Thoughts on heterosexual marriage, divorce, dating. Note – I am referring to heterosexual relationships here because I am neither experienced in nor qualified to speak on behalf of same sex relationships or really anything related to the queer community. I am an ally, but it is not my place to speak on behalf of things I haven’t experienced myself.
We’re all lonely. Well, not all of us. I know many straight people in the 35+ crowd who are happily married, happily living with a partner. They are raising kids and resolving conflict and feeling endlessly annoyed that their partner left the dirty spoon on the counter again but letting it slide. Relationships are work. Hard work. The hardest work you will ever do outside raising children or healing your own generational curses. There are many of us crushing the marriage thing. All the love and respect to those of you in the trenches choosing your partner over and over again, no matter how hard it gets. Considering most second and third marriages fail at higher rates than first marriages, according to the Pew Research Center, the case for staying together and working through issues is a much better choice than divorce. May we all be so lucky to have found partners who are willing to commit.
But those of us who did not choose a partner wisely , we are in the suck right now, you guys. We who found we married for the wrong reasons, too young and then grew apart, or found ourselves in abusive, cheating, alcoholic partnerships opted out of the “just work harder” ideal. We know that divorce is not the end of the world because our parents divorced. Because religiously dictated togetherness doesn’t have the choke hold that previous generations experienced. And some of us are opting to stay married anyway. For the kids. For financial reasons. For the security of the devil you know. And we may be unhappy. It might be toxic, codependent, mutually destructive. But some of us are also in the married game because the alternative seems scarier than sticking it out. I did a bit of Googling and learned that while divorce may seem like it is all too common, divorce rates have actually been dropping since the 1980s. Despite popular opinion, more people are staying married.
And then there are those of us who opted out. Who never got married, or found our non-negotiables were infringed too often. Or we were widowed. Or someone cheated. Or someone drank too much. Or someone punched too many walls and scared the kids and we decided we were done. We are sitting in the murk, the morass of what has become the dating world. Finding ourselves single parenting and trying to date with traumas, trust issues, cynicism, and yet, inexplicable hope in our hearts that somehow we are going to find a companion. It is a rollercoaster moving through fog. The talking stage, the dating stage, changing our Facebook relationship statuses, then something happens, the connection is broken, and our hearts are broken all over again. And then we’re back where we started wondering if this is how it is supposed to be, and if we’re doomed to be on this freak train shitshow of a ride forever.
Spend any amount of time online and invariably some sound byte dating advice will find you. Attachment styles (somehow everyone’s ex is a dismissive avoidant). Mental health diagnoses without any basis (somehow everyone’s ex is also a narcissist). The Let Them theory. If he wants to be mad, let him be mad and don’t ever try to understand or repair. If he doesn’t post you on socials, he is cheating. If he doesn’t answer every text message within 1.4 hours, he doesn’t really care about you. If they move too fast, if they don’t move fast enough. Red flags. The Ick. The No Contact Rule. Situationships. Healing eras. Twin flames. Soulmates. Soul contracts. Blah blah blahbedy fucking blah.
All of it just noise that reduces a person’s entire lived experience, social conditioning, and individual ways in which they connect with the world to extremely simplistic rules designed to keep us all far apart, suspicious of one another, and playing endless mind games trying to get the other person to prove their feelings. The reductive nature of online dating advice is creating an entire population of surface level, unsatisfying relationships that end at the first sign of trouble. Not a single bit of it is based on any proven method for negotiating conflict, insecurities, communication issues, and human imperfections.
So many of my friends who are now single have been single for some time and are finding stunningly low success building new, healthy, long-term relationships after divorce or losing their partner. Which brings me to the topic of how online dating is impacting our success. We know the drill. Get online, build a profile, describe yourself in 200 words or less, carefully select photos that show our best angle in flattering lighting and hope that will be enough to get someone to swipe our way, start a conversation, go on dates, and build a healthy relationship. One study estimated that in 2019 there were over 200 million active users of dating sites and around 40% of singles are online looking for their forever. That is an unfathomable amount of potential soulmates, my friends. That is an unfathomable impact on our social consciousness and the impact on dating in 2026 cannot be understated given the pervasiveness of online dating as a means to connect with other humans. The same study found that people who use dating apps have higher instances of infidelity, and had more casual sexual partners than people who did not use dating apps.
“The number of apps used was positively related with objectification, internalization, and body surveillance, and negatively related with body satisfaction and self-esteem.” More focus on appearances and less on character and values. Having masochistic, psychopathic, anti-social tendencies was a positive predictor of dating app use. Read that again.
I had to stop reading the study because the findings were so depressing. It is no wonder we’re all disconnected, self-absorbed, and totally isolated.
None of the behaviors reported in any of these studies are the behaviors of people who could become life partners. The safety factor for women alone, knowing how much Machiavellianism, misogyny, and psychopathy is found in online dating app users, is enough for me to want to throw my phone in the nearest metal foundry and never look back.
Somehow my lack of success finding a partner via online dating seems vindicated. And if you’ve found nothing but surface level relationships with men who want your body while they play hacky sack with your heart, you should feel vindicated too. The men we want in our lives most assuredly are not on dating apps.
I solve problems for a living. The only way I know to solve this problem is to disconnect. The real red pill is realizing that the internet encourages the worst in us, so hoping to find our forever there is an exercise in futility. Our bodies are being harvested for sexual use by people who have no idea how to hold our complexity, our power, or all the beautiful ways the feminine brings healing into the world. If we’re going to find lasting love, we have to get offline and get out of our houses and look each other in the eye again. We’re going to have to network and grow our circles and treat the future of our love lives like we treat the future of our careers. That starts with understanding our values in relationships and feeling empowered and confident enough to demand nothing less, to be more willing to be alone than to compromise those values.
Which leads me, finally, to this. What are your values in love? What does a lasting relationship mean for you? Drop a comment below or message me, I really want to know.
I will close with mine:
– Safety. No slammed doors, no yelling, no rage. We must be able to talk about hard things without screaming at each other or worse, running away and avoiding the conversation.
– Fidelity. We have each other’s backs and we do not betray the other’s time, patience, or love. Life is short and time is the one thing we can never get back. If we cannot stay faithful, we should not waste each other’s time.
– Kindness. There are going to be hard days and we are going to drive each other crazy, but we are not going to lash out at each other and we are going to assume the other person was doing the best they could.
– Patience. Some days you can’t give anything to anyone because your battery is drained. Some days you need a whole lot of reassurance. Some days you’re going to feel big emotions and you’re going to say and do things you’re not proud of. Patience in the imperfections.
You are worthy of the love you seek, and I have to believe that the love I desire is already well on its way to me or already here. I just need to get offline, out of my head, and out into the world with courage.
Full and Unfinished 
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