{"id":1778,"date":"2026-08-03T10:41:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1778"},"modified":"2026-08-03T10:41:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:41:30","slug":"the-great-romance-slump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1778","title":{"rendered":"The Great Romance Slump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About 90 seconds<\/span> into a three-minute hug with a stranger, I began to think that dying alone might not be so bad after all. I\u2019d come to a candlelit loft in Manhattan for a \u201cmindful singles event\u201d called The Feels, which was designed to be the opposite of the disembodied experience of dating apps. Participants, phones tucked away, paired up and attempted a series of \u201csomatic awareness\u201d exercises, including staring into each other\u2019s eyes, hugging, and holding a hand over each other\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

Read more How AI Could Make People More Anxious<\/a><\/p>\n

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Explore the September 2026 Issue<\/h2>\n

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We\u2019d been warned that discomfort is part of the process. A facilitator had reminded us that, as long as consent and respect are involved, a little uneasiness opens the door to vulnerability. Having paid $100 for a process advertised as \u201cbetter relating\u201d\u2014informed by Carl Jung and the Buddha and the body\u2019s \u201cinfinite wisdom\u201d\u2014participants were motivated to agree. And many of us, more by circumstance than by choice, were already experts in exiting our comfort zone. We\u2019d spent years meeting strangers, opening ourselves to judgment, scrounging for conversation topics, worrying about our outfits, gargling mouthwash in the office\u2014but we still hadn\u2019t found what, or whom, we wanted. We came ready to get to work.<\/p>\n

The mere existence of The Feels, which hosts events in cities across the United States, suggests that we are living in a time of romantic plenty. In New York City, I could go to a dating event every night of the week. I could use a matchmaking service, or talk with a dating coach, or sign up for one of the many newsletters trying to bring back personal ads. Even if I didn\u2019t live in a major city, I\u2019d have dating apps to choose from: not only Tinder and Hinge but a zillion others\u2014platforms for farmers, gamers, single parents, cannabis enthusiasts, and members of the gluten-free community. I have four apps in my current rotation; as I write this, one of them has 317 message threads and 455 \u201clikes\u201d that I need to evaluate.<\/p>\n

And yet, despite the bounty of possibility, we are living through a great romance slump. Romance<\/i> is a broad term, of course. Traditionally, it manifests in the thrill of sex, the devotion of long-term partnership, or the ritual of courtship, including the act of hope that is a first date. But all of those manifestations are becoming less common in the U.S., especially among young people.<\/p>\n

The proportion of 25-to-34-year-olds in marriages or cohabiting partnerships dropped steeply from 1980 to 2022\u2014by almost 10 percentage points for college graduates and more than 20 percentage points for people without a degree, according to an analysis by the Financial Times<\/i> data reporter John Burn-Murdoch. A shrinking share of young adults have a steady partner, and in 2019, 42 percent of single adults younger than 40 told Pew Research Center that they\u2019d never been in a committed relationship. In a 2025 YouGov poll, 69 percent of single respondents said they \u201crarely\u201d or \u201cnever\u201d go on dates. And people are having less sex. From 2000 to 2018, the share of 25-to-34-year-olds who said they hadn\u2019t had sex in the previous year almost doubled.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that people have lost interest in love. A majority of single young adults say they want lifelong partnership. But for a variety of reasons, fewer of them are finding it. Allie Hoffman, a former CEO of a digital-media company who launched The Feels in 2022, has observed \u201ca collective this sucks<\/i>\u201d among romance seekers. She has expanded her offerings accordingly. At a \u201cLevel 2\u201d Feels event, which costs up to $215, you can be paired with people \u201cat a similar stage in their awareness journey.\u201d A spot at a singles\u2019 weekend retreat starts at $1,300; three matches based on a questionnaire and a phone call, plus six coaching sessions over three months, total $4,750. In a romance recession, some people give up and some double down.<\/p>\n

So here I was, doubling down, sweating in a strange man\u2019s arms. My neck hurt. I couldn\u2019t figure out how close to him I should stand. (Too near and you lose breathing room; too far and the whole enterprise falls apart.) For years I\u2019d been in the same group chat with pretty much the same single friends. We\u2019d labeled it the \u201cLonely Hearts Club,\u201d and it became a sanctuary for dishing about weird dates, complaining about getting ghosted, sharing links to TikTokers dishing about weird dates and complaining about getting ghosted. I\u2019d received variations of the same \u201cI\u2019m not feeling a spark\u201d text so many times that I started replying with a single emoji:\ud83e\udee1. But at The Feels, I was trying to be open and optimistic. I\u2019d stared into someone\u2019s eyes for three languid minutes, wondering if I was blinking a normal amount. I\u2019d been moved, feeling another person\u2019s heartbeat beneath my palm, as anyone with a pulse would be.<\/p>\n

