How to date IRL

0:00Haven't had much luck on the dating apps lately? Don't worry, it's not just you. It does seem like across sex and dating and partnership, cohabitation, marriage, all of these behaviors are kind of on the decline. How to fight the romance slump and find a connection in real life. That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. I refuse the sorts of dating apps. I glated my app and my profile earlier this spring, and I have only been making connections to people that I meet in real life or I call it in the wild. And it's been incredible. Maybe we're kind of going back to the 80s in that sense. The dating world is wide open now, but I don't think it's on the apps anymore. That shit's depressing itself.

1:00Okay, time for some real talk. I'm a single lady about town, and honestly, the apps haven't really been doing it formulaively. And not to be all carry-bratch-all about it, but I can't help but wonder, is it just me or am I a part of a bigger trend? That's the question that brought me to a singles event at a trendy metro car turned bar on an extremely hot summer evening. I grabbed a microphone, might also single editor, Amina Alsati, and Kelly Wesinger, our editorial wait woman. I wanted to find out more about why people are ditching the apps and what they're doing instead. I'm John Polin Hill, and this week on Explain It To Me from Vox, why does dating suck now? The event was a red flag party, put on by Thursday. Now, company whose whole appeal is that it's not a dating app.

2:03Attendees walk around with bingo sheets to find out who among us was a DJ or referred to movies as films. I may or may not be guilty of that last one. And as everyone was mixing and mingling, I took the opportunity to ask questions of my own. Like, how much luck had they had on the dating apps? They've been decreasingly worse and worse, and I see that people are not as invested or not as engaged as before. So, I don't know, as a guy trying to like get matches and ask on dates, but not getting that engagement can really feel self-defeating and kind of hopeless, I think. So, I don't really communicate well through the dating apps. I don't like those that well. I love being in person and I myself is better when I'm in person. So, I thought it'd be a good chance to at least mingle and get out in the city a little more. Overall, yeah, it's been terrible.

3:05I read somewhere that it's like the apps make you interact with people you should have never met in real life. It feels so dehumanizing to be swiping on people and it makes me feel gross and super superficial, but also at the same time, it's like, what else am I supposed to do? Like, how do I... I've never been at a bar and saw someone across the room and been like, I'm gonna go after that person. It's never felt like the vibe. Everyone's kind of burnt out on dating apps, and I feel like at least this is a way to get out and at least socialize at least. I don't know, at the very least, me people. I think just thinking the pros and cons, like thinking the worst that can happen, you don't meet anyone, but you got to socialize a little bit. And at best, maybe you make a connection. I don't think the risk of that high. You spend a few hours, but that's what you're gonna be doing on the apps,

4:06hours and hours and maybe money and with no results at all. At least no immediate results, right? In college, you knew everybody was out there looking to make out on the dance floor. Like, I was talking to someone and someone was like, bring back drunk make-outs on the dance floor. People used to be making out on the dance floor. People used to be grinding on the dance floor. None of that happens anymore. Thank you to Jonathan, Jill, KP and Priya. Coming up, people feel like the apps are broken. Is romance broken too? Support for the show comes from Mint Mobile. If you're while it's feeling a little light after a summer full of travel and activities, then here's an idea to help you save money. Lower that expensive phone bill, and you can do that with Mint Mobile.

5:07They offer premium wireless plans for just $15 a month. We have a colleague here at Vox who's used Mint and he swears by it. He says he likes that he can save so much money and that he's never run into an issue where his data might be limited. To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to MintMobile.com-explainitome. That's MintMobile.com-explainitome. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at MintMobile.com-explainitome. That's it. There's no catch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months, plan required $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Incluses up to 30-20 gigabyte hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. CmitMobile.com

6:07Support for the gray area comes from granola. The best meetings are the ones that get everything done in one go. Everyone's on the same page. You leave with the information you need and you're ready to actually make things happen. No follow-ups required. It might sound like a fantasy, but with granola, every meeting can work a little more like that. Granola is an AI-powered notepad that makes your meeting notes useful. It captures what happens in your meetings and turns them into clean, structured notes with decisions and action items pulled out and made easy to find. And the best part? Granola fits right into the way you already work. That means no complicated setup or extra steps. It turns messy meeting conversations into clear, organized notes you can easily search and reference weeks later. Everything stays in one place and becomes actionable. So you can focus on the conversation instead of scrambling to take notes. Once you try it on a first meeting, it's hard to go without. You can try it totally free. Head to granola.ai slash gray area. That's granola.ai slash gray area to get your time back.

