The Sydney Morning Herald — This year, dating apps died. What’s next doesn’t have to be scary
When Selani Adikari’s 10-year-long relationship with her school sweetheart came to an end, it was more difficult than she had anticipated. But that’s less about saying goodbye to her first love and more to do with unexpectedly having to navigate Australia’s brutal dating scene for the first time at 27.
“It was a very different world,” says Adikari, who had already met her former partner when Tinder was launched in late 2012, revolutionising how a whole generation embarked on relationships. “We were friends first before we started dating when we were so young … I never went through a dating phase of trying to meet people outside my circles.”
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But the exodus offline is not the be-all and end-all solution. Rather, it’s exposed another obstacle the modern lovelorn have to climb in their quest to settle down. “People are hesitant to walk up to someone new and strike up a conversation – you kind of just stick to who you know,” says Adikari.
The Sydney-based project manager finds dating apps time-consuming and impersonal, but with her friends already spoken for and a general lack of spontaneous face-to-face socialisation, there haven’t been many opportunities to organically expand her pool of prospects.
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Relationship and intimacy coach Susie Kim has also noticed an increase in people who are concerned about being seen as a predator, but, she says, “the funny thing is, the guys who are actually worried about that are … actually not the creeps, and … the guys who are still out there being creepy, they’re not worried about it.”
Kim says the rise of social media and dating apps, as with anything, is a double-edged sword. It may help the “queer kid from Shepparton” find community, but it’s also created younger generations who are more image-conscious than their predecessors. Mix in the depersonalisation of constant swiping, she says, and you have the perfect base to bury the inclination for vulnerability under – and to build a propensity to dismiss a book for its cover on top.
Keywords: courtship, friends, intimacy, dating, apps, guys, offline.