The hug was the last round, though, and then real life resumed. We mingled, but the intimacy had disappeared. One man told me that he had high emotional intelligence and could tell that I did too\u2014then he suggested that we travel together someday, handed me his business card, and walked away. I gave a few people my phone number, including one man who sent me a picture of his face the very next morning and another who texted me so much (even after a polite rebuff) that I had to block him. One date with another guy resulted, but I wasn\u2019t interested in a second. The perception of abundance had, once again, evaporated into nothing.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to suggest that people need romance to be fulfilled. In truth, I don\u2019t believe that partnership is inherently better than singlehood. As a society, we\u2019ve been moving toward this point for decades: where marriage is not a prerequisite for social and financial survival, where we have other sources of purpose and community, where there are many different ways to live a good life.<\/p>\n

Yet now that we\u2019re here, the reality doesn\u2019t feel quite so triumphant. If the dream was more equal partnerships\u2014born from love rather than necessity, freedom rather than convention\u2014what many of us got was no partnership at all, and a feeling that it was eternally out of reach. Those getting ever closer to 40, especially, tend to feel a particular sense of impending loss. Those are the years when the average unpartnered person struggles most with singlehood, Geoff MacDonald, a University of Toronto psychologist, told me. (\u201cIt\u2019s like\u2014Everybody find a lifeboat<\/i>,\u201d he said.) It\u2019s a period of acute open-endedness, when people are trying to figure out what to prioritize, how to plan for the future, which dreams are worth pursuing and which have to be sacrificed. For women who want to have biological children, it\u2019s also when time is running out.<\/p>\n

One 39-year-old I talked with, a woman who works in film, told me she felt like she was on a \u201cprecipice.\u201d She was weighing having kids and knew the clock was ticking. She\u2019d had a great time on a Feels weekend getaway, and although she hadn\u2019t formed a lasting romantic connection, she\u2019d made friends; they chat in a WhatsApp group about their dating highs and lows. Her life is full. Still, she said, \u201cthe world is burning. I would really like to be able to go through that with someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted that for her, and for myself. Or, at least, I wanted to understand why <\/i>we weren\u2019t finding what we wanted. So I did what I know how to do: I reported. I interviewed dozens of researchers and single people across the country, endured a series of curious but fruitless dating events, and bravely subjected myself to some actual dates. The romance slump, I found, is a product of broader trends: souring gender relations, a transformed economy, the unevenness of social progress, and technology that both connects and isolates us. Millions of individual heartaches are rewriting the love story we\u2019ve told ourselves for centuries.<\/p>\n

Just to be clear:<\/span> I\u2019m not nostalgic for how things used to be. For much of human history, romance was incidental. Marriage was typically a practical arrangement: a way to unite families and consolidate resources. In the Industrial Age, young people began relocating to cities for work and enjoyed newfound independence and leisure time; courtship moved from the family parlor to the dance hall. But women still didn\u2019t have many pathways, other than marriage, to financial independence\u2014or to sex. The fact that my great-grandmother got pregnant before she was married, at the beginning of the 20th century, was such a source of family shame, never freely discussed, that my mother felt its dark shadow when she was growing up in the 1950s and \u201960s.<\/p>\n

That was the peak-marriage era, when almost 90 percent of women in the U.S. were married before they turned 25. Even as second-wave feminism boomed, banks could still require a woman to obtain permission from her husband or a male relative to get a home loan or apply for a credit card. In 1965, birth control was legalized, but only for married couples. A few years later, my mother, who was living with her boyfriend at the time, wore a fake wedding ring\u2014a plastic one from a gumball machine\u2014to her doctor appointment to request the pill.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the \u201970s, though, wider access to contraception and abortion began to curb shotgun weddings, and more women entered college and the workforce. Stigmas around singlehood and queer relationships loosened. The nuclear-family model, once such a source of gravity, lost some of its pull. The decline of marriage could also be called the rise of choice\u2014especially for women, Philip N. Cohen, a University of Maryland sociologist, told me. \u201cThe 1950s family could not even reproduce itself for one generation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t even convince their children that this was the right way to arrange their lives. So it failed immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