7:09Go to granola.ai slash gray area to try it on your next call. I'm Jake Hue. This is Explained To Me. I'm Faith Hill and I'm a staff writer for The Atlantic. Faith hasn't just written about the heroine experience of dating in 2026. She's also living it. And in her reporting, she found that it's not just the state of dating that's bad. We're kind of in an overall romance slump. Yeah, so of course romance is a really big umbrella term for a lot of different things. But it does seem like across sex and dating and partnership, cohabitation, and the same thing. All of these behaviors are kind of on the decline. So the marriage rate in the US and many other countries has been declining for a while now. But also we're finding the same thing, especially among young adults in terms of how many people are entering committed relationships, people are having less sex.

8:12And even among single people in the US, a lot of single people say they're not regularly dating at all. I would rather go to the dentist and get a root canal than go on a first date ever again. You don't actually have to date. You literally actually do not have to date. And I probably will never date ever again. I like being single. So there's a financial times data reporter named John Burn Murdoch who did an analysis of data and found that the proportion of 20 years ago, the proportion of 25 to 34 year olds in marriages or cohabiting partnerships, dropped really steeply from 1980 to 2022 by almost 10 percentage points for college graduates, and more than 20 percentage points for people without a degree. Wow. In 2019, 42% of single adults, younger than 40, told Pew Research Center that they'd never been in a committed relationship.

9:14But at the same time, in surveys, you still see that the majority of people say they want marriage, they want partnership. So I still feel like it's worth talking about all those people who aren't getting something that they want. And I think it's this sort of simultaneous thing of, on the one hand, it's easier to be single in some ways than it used to be. And yet, dating is difficult in these very particular modern ways, and when both of those are true at once, people will just start giving up and not getting something that they do in many cases really deeply want. But I would like a husband and unfortunately that does require me going on dates. But I've kind of hit a point where I am just content with the people and the things that I have in my life that ask me to go on a date feels like pulling teeth. I'm thinking a lot lately about whether I just accept being single for a while, rather than continuing this process of meeting new people and going on dates and trying to find someone.

10:18Wow. When we talk about these surveys, are the people doing them just asking straight people? We got a voicemail from a listener who said the apps are broken for gay men too. It's not just saying that as a gay man in a fairly big city, dating up to suck, I think they suck for street people, they suck for gay people. And I found way more success at the club. How universal is this experience? I think that there is a romance lump happening across gender, sexuality. I did, in reporting this piece, I tried to talk to people who were straight, people who were queer, people of different class backgrounds. I'd really tried to get a mix and I did feel like there were a lot of similarities in what people were experiencing. I think the apps is a big part of that. I've just heard from a lot of people who do say that the apps just really require sacrificing other priorities, other parts of life and really take a toll on people.

11:27There's a sense of fatigue among queer and straight people alike. I do think that for straight people, there's kind of an added element as well of frustration and tension and distance between men and women. So that's something I get into in my piece as well. And I think it's sort of just one of the many challenges that single people are going through. I wonder, the world is on fire right now. It kind of seems like the vibes are just bad overall. We're living in a very chaotic period in human history. Is everything that's happening in the world, is that factoring into why people are in this romance lump? I think it's a big part of it. I think part of that is just to do with interpersonal trust and kind of optimism about other human beings. We can see that in the US at least, rates of trust and other people in fellow Americans are pretty low.

