Online dating – is it all it’s cracked up to be?
When so much of dating is reduced to a reflexive left swipe, left swipe, right swipe – where do you turn if you’re looking for something real, or something meaningful?
Dating apps and websites make it fairly easy to score a date with someone.
But they also make it easy to lose time: lose time on someone who is only interested in a casual fling, or who is so caught up in the instant hookup culture that they don’t invest themselves in forging deep connections with the people they meet.
Because when you can get a date with someone new as easily as you can get food delivered to your pad, there’s a not a whole lot of motivation to get to know your date on a meaningful level.
In such a world – and this is the world we live in today – the value of a “first date” drops. It’s something that can be had so easily, with so little personal investment, that it’s often meaningless (at least for a lot of people immersed in the casual dating fad).
This is not to say that one should embrace a Luddite view of mobile apps and other technologies. Dating apps definitely have their place in society, and are indeed useful if one is interested in just having fun, or meeting new people for the thrill of it, and so on.
But if you’re looking for a profoundly real connection with someone?
Don’t fall for the swipe hype.
“Swipe hype” – meaning the idea that you can easily find real love just by whipping out your smartphone and loading up the latest dating app – is more glitter than gold. After all, one must wonder why there’s an epidemic of loneliness in society despite the presence of dating apps that promise all the meaningful connections one could possibly want.
Perhaps it’s reasonable to suspect that the downgraded value of a date with someone has something to do with this loneliness epidemic.
In any case, there are far too many tales of people looking for love through an online dating site or app – only to get heartbroken by someone not quite as serious about love.
That doesn’t even cover the whole issue of getting catfished (cue the theme music for MTV’s Catfish).
Or meeting up with someone who is far, far less pleasant in person than their happy-go-lucky online pictures would suggest.
It’s easy to get burned through online dating – taking away time and energy you could be using to create a meaningful, profound romantic relationship with someone.
And finding love online?
A lot less easy – success stories notwithstanding (there will, of course, be some success stories for just about anything that occurs at the frequency and magnitude of online dating).
So if you really want something real, maybe it’s time to delete the dating apps.
You won’t need them in your search for true love, because Lyons Elite’s Toronto matchmakers are experts at finding love for people who want real connections instead of first date after first date.
