WHAT WE REALLY FIND — AND LOSE — WHEN WE LOOK FOR LOVE ONLINE

LUST, LOVE… CAUTION

After emerging from the safety of a long-term relationship a few years back, I found myself in a strange new world that I came to call Singledom 2.0. Here, I was promised that solitary life would now be far more pleasant than in days of yore, and if I didn’t, it was a state that wouldn’t last very long thanks to the wonders of technology.

People recommended that I ‘get on the apps’ as soon as possible — that’s where all the single people spent their time now. Here, I was thrilled to discover that there were a truly overwhelming number of fish in the (digital) sea, far more than any local bar could ever hope to offer me as a freshly single early thirty-something; the sad, self-pitying feeling that I was all alone in my aloneness — digital dating disabused me of that notion pretty quickly. In all its incarnations, digital dating promised me that finding love online would be far simpler than looking for love in real life thanks to supply chain improvements which boosted access to a formerly hidden, but now apparently inexhaustible, supply of first-rate singles ‘out there’ in the electronic ether.

I soon discovered digital dating had also managed to reconfigure the romantic ecosystem. Things had really changed during the seven years that I had been hibernating in my…