buried love under our own lies. Now we must dig it up with honesty, consistency, and brutal self-awareness.

And maybe, just maybe, when we stop trying to be everything to everyone, we will find someone who sees us for who we are and chooses us anyway. No filters. No masks. No rehearsals. Just us. In all our flawed, beautiful, inconvenient truth.

Works Cited

Ansari, Aziz, and Eric Klinenberg. Modern Romance: An Investigation. Penguin Press, 2015.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Polity Press, 2003.

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books, 2012.

Finkel, Eli J., et al. "Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science." Psychological Science in the Public Interest, vol. 13, no. 1, 2012, pp. 3–66.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612436522

Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford University Press, 1992.

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books, 1959.

hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2000.

Illouz, Eva. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. University of California Press, 1997.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520214886/consuming-the-romantic-utopia

Illouz, Eva. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. Polity Press, 2012.

LeFebvre, Luke E. "Ghosting as a Relationship Dissolution Strategy in the Technological Age." Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol. 34, no. 6, 2017, pp. 788–809.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407516664195

Lykins, Ashley D., David A. Segovia, and Laura Weinstein. "The Ambiguity of Modern Romantic Relationships: Predictors and Outcomes of 'Situationships'." Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 162, no. 2, 2022, pp. 145–160.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2021.1934102

Perel, Esther. The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Hodder Paperbacks, 2020.

Pew Research Center. "The State of Dating and Relationships in America." Pew Research Center: Social Trends, 20 Aug. 2021.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/08/20/the-state-of-dating-and-relationships-in-america/

Pew Research Center. "The State of Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age." Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology, 21 Oct. 2020.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/10/21/the-state-of-dating-and-relationships-in-the-digital-age/

Sandel, Michael J. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Timmermans, Elisabeth, and Elien De Caluwé. "To Tinder or Not to Tinder: An Exploratory Study into the Motivational Background of Tinder Use and Its Relationships with Users’ Characteristics." Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 70, 2017, pp. 34–43.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.037

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2011.

Twenge, Jean M. Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future. Atria Books, 2023.