Spare a thought for the lonely hearts. Dating during a crisis doesn’t sound like much fun. A close friend of mine recently held a four-hour phone call with a newly found match on a dating app, exchanged a few text messages, organised a video call and was then told in no uncertain terms that his prospective partner was ‘not feeling it’ and hence it was better not to proceed with any further contact.

I felt for my friend, of course. I’m frequently useless on the phone and sincerely hope that no one forms core judgments about my character based on the audio-only experience. My phone self is not my best self. Four hours sounds like a decent effort, frankly. I would deem that a hugely successful call, unless of course the entire exchange was spent in a blazing row – two strangers hurling abuse back and forth at one another, time merrily flying on by.

So what went wrong? It couldn’t have been the text messages. I vetted most of them myself, fearful of my friend’s tendency towards insane proclamations and premature verbal ejaculation. Unless I played it too safe. Perhaps she is the type that enjoys premature verbal ejaculation.

One can’t help but conclude that the wantaway other half is perhaps harbouring unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved romantically during a global pandemic. What exactly is one supposed to feel after a four-hour call and a day’s worth of texts? I don’t know. That seems no time at all to get the measure of a person. Not everyone clicks instantly. Those that do often combust.

Or to play devil’s advocate, maybe she called it correctly. In a short-to-mid-term future that appears to be comprised exclusively of socially distanced dates in municipal parks, maybe texts, phone calls, and Zoom chats simply have to count for more.

Still, such incidents only serve to further my distrust of the digital dating world. Like most digitally-driven industries, it is comprised of companies reliant upon ever-growing user numbers, and it’s hard to square this with the core purpose of dating, which, for most people, is to accelerate their ambitions of finding a suitable match so that they can get the hell out of the dating world. Does a dating business succeed when two of its users find true love, or when a successful ‘match’ leads to rejection a week later (the fault of the matchmade, not the matchmaker), pushing the crestfallen duo back onto the dating app to repeat the process all over again?

Engagement on dating apps has soared since the start of the pandemic. One suspects that disappointment levels will also have soared. So spare a thought for the lonely hearts. This isn’t a good time to be alone.

Photo credit: Anthony Tran