I came along in 1995: a lucky moment, in many ways. Growing up in the 21st century, I daydreamed not about whom I\u2019d marry but about what fabulous career path I\u2019d choose. (In elementary school I made business cards that said PSYCHOLIGIST: GOT A PROBLEM? CALL ME!<\/span> and distributed them on the playground.) When my grandmother was widowed in her 50s, her friends\u2014all couples\u2014stopped calling her; it wasn\u2019t proper for them to socialize with a single woman. When my mother got divorced in her 50s, she wasn\u2019t abandoned by her friends, but she was always aware of her single status in a social snow globe of married people. I\u2019m 31 now, and most of the people in my circle are single; quite a few of them have never been in a relationship. I spent this past Valentine\u2019s Day on a beach in Mexico with two of my best friends.<\/p>\n

And yet, for many people, singlehood is at once eminently normal and entirely unwanted. Even an unhappily single person, Cohen said, is a sign of progress; at least they haven\u2019t been forced to partner with someone they don\u2019t want to be with. But that\u2019s like telling someone with a cavity to be grateful for modern dentistry: completely correct and a little annoying.<\/p>\n

In interviews, people kept saying they knew they ought to make time for romance, but then when would they see their friends or travel or exercise or get ahead at work? Dating has always entailed some hardship, but it used to be the norm to find love in everyday life\u2014at the office, at church, at a party. People didn\u2019t need to choose what to step away from. Now many of the quirks of modern life have made meeting organically in person less likely. More people are tucked away at home, working remotely, streaming TV, and having food delivered to their door; approaching strangers feels fraught when so many of us are used to flirting via text with people who have already \u201cliked\u201d us. So we depend on the apps even as we resent them. Dating becomes another responsibility to squeeze in, \u201clike you\u2019re scheduling a job interview,\u201d Sarah Boyle, a 29-year-old public defender in Chicago, told me. \u201cOh, let me pencil in this date for three weeks from now with this stranger from the internet.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

Modern romance requires a toll, in other words, paid in energy, in sanity, in cash, in hours\u2014and not everyone can afford it. One 2025 study\u2014which, I feel obliged to report, is called \u201cMaking (Enough for) Love\u201d\u2014found that the higher someone\u2019s income, the more likely they were to enter into a relationship, or simply to feel ready for one. You might protest that coupling is actually a savvy financial move; indeed, it was once common for partners to marry first, then pool resources and work toward stability together<\/i>. But sociologists today say that marriage is seen by many as a capstone\u2014a trophy that people feel prepared for only after they\u2019ve paid off debts, settled into a steady job, or saved enough to buy a house or have kids. Over the past 50 years, job security and stable hours have become scarcer, said Kristen Harknett, a UC Berkeley sociologist. That means traditional milestones are harder to reach\u2014and tying your livelihood to someone else\u2019s can feel like a liability rather than an advantage.<\/p>\n

On top of all this, COVID-19 triggered a \u201cpandemic dating recession,\u201d according to the Stanford sociologist Michael J. Rosenfeld. From 2017 to 2022, the number of single adults in the U.S. rose by about 5 percent (more than 13 million people), mostly because young people weren\u2019t meeting as frequently as before. Americans, mired in uncertainty, have lost faith that the old sources of stability\u2014the economy, marriage, one another\u2014will deliver them to solid ground. And mistrust and instability are bad for romance.<\/p>\n

I talked with plenty of researchers about numbers and theories, but I wanted to hear how this really feels\u2014and not just for my Lonely Hearts Club. So I created an informal survey to pass around to single people, asking how they approached dating (or didn\u2019t), how set they were on finding a partner, how that fit in with other life goals, and whether they were hopeful about finding love. I heard back from men, women, and nonbinary people, queer and straight, ages 23 to 49, living in places such as Oklahoma City; Atlanta; Pittsburgh; Bowling Green, Ohio; and Portland, Oregon. I talked with people from different race and class backgrounds. And what I heard was that a lot of them are tired.<\/p>\n

Dating is \u201cjust a series of constant blows to whatever self-confidence I had,\u201d said Keith Causin, a 42-year-old straight man from Queens. \u201cIt\u2019s low-key soul destroying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are very commitment-resistant and it\u2019s contagious,\u201d a queer 27-year-old from New Jersey said. \u201cBeing alone and lonely and wanting is safer than risking being put through emotional distress. I think romancing myself, treating myself kindly, doing nice things alone like taking myself on a date and treating myself, has yielded better results.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a part of the generation of Disney girls who were groomed from birth that our Prince Charming was coming, and unfortunately, I still believe that,\u201d wrote one 26-year-old woman in Los Angeles who\u2019d been single her whole adult life, though she\u2019d been diligently dating for years.<\/p>\n