12:28So I think people really have their guard up in that sense. And in particular, when it comes to Gen Z, this is a generation that a lot of researchers have described as pretty slow to trust and afraid of rejection and risk. And you can't really have romance without rejection and risk. Those are just crucial. So I think it's really hard to put yourself out there for a lot of really valid reasons. And as you're saying, the world is so chaotic and that gets reflected in people's personal lives too. And when people have so much going on, romance just feels really hard to prioritize. Both, just in the sense that they have a lot on their minds and other things they want to take care of. And also just logistically, if you are someone who doesn't know what your work schedule is going to look like the next week, it's really hard to set up a date. There's a lot of people who have really unstable work conditions.

13:29A lot of people who are very worried about money, they're thinking about trying to make rent or saving up. And it's kind of like, okay, maybe later down the line, I'll date. And I do want that. But right now everything feels so insecure. Something that I find interesting about all this is that despite how challenging and honestly demoralizing dating can get, the people you talk to, the people we met at that event, my friends that I talk to, still want relationships. Why do you think we're still seeking that partnership? I think people have a really deep yearning for connection and romance. And I think they imagine that if it, you know, in its ideal form, it would be amazing. And a lot of people just don't think they can really find that ideal romance.

14:29Now I did certainly talk to, you know, some people who really just aren't interested in relationships. And that certainly exists and is great for those people. But I also talk to a lot of people who have completely given up on dating. And yet when you kind of push them on it, they will say, well, yeah, of course I would love a great relationship. If I could find it, but I'm just not going to look for that right now. And I think I take that decision really, you know, seriously. I'm not going to expect it because I don't think they're making it lately. Like I think not to get so existential with it, but we all have limited time. And they did, you know, want to spend the time that they had on things that felt possible and meaningful and that were in their control. When it comes to love, there's so much of it that's out of our control.

15:30There are three steps to try if we really want to find that romantic connection. That's next. Support for the gray area comes from granola. The best meetings are the ones that get everything done in one go. Everyone's on the same page. You leave with the information you need and you're ready to actually make things happen. No follow-ups required. It might sound like a fantasy, but with granola, every meeting can work a little more like that. Granola is an AI-powered notepad that makes your meeting notes useful. It captures what happens in your meetings and turns them into clean, structured notes with decisions and action items pulled out and made easy to find. And the best part? Granola fits right into the way you already work. That means no complicated setup or extra steps. It turns messy meeting conversations into clear, organized notes you can easily search and reference weeks later.

16:31Everything stays in one place and becomes actionable. So you can focus on the conversation instead of scrambling to take notes. Once you try it on a first meeting, it's hard to go without. You can try it totally free. Head to granola.ai slash gray area. That's granola.ai slash gray area to get your time back. Go to granola.ai slash gray area to try it on your next call. It's hard enough to keep track of your keys, wallet, and cell phone. But keeping track of a cabinet full of supplements on top of that is way too much to ask of one brain. I am made is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all. I am a daily, ultimate essentials can replace 16 separate supplements for $2.61 a day. That's 90 ingredients that can work across nine major organ systems, all in a single drink. Co-founded by David Beckham and built by leading doctors and researchers, I am a was designed by the world's best. 95% of people who tried it for 12 weeks felt more energy.

17:31And that's from a clinical trial conducted by the San Francisco Research Institute. Go to I am a health.com slash explained right now or click on the link in the description and use code explained for a free welcome kit. 5 free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code explained at I am a health.com slash explained code explained at I am a health.com slash explained. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Hey, my name is Emma and honestly, I refused to touch a dating app. Personally, I've been meeting people at church, at a adult, a family, a family, you know, this is the right person will come at the right time. And it won't be something that I'll have to search too hard for. I'm a lot more hopeful that I'll meet the person that I'm meant to when the time is right.

18:31This is explain it to me. I'm Jake Kew. So we've established that the dating landscape isn't all that great right now, especially on the dating apps. And yet, a lot of us still want to find love. So how do you square those two things? That's what I asked Lily Womble. She's a dating coach and author of the book. Thank you more, please. Affiminous guide to breaking dumb dating rules and finding love. It's really hard dating can be so exhausting depleting, demoralizing. And I only think dating apps have increased that experience for single folks that coupled with, you know, our societal pressure to be partnered and that, like, you know, the messaging that we received from a young age that like to be partnered is to be ahead, right, to be single us to be behind. I think that pressure is there. I also think like how human of us to want romantic connection. So I, you know, totally respect people who just say, I don't want to meet a partner.

