Dating Dave

Modern singles are encouraged to have standards, recognise red flags and refuse to settle. This is valuable advice, especially for people who previously tolerated dishonesty or disrespect. Yet standards can quietly become a system designed to prevent anyone from getting close. A date is rejected [...]

There is a particular kind of relationship crisis that does not begin with betrayal or one terrible argument. It begins with depletion. Conversations become another task, affection feels effortful and both people are too tired to be curious about each other. One partner eventually says, “I [...]

Artificial-intelligence companions have moved from science fiction into ordinary phones. People chat with systems designed to be supportive, affectionate and always available. Some use them for entertainment, loneliness, confidence or to rehearse difficult conversations. Others create a romantic [...]

Couples counselling is often treated as the final room before a relationship ends. Two people arrive after years of resentment, a major betrayal or the moment one partner has already decided to leave. Therapy is asked to rescue a bond whose ordinary methods of repair stopped working long ago. A [...]

More couples are choosing to keep their relationships away from social media. After years in which romance seemed to require an announcement, photographs, anniversary tributes and public evidence of happiness, privacy is becoming attractive again. Some people no longer want strangers, former [...]

Some of the strongest modern romances exist entirely in a message thread—until the people meet. The conversation is witty, vulnerable and constant. Good-morning messages arrive before either person gets out of bed, private jokes form within days and both begin imagining a future. Then the first [...]

A birthday can change somebody’s dating prospects overnight without changing anything meaningful about the person. On Monday they are forty-nine and appear inside a match’s chosen age range. On Tuesday they turn fifty and disappear from the search. Their health, humour, face, values and [...]

Dating-app burnout rarely arrives as one dramatic event. It appears gradually. You stop reading profiles properly, postpone replies, feel irritated by harmless questions and open the app without remembering why. Matches who might once have interested you begin to look like more work. You delete [...]

The swipe may no longer be the unquestioned centre of online dating. A new generation of services is asking singles to speak with an artificial-intelligence interviewer, answer detailed questions and allow software to recommend a small number of matches. The promise is attractive: no more judging [...]

Dating is becoming a team sport again. After years of being told that love could be found by quietly swiping alone, more singles are asking friends to introduce them, review profiles, join double dates or simply confirm that a promising match appears to be a real and reasonable person. Dating [...]

Voice notes are becoming one of the most revealing parts of online dating. A photograph can be selected, a biography rewritten and a text message polished for twenty minutes, but a voice carries details that are harder to curate. You hear pace, warmth, confidence, humour, nervousness and the little [...]

We are being told that modern singles are living through a “dating recession.” The phrase sounds dramatic, but it describes something many people recognise immediately: plenty of adults still want love, commitment and eventually marriage, yet fewer feel confident about doing the practical [...]

Artificial intelligence has quietly joined the dating conversation. People use it to improve a profile, choose a photograph, suggest an opening line, interpret a confusing message and compose a reply when their own mind has gone blank. Dating apps are building similar tools directly into their [...]

Every few months the internet discovers a new theory about love, gives it a catchy name and presents it as though somebody has finally found the secret timetable governing our romantic lives. This month the phrase doing the rounds is “August Theory”: the idea that August brings emotional [...]

“If you have nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” sounds persuasive during an argument. A partner refuses to share a phone password, turns the screen away or wants a private conversation with a friend, and uncertainty fills the gap. Complete access begins to look like proof of love. Some [...]