Olivia Medina, another 26-year-old in Los Angeles, said that, at the beginning of 2020, she\u2019d been excited about a budding relationship with one of her college classmates. Then she had to spend her entire senior year online. By the time the world returned to relative normality, her priorities had shifted. \u201cI had basically created a whole new hierarchy of what\u2019s important,\u201d Medina said. \u201cAnd dating was so low because I had gotten so used to just spending time with my friends and doing things that I like, for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the need for romance is low and the toll is steep, some give up. Others hold out for a partnership dreamy enough to justify the search. Again and again, people explained that their lives weren\u2019t lacking, and they would only carve out space in their days for someone who made them giddy. Having expectations this high is a magnificent historical novelty. The hard part is finding someone who can meet them.<\/p>\n

Joanna Davidson,<\/span> a Boston University anthropologist, was living in a village in Guinea-Bissau when she began to notice a particular kind of run-down house. Kungomaku<\/i>, she learned, were the structures women moved into after their husbands died and their homes were torn down\u2014a custom among the Jola ethnic group predominant in the region. The widows either borrowed rice paddies or begged for food. Yet fewer and fewer of them were willing to remarry, she determined, and the number of kungomaku<\/i> kept growing. \u201cYou sit and suffer under the punishment of your husband,\u201d one woman told her. \u201cWhen he dies, why would you go get punished by another man?\u201d<\/p>\n

When Davidson relayed all of this at an American Anthropological Association conference in Washington, D.C., the air felt charged with recognition. A room full of researchers could chart, from their own fieldwork, the depth of women\u2019s dissatisfaction. So Davidson and Dinah Hannaford, a University of Houston anthropologist, sent out a call for contributions for what would become their 2022 book, Opting Out: Women Messing With Marriage Around the World<\/i>. Their inboxes flooded with case studies from countries rich and poor.<\/p>\n

In Botswana, they heard, many children are raised within networks of single women and their kin. (Only about 4,500 Botswanans married in 2024, out of a population of 2.5 million.) They learned about women in South Korea who had delayed marriage to take care of aging family members\u2014then realized, looking around at the men in their lives, that they had no regrets. Hannaford wrote about women in Senegal marrying men who live abroad, or becoming a man\u2019s third or fourth wife, in the hopes of evading both the public disgrace of singlehood and the practical, emotional, and sexual labor of a typical union. Nine out of 10 people worldwide, the anthropologists pointed out, live in a country with falling marriage rates. The specific challenges varied by location, but all over the globe, women were fed up. \u201cEmbedded throughout this volume,\u201d Davidson and Hannaford wrote in their introduction, \u201cis the seeming ubiquity of generally disappointing men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Call it a supply problem. Some researchers think that the great romance slump has been caused largely by a shortage of \u201cmarriageable men.\u201d But, to be fair to men, the old standards of success have become harder to achieve. In the United States, steady, well-paying blue-collar jobs have been all but decimated, and fewer men than women are earning the college degrees that have become almost a prerequisite for financial stability. The percentage of 25-to-54-year-old American men who are neither working nor seeking employment quadrupled<\/i> over the past 70 years. A vanishing portion can single-handedly support a family, or offer a partner any sense of security. More college-educated women have begun marrying men without a degree, picking off the high earners among them. This means that women without a degree are, in turn, left with fewer prospects\u2014and their marriage rates are plummeting, especially in areas where men face higher rates of joblessness and incarceration.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a lot of men are feeling painfully inadequate. It\u2019s not that money is the only thing a man can offer; after all, fewer women need a breadwinner now. But researchers told me that the qualities women now value more than ever\u2014sensitivity, openness, communication skills\u2014are not typically ingrained in men from childhood. And although men strive to meet those modern expectations, the old standards haven\u2019t disappeared. Men are supposed to pay for dinner but also treat women as equals; to initiate flirty banter but never be creepy or aggressive; to be sturdy and masculine but also empathetic and thoughtful. Arthur, a 46-year-old in New Jersey who responded to my survey, said that he\u2019s dated women who think he\u2019s too nice. One explained that she broke up with him because he has \u201cdad energy.\u201d (\u201cI\u2019m not 100 percent sure what that means,\u201d Arthur told me, \u201cbut I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s not very sexy.\u201d) Another said she liked how sweet and supportive he was, yet also wanted him to be more decisive\u2014to be \u201cthe man\u201d in the relationship, as Arthur saw it. He wasn\u2019t sure how to exhibit both traits at once.<\/p>\n