19:34I don't want to date. That's not what I want to do in my life. I'm cool being single. I don't think that singleness is a marker against one's value. I think that people are holding valuable right now both. And if you do want to find love in romantic partnership, there is a more helpful and empowering way to go about it that centers you as the main character. Instead of, for example, centering men in whether or not you are worthy or valuable or lovable. And people are centering those that have been wrong for them and whether or not they believe their own desires. We've been chatting in this episode about getting out of our phones with dating and getting in the streets. But how do you go about that if you're used to dating apps and you want to meet someone in person? How do you make that happen? It's really important to reset your brain off dating apps to get in person to build new connections. And it is as simple and as complicated as three steps.

20:36Number one, joy building. Joy is connected. You need to exit your house, get off your couch and go do something in your town or city that brings you some amount of joy with other people. The point is to make a new friendship, to make a new connection. You never know what 70-year-old you meet at your quilting night in your small town whose son's boyfriends, whose cousin comes to a party and suddenly you've met the love of your life. I met my husband through joy building. I went to an improv class. I made a friend that friend introduced me to her social circle. Then I met Chris. My husband, like joy building, does help you meet the right people. Secondarily, you've got Coke and Spiritorship. So helping your friends help you better, becoming your expert-wing person. Now, your friend might say, I don't know any single people. To that you say, I don't either. So let's co-create creative solutions. We're both smart. You have a workplace. You have a work conference.

21:37Are you looking out for me there? Here's the kind of person that I'm looking for. Here's the questions I want you to ask somebody. Finally, we've got flirting, which is the most vomiticious, you're lacking part of this plan. And the good news is that it's a buildable skill set. It's not just something that your favorite, like friend who is so naturally flirty has and you don't. I think that flirting is essentially joyful, courageous connection. People overcomplicate flirting to be this like game. But I really believe and have seen in my own experience, my clients experience, that flirting is just simply approaching somebody, asking a genuine question and seeing if that person wants to co-create a conversation with you, continuing that conversation. And to see if it's romantic, you literally just ask like, hey, random question. So are you single in the conversation? All of this requires 10 seconds of courage to do the thing, to go to the speed dating event to ask the question, to go up to somebody and say, hey, you're cute.

22:41I just wanted to come tell you that one of my clients did that on a crosswalk with a man that she found cute. And they ended up dating. I'm not kidding you this works. It just takes the willingness to be uncomfortable in the pursuit of making new connections for yourself. Okay, I will say you make it sound so easy, but that joy building, that getting out and talking to people, that can be really hard. What? It's hard to be joyful when it feels like the world is falling apart around us. Also, some of us are more shy than others. And there are people who lost a lot of valuable learning to flirt, skill building time during the pandemic. Like, I hear you, but like, how do you do it? How do you do it? Great question. We have lost a lot of social skills. Like, those years that we were in lockdown were reps missed. Especially, I think, for Gen Z, who like literally were in school during that time. I'm a millennial.

23:46So I had already, you know, cut my teeth in like New York 2015, 16, 17 with IRL flirting. It does require a couple of things, a rejection resilience plan. I recommend that people have in the notes up their phone a plan to be courageous and to know how they're going to react and care for themselves after a hard moment. Because there are people when you flirt or joy build who don't want to be your friend, who don't want to talk to you, who are uncomfortable themselves. And so that rejection resilience plan can really like prep you to be courageous and know that no matter what you're going to be okay. It's just as simple as like understanding that your brain's going to think it's dying after an experience of rejection. Just say, I think I'm going to die after rejection. It's a thought not a fact to write it down. Then have a plan to be compassionate towards yourself. I also recommend a flirting ladder to increase your distress tolerance. So you start at the very basic level of I'm going to make eye contact with somebody for one second and then look away.

