Modern dating seems so easy: more options than ever, devices to connect you, and loosened taboos and expectations.
But every single one of these transformations has made things more difficult, too: Potential partners start feeling more like products, it’s more difficult to hold boundaries and it’s paradoxically harder to settle down in an era of infinite choices.
A majority of women say dating is harder today than ten years ago, and while just 7% of 35-year-old women had never been married in 1980, that number has climbed to 30% today. In fact, Pew found in 2020 that 42% of never-married single Americans under 40 have never been in a committed relationship.
“I’ve definitely always been open to it, and I’ve gone through waves of really wanting to be in a relationship, and … feeling like something is wrong with me,” said Allie Duff, a 33-year-old with limited romantic experience. She’s one of four women in their 20s and 30s that The Post talked to who have never been in a serious relationship. Meet them.
Allie Duff: ‘I’ve let go of the panic of not having a partner’
At 33, Allie Duff has gone on dates and found herself in “situationships,” but she’s yet to have a boyfriend. As each year passes, she said, the stigma grows.
“I don’t think I know anyone in real life who’s in a similar situation,” she told The Post. “I still hold a bit of shame around it and still feel a little embarrassed telling people about it…. Are they gonna think something’s wrong with me?”
Duff, a florist based in Prince Edward County, Ontario, said living in a small community has made finding a partner difficult — as have men pushing 40 who still aren’t ready to settle down.
“I don’t wanna date to just have fun and play around. I obviously eventually want to meet my person,” she said.
Duff has weathered the ebbs and flows of desire and despondency as she’s watched most of her friends get married and have kids, but she’s recently started revising her idea of what a good life can look like.
“I did find it really hard to not get stuck in the comparison trap and feel like I was super behind in life,” she said. “It honestly took me until getting into my 30s to realize that there is no timeline in the path of life.”
The longer she’s on her own, she noted, the harder it is to settle. She has a fulfilling life on her own, filled with friends, family, and travel.
“[Women are] starting to kind of step into our own power and are realizing, actually maybe we don’t have to have a man to do all these things that we want to do,” she said. “I’ve just tried to let go of the pressure of feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to find someone to be with,’ and just let go of the panic around it.”
Avery Arnett: ‘Modern dating is out of sync with my values’
The 21-year-old has gone through her life thus far without having a boyfriend — or sex. She wants love, but her personal standards are mismatched with a fast-paced, hyper-sexual dating market.
“I plan on being a virgin until I find the right person, maybe until marriage,” Arnett, an aspiring pilot in flight school in Fort Worth, Texas, said. She’s tried the dating apps, but she’s found the sexual pressure intolerable.
“There’s lots of casual stuff going on [and] I don’t really see a lot of people compromising on that,” Arnett, who is a nondenominational Christian, said. “[Girls] will have sex on, like, the first hangout, and then it’s like, ‘Well, I still don’t know if he really likes me.’”
Still, she’s worried that, as she gets further into her 20s, she’s missing out on the life lessons of being in a relationship.
“I don’t know how I would function in a romantic relationship, because it’s something I’ve never experienced — like, on a day-to-day basis, what would that look like? I just have no idea,” she said. “I can only do so much self-work, and those are things that I can only learn in a relationship.”
But, Arnett said the “toxic relationships” of her friends and acquaintances have made her more selective and more suspicious.
“I just have a really hard time trusting a guy, because you’ll be talking to him, and then all of a sudden you find out he has a girlfriend, or he is talking to other women,” she explained. “I really, really want to date, but I’ve learned from other people’s mistakes. I’m just not going to fall for that or settle. I made it this long. I can stick it out for a bit more.”
Mikkinzie Stokes: ‘Everyone keeps asking if I have a boyfriend yet’
A lifetime without love has made 30-year-old Mikkinzie Stokes insecure about being wanted — but also less willing to compromise on what she wants. The marketing professional from Central Illinois has only been on a handful of dates in her life, and they’ve never progressed to anything serious.
“At all of the weddings and stuff, everyone is like, ‘Are you gonna bring anyone?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I still don’t have anyone,’” she said.
Her complicated relationship with love started young, when friends were partnering up but she was left without a homecoming date or prom date.
“I was always the larger friend, and so I just got put into the friend category, whether I put myself there or boys put me there,” she said. “I would just automatically assume that anytime a guy was talking with me that… he was interested in one of my friends.”
Stokes admits that she still can’t let go of that feeling: “It’s just kind of been a hard mentality to break… I just kind of blocked myself off and put myself into that [friend] position, probably from a standpoint that I don’t want to get hurt.”
But, something has surprised Stokes: As the years go on without a relationship, the need hasn’t become more urgent. She’s established a career, a household, and a lifestyle independently, which has made finding a partner less pressing.
“It’s not something that I need at this point,” she admitted. “Now that I know that I can do it without somebody, it’s made me even pickier when I am dating because [I need] someone who adds to my life.”
Esther Schaafsma: ‘Not dating has become a feedback loop’
Esther Schaafsma, a 27-year-old caterer from The Hague in the Netherlands, wants love, but repeated bad experiences have made avoiding relationships feel safer than pursuing them.
It started in her early 20s, when she found herself in casual flings when she really wanted more.
“I was trying to participate in the hookup culture… but I just wanted to feel loved, I guess,” she said. “I felt like if I do that, maybe they will start liking me. Of course, it doesn’t work like that, and I learned that the hard way.”
But when she’s actually tried to date, she’s found herself repeatedly abandoned.
“You want them to like you, but after a while, they all start to ghost me,” she said. “The last guy I dated, I thought that he liked me back, and then all of a sudden he started to pull away. That just kind of broke me, and then I got so scared that it’s [become] too hard for me [to] start dating again.”
Even though she wants love, each passing day makes getting back into the dating market harder to imagine, because being alone increasingly feels normal.
“I haven’t been on a proper date in two years, and the anxiety gets bigger,” she admitted, noting that the pattern of ghosting was simply too much for her. “When I’m not looking to date, I feel like it’s easier in a way, because I feel happier because I’m not putting myself in a situation where I can get hurt again.”
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