Read more The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta<\/a><\/p>\n

Other men I spoke with felt like the romantic odds were stacked against them, especially on dating apps. They had the sense that women were drowning in matches, while they were sending \u201clikes\u201d into the void. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m being rejected by 4 million women at once,\u201d Causin, the man from Queens, told me. The guys I talked with described men as demoralized schmucks and women as thriving girlbosses\u2014the rule-setters, the winners, and<\/i> the prize. The ones who want romance but do not need it.<\/p>\n

But that idea makes women sound a lot more powerful and liberated than they really are, as a whole. Women may be going to college at higher rates, but they still make less, on average, than men with a comparable education in the same field of study. In the typical married or cohabiting straight couple, women still do much more of the domestic labor\u2014even when the woman is the breadwinner.<\/p>\n

Kris Swiatocho, who ministers to single Christians, hears from many young women who are so exasperated by their search for romance that they are losing hope. They tell her versions of \u201cI\u2019m meeting a lot of guys who still live at home at 27. And they\u2019re gamers. And that\u2019s all they\u2019re interested in doing.\u201d Allie Hoffman has noticed that many of the younger men at The Feels events seem \u201crelationally underdeveloped\u201d\u2014particularly Gen Z men, who have grown up in front of screens. They want connection but, when confronted with women\u2019s expectations, they can feel underequipped and overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

The women I interviewed didn\u2019t seem picky so much as pessimistic, and burned out on bad behavior. One had flown to visit a guy who was drunk for most of her stay, brushed off his neighbor calling her a \u201cpiece of ass,\u201d and then, soon after she returned home, texted her that they were \u201cnever going to be together long-term.\u201d Another woman had fallen for a co-worker with whom she was getting dinner two to four times a week\u2014and who turned out to be seriously dating someone else. A lot of stories were less dramatic: tales of confusion and quiet disappointment, featuring men who couldn\u2019t seem to express or even decide what they wanted.<\/p>\n

Most women, I think, know that good men are out there. But I don\u2019t blame them for growing cynical about the chances of finding one. The feminist progress of the past half century has been met with a virulent backlash of misogyny. Nearly 60 percent of Gen Z men say that their country has \u201cgone so far in promoting women\u2019s equality that we are discriminating against men,\u201d according to a 2025 Ipsos poll of 30 countries, including the United States. Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that many of her students\u2019 brothers watch videos of the manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, who has argued that women are the property of their husband, and who has been accused of rape, assault, and human trafficking (allegations he denies). If that\u2019s what they\u2019re seeing within their own family, why should they trust a stranger from an app?<\/p>\n

Hannah Tessler, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, has studied the factors that influence whether singles value romantic partnership. In interviews, she found that most young male participants hadn\u2019t considered in much detail how they\u2019d split household labor if they married or had kids with a partner; they weren\u2019t really expecting to make sacrifices. Young women, meanwhile, were weighing their choices accordingly. Some wanted a partnership only if it was truly equal. \u201cI don\u2019t want to sign up to be somebody else\u2019s, you know, caregiver, mom, maid, sex robot, nanny, therapist, etc.,\u201d Tessler summarized. Other women were willing to do just that, if it meant they could have a family.<\/p>\n

Gigi Gayle, a 44-year-old in Chicago, has been considering these sorts of trade-offs. She\u2019s not someone you\u2019d expect to be looking for a more traditional arrangement. She\u2019s a college graduate who owns a marketing company in the nightclub industry and co-owns a counseling center. But she got tired of relationships in which she worked full-time and split the bills\u2014and<\/i> the men wanted her to cook, clean, and generally act like a \u201ccounselor,\u201d as she put it, \u201cgiving them advice, building them back up.\u201d So now, she\u2019s decided to try leaning into being \u201cmore submissive.\u201d She wants a provider, someone who\u2019ll make her feel cared for. First, she\u2019ll have to find him\u2014and she\u2019s not having any luck.<\/p>\n