24:48Great boom done the first level on the flirting ladder. Next level, I'm going to hold it for three seconds. It's in small steps. I'm going to go up to somebody and say hi and then literally run away. Plan to do it in small bite size steps so that you can increase your distress tolerance window. One of my clients did a wink and run, put it on her ladder. Oh my gosh. Literally planned to wink and then freak out and run away. When you plan to do something courageous and just say under do it for 10 seconds and then I can totally bail, you're more likely to do courageous things. You're more likely to have more connection in your life and you're more likely to meet the right people for you. Okay, this is advice anyone can take, but I have to say there is a part of it that I struggle with and that's you know the way I was raised. What do you struggle with? Tell me. The way I was raised, the way I was socialized women do not approach men. That is his job to do.

25:51If you do it, you will be chasing him for the rest of the relationship. There is a way is supposed to go. Men are the pursuers. You wait to be pursued or else the relationship is off balance from the very beginning. You're doing everything. It's like you got to do everything around here. Well, it's interesting that we're talking about literally a first move and then people's minds go to I'm going to have to do everything. It's important to understand that adult relationships have to be co-created. And one of my feminist rules of dating is that you need to be shooting your shot 100% of the time to be in the flow of asking for more, to be in the flow of receiving opportunity. And this is what I tell my clients. When you know you want to go on a date with somebody say I'd love to take this at IRL. What do you say? A mussely version of that where you are doing all of the work which will not lead to a good relationship is when you ask them out. You plan the date. You confirm the date. You make the reservation. You text afterwards. That is doing everything and that is not a co-created relationship.

26:57That is you because of scarcity doing all the work. Is it possible to find that on the apps though? Do we really have to get out there in the real world to find love? I do think that dating apps are exhausting. I think we have to acknowledge that they're marketing messages like Hinge is designed to be deleted. Hinge wants you to meet someone great. Even if it kills us. Make users feel dumb I think for being on them all the time and not finding love but they're publicly traded companies who are incentivized to keep users on the platform and de-incentivized to give you enough of the good stuff to get you off the platform for good. I think so many people are settling from the moment they get on a dating app. They're settling for someone who doesn't ask them questions back. They're settling for someone who they're not attracted to at all. They're settling for someone whose bio is not filled out because of this experience of scarcity.

28:02We're not meant to see this many faces. Our brains are not meant to. Because of cognitive overload our higher functioning shuts down at a certain point of seeing so many faces. That increases the likelihood that you're going to settle for the wrong kind of people for you on the dating app. Why is it important to set basic time boundaries with yourself? Why is it important to have standards of messaging for yourself in dating apps? Something that I would love to know more about. We're talking about dating and as we're talking about it we're talking about this idea of finding your person. Finding maybe your spouse, your life partner, like the person you do life with. But what about for those who aren't necessarily ready for the one or like it's a little scary but I still want to be out here. What do they do? If you want to date but you're unsure if you're ready for like a relationship or the right relationship then go around and can I curse on this person?

29:08Oh yeah, we're not that. FCC can't stop us. Okay great. Fuck around. Go fuck around and find out what can happen when you pursue your pleasure. If you look at dating, I think whether you're looking for a relationship or not, when you look at dating as an act of agency, as an act of aliveness, as an act of pleasure for yourself and as a practice setting boundaries, then you can go have the most amazing time connecting with people getting to know yourself and your preferences, getting to know what turns you on and what turns you off. So, what do you think is really important life things that you get to do? Are we over complicating this? Does it really actually have to be that hard? Absolutely not. But it is as complicated as prioritizing and pursuing your desire after a lifetime of being told that your desires are too much.

30:08That's it for this week. Right now we're working on an episode all about modern etiquette. We want to know what are the rules you wished everyone followed? How should people talk on the phone, travel on an airplane, or keep it professional in the workplace? And what are your pet peeves? Give us a call at 1-800-618-855 or shoot an email to askvoxatvox.com. If you like listening to this podcast, consider becoming a vox member. Members get to listen to this podcast at free and get unlimited access to vox.com. Head over to vox.com slash members to learn more. This episode was produced by Kelly Wessinger with help from Ariana Spudor. It was edited by Amna Al-Sati, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, and engineered by Bertrand Jennerkin. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Colin Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

31:09Bye!