Gayle\u2019s story reminded me of something else I\u2019d heard. Carrie Rappaport-Zaken, a Manhattan therapist, said that many of her single female clients have been reading The Rules<\/i>, a dating guide that was published in 1995 (and was seen as retrograde even back then), because romance influencers are recommending it. \u201cDon\u2019t overwhelm him with your career triumphs,\u201d the book advises. \u201cTry to let him<\/i> shine.\u201d Rappaport-Zaken finds it unnerving: all these smart, successful clients waiting for men to pursue them, trying to appear soft and undemanding\u2014all in deference to a book so old that it warns women not to call a man\u2019s landline. But she understands why a blueprint like this is appealing. Plenty of her clients have tried going boldly after what they want, only to find that this turns men away.<\/p>\n

I kept encountering the same weary nostalgia: for setups and meet-cutes, for steady jobs and gender norms. Some people I interviewed wished openly for more rules and fewer choices. When the present feels hostile to romance, and the future is frightening or unknowable, can you blame people for looking to the past?<\/p>\n

In the months <\/span>following The Feels, I attended five other dating events across Brooklyn and Manhattan. I met countless jaded veterans of the New York singles\u2019 circuit\u2014who regularly showed up to similar affairs, or frequented the same one. I chatted with a man who said he\u2019d been to so many that he\u2019d had to institute a rule for himself: five months between each, so as not to lose his mind. Later, when I recounted my observations to a friend, he said it reminded him of when he\u2019d been looking for an apartment and kept seeing the same people on tours.<\/p>\n

One event, at a dimly lit Tribeca bar, was smushed next to a happy hour for real-estate and land-use experts. Attendees were given glowing colored wristbands. \u201cPurple talk to purple! Red talk to yellow!\u201d the emcee called out, and then she spoon-fed us icebreaker questions such as \u201cWho is your celebrity crush?\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s your dream date?\u201d I went to two events\u2014a straight one in the Financial District and a (better-dressed) queer one in Bushwick\u2014where presenters used PowerPoint to pitch their single friends to the crowd. At yet another, in Williamsburg, people much braver than me pitched themselves<\/i> to the room. One guitarist crooned a song she\u2019d written about herself; another did a stand-up routine about how she\u2019s \u201cAmerican ugly,\u201d meaning only men from other countries find her attractive. The host joked that we were all too hot to need an event like this, so our personalities must be terrible.<\/p>\n

At the self-presentation event, I sat with a man who shared a sprawling list of deal-breakers (pixie cuts and lack of physical fitness among them) and then proudly described himself as nonjudgmental. During a speed-dating night at a diner-like bar in Bushwick, I held court at my assigned booth while men rotated through the spot opposite me. I had only three minutes with each\u2014but as I\u2019d learned at The Feels, three minutes can last a long time. When I gently pushed back against one man\u2019s theory about the romance slump\u2014The problem is that when women talk to one another about men, they start to hate them<\/i>\u2014he changed the subject: \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite animal?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know when to get off the dating merry-go-round. Some people view the romance toll as an investment in their future self. On dating apps, you can always keep putting in the work, swiping and messaging and grabbing drinks and swiping again. The volume of potential matches is enormous, and so is the amount of time required to investigate each one, with no guarantees of success. The more you try, the more you want things to work out, and the less sure you become that they will.<\/p>\n

Others refuse to pay the toll; they delete the apps and hope love will find them<\/i>. Margot Bracke, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Antwerp, said she no longer asks study participants if they are \u201cactively\u201d looking for a partner; the question that resonates more is whether they are \u201copen\u201d to a relationship. And many have simply made peace with not being in one, her colleague Elise \u2019t Hoen told me.<\/p>\n

In this last category is Treasure Saunders, a 39-year-old who spent years in a string of serious relationships, during which she worked full-time, handled the housework, and took care of her three kids. She always seemed to lose her sense of self. When she decided she was done, she needed \u201chusband money,\u201d but without the husband. So she trained to become a technical engineer working on transportation infrastructure (\u201cLots of concrete and steel\u201d). Then she used that salary to achieve a long-standing goal: purchasing a four-unit property, most of which she rents out. At first, without a partner, she was lonely. But she started spending time at a nearby union hall for construction tradespeople and getting close to her fellow UA Local 130 members\u2014almost all men. \u201cI have the big sweaters and the dirty jeans and the boots, and my hair is always a mess,\u201d she said. \u201cI kinda just settled right on in.\u201d And her girlfriends are so precious to her that she is, in a certain way, in love with them. They take one another out to sushi dinners. They travel together. \u201cI\u2019m romantically involved with my friends,\u201d she said, adding with a hoot of laughter: \u201cAnd I use men for sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a perfect world, Saunders said, she wouldn\u2019t be single. But this is her reality. I heard similar sentiments in other interviews. Arthur, not beating the dad-energy allegations, has decided to focus on being a good guy, a good employee, and a good uncle. Dating kept getting harder and harder, he said. After so much rejection, opening up to new people feels like asking to get hurt. So he\u2019s said goodbye to the partner he\u2019d once imagined. \u201cIt was like I lost a parent,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut it\u2019s like anything else, you know\u2014you move on.\u201d He\u2019s been getting back in shape, learning new languages, and spending time with relatives in their 80s and 90s. He thinks\u2014hopes\u2014he\u2019s becoming a better person.<\/p>\n

Hoffman, the Feels founder, also once had a specific vision for her future: a soulmate, a brownstone, two kids. \u201cI had it all figured out,\u201d she said, \u201cand then it didn\u2019t happen.\u201d In her late 30s, she realized that her dream life was just a dream; she could only know what was right in front of her. As she said this over Zoom, she started naming things around her\u2014an orange, a water bottle\u2014to indicate how literally she meant this. Her goal now is \u201ctotal devotion to reality.\u201d The Feels asks participants to be in the moment together, paying attention to their bodies and their breathing. If romance follows, great. But she\u2019s often said that the events aren\u2019t just about partnership\u2014they\u2019re about connection, \u201cembodiment,\u201d the chance to \u201cemote.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman acknowledges that this philosophy is a tough sell for women who want kids\u2014especially those in their late 30s to early 40s. At Feels events, that\u2019s the population that arrives with the most palpable anxiety. Because so many men date down in age, she said, women in that bracket are left with a \u201cportion of the portion\u201d of male prospects that is \u201cexcruciatingly small.\u201d In my interviews, too, baby-longing was the great dividing line. The aspiring parents tended to feel most stressed.<\/p>\n

I will confess, now, that I am among the ones with no chill. After searching for nearly a decade, I met someone at a wedding almost two years ago who made romance feel unexpectedly easy. We\u2019re a nine-hour train ride apart, but I grew accustomed to the Amtrak caprese sandwich. We said \u201cI love you\u201d eight months in, which felt positively retro compared with my previous interminable, communication-free situationships. But he doesn\u2019t want kids, and I\u2019m pretty sure I do. So here I am in my 30s, in a long-distance open relationship with him and somehow also back on the merry-go-round: running straight from work to meet strangers in bars across Brooklyn, prepared for another perfectly nice evening that will ultimately lead nowhere.<\/p>\n

Of course, people have kids without a partner all the time. In 2024, 40 percent of all babies in the U.S. were born to unmarried women\u2014eight times the share in 1960. A growing number of men are deciding to become single dads. Batya Novick, a therapist who works with people facing reproductive challenges, is seeing more single clients who want to discuss egg freezing or IVF; she hears so much about their romantic lives, or lack thereof, that she\u2019s become a de facto dating coach. Solo parenting, though, is rarely Plan A. Raising a kid without a teammate is difficult, expensive, and sometimes lonely.<\/p>\n

So some people are looking for creative Plan Bs. In 2011, Ivan Fatovic created a website called Modamily for people in search of a partner\u2014not necessarily a romantic one\u2014to have a child with. Fatovic was 35 when he realized that there might be demand for such a service; his female friends were starting to worry about their biological clocks, and their dating lives weren\u2019t going anywhere. \u201cMaybe the person that you have children with,\u201d he said, \u201cis not the person that you grow old with.\u201d Modamily now has more than 120,000 users, and it\u2019s led to more than 1,000 babies being born, according to Fatovic.<\/p>\n

Through Fatovic, I got in touch with Zachary Sahuque and Amanda Lohse, who have two children together from IVF, and are considering using their frozen embryos for a third. When they met on Modamily in 2019, they were both single and antsy to have kids. Lohse was 40 and preparing to have a child on her own, but figured she\u2019d give the site a shot. After vetting each other for a few months, talking about God and ethics and parenting styles, they decided they could work well as co-parents. They\u2019d both been through some painful romantic experiences and thought this way might be cleaner\u2014avoiding the great rush of feelings and the disappointment when they fade. Sahuque hoped for what many of us consider a second-best-case scenario: \u201cWe\u2019ll be like a happily divorced couple.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that sense, their dream came true. They\u2019ve become close friends. With their two boys, they go on vacations, spend holidays together, and have the occasional family dinner. Sahuque is grateful for how dedicated Lohse is to the kids; Lohse is happy to have a co-parent at all, but especially someone so warm, who has never made their situation feel awkward. Listening to them, I started imagining that I, too, might find someone on Modamily.<\/p>\n

But then I realized, with a sinking feeling, that as unconventional as Sahuque and Lohse\u2019s setup is, they still follow traditional gender roles. They reside on his 55-acre ranch in Price, Texas, but she and the kids live in a mobile home on the property. He travels constantly for work, and she balances child care and a full-time teaching job. He\u2019s dated since they had kids, but she rarely has the time. And although the women Sahuque has dated seem charmed by their unusual parenting arrangement, she told me, the men she\u2019s met seem threatened by it. \u201cThere\u2019s just something that draws women to men who are actively involved in their kids\u2019 lives,\u201d she said. But \u201ca woman with two little kids is more of a burden than a benefit.\u201d I felt like I\u2019d burst through a new door only to find myself in the same room.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re living in <\/span>a strange in-between time. Women have gained enough agency to work outside the home, but many still lack equality within it. Men could benefit from a new set of gender norms, but much of American culture embraces the old ones. People can do without romance, but what are they replacing it with? The anthropologist Dinah Hannaford\u2019s concern, after seeing women around the globe \u201copt out\u201d in different ways, is that single Americans are encouraged to find meaning in professional gain, wellness, and self-actualization\u2014individual pursuits rather than collective ones. In the past decade or so, happiness rates have declined precipitously for unmarried adults\u2014regardless of education level\u2014much more so than for those who are married, Yifeng Wan, a researcher at the University of Virginia, has found. In that sense, singlehood is getting harder, even as it\u2019s less stigmatized. Perhaps that\u2019s because faith groups, civic organizations, and other communities play a less central role in American life than they once did. These networks used to buffer against isolation and economic displacement\u2014the thorns of modern life that make partnership more valuable yet love more difficult to find.<\/p>\n

One of the things that makes us human, the anthropologist Joanna Davidson told me, is that we can envision alternative futures. But first, we must look frankly at the present. The women she and Hannaford featured in Opting Out<\/i> weren\u2019t part of an orchestrated revolution against marriage. Most of them still valued romance; they didn\u2019t experience singlehood as \u201cunequivocally liberating,\u201d the authors wrote. They simply made choices within their given constraints. This was Allie Hoffman\u2019s credo, in a way: \u201ctotal devotion to reality.\u201d Yet when enough people veer from tradition\u2014if only to inch their own life forward\u2014a social movement begins.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure where this one is leading us. But I feel hopeful when I think back to my first interview with Kris Swiatocho, the singles minister. (\u201cJesus was single,\u201d she likes to remind congregants.) In her 20s, she said, she\u2019d hopped from boyfriend to boyfriend; she was in debt, drinking and partying to try to fill \u201cthe well\u201d\u2014the empty place within her. Her parents\u2019 church didn\u2019t have any single members around her age. But then she learned about a group called Singles Offering Life to Others, or SOLO, and that\u2019s where she found her sense of purpose. Now she tours the country teaching church leaders, who are mostly married fathers, how to engage the growing number of single people they need to fill their pews. \u201cI do this,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I see me everywhere out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found it curious, though, that despite living such a rich, full life as a single person, she urges congregants not to give up on romance. So I asked about the discrepancy. Swiatocho still believes in the beauty of partnership, she said. But she doesn\u2019t think that she\u2019ll find it anytime soon, and she\u2019s content with what\u2019s in front of her. She talks with single friends sometimes\u2014half joking, half serious\u2014about buying tiny homes, parking them somewhere, and making a DIY retirement village. Each night they would gather around a firepit, cook dinner, and talk about their day. It\u2019s a tribute to reality and also an exercise in imagination. Sounds pretty romantic to me.<\/p>\n

This article appears in the <\/i>September 2026<\/i> print edition with the headline \u201cThe Great Romance Slump.\u201d When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/i>The Atlantic.<\/small><\/p>\n

Read more I Can\u2019t Be the Only One Who Loves Dulles<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why are so few young people finding love?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Great Romance Slump - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1778\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Great Romance Slump - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why are so few young people finding love?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1778\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-03T10:41:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"34 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"The Great Romance Slump\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-03T10:41:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778\"},\"wordCount\":6844,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/c1449bfabc648c676e24038feee9e83c.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1778\",\"name\":\"The Great Romance Slump - 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