40 | The Great Romance Slump

Something strange this way comes… we don’t really like dating anymore.

If you live in a city, you could go to a dating event every week, hire a matchmaking service, talk to a dating coach - and you have a bunch of dating apps to choose from. And yet despite the abundance of possibilities we are living in a slump.

A major piece published this month in The Atlantic is literally titled “The Great Romance Slump” and asks why so many young people are struggling to find healthy, long-term relationships. Everybody's calling it a dating/relationship recession.

People want connection → dating apps aren't satisfying them → marriage is still desirable → but people are increasingly comfortable staying single.

Our generation still wants love, marriage, and real commitment. What we're losing faith in is the machinery that's supposed to take us there.

The apps promised better matches through more options. What many of us actually got instead was exhaustion.

Modern romance takes a toll. You pay with your energy, your sanity, your cash, and hours of your life, and not everyone can afford it.

A survey of over 14,000 young singles aged 18-34 found more than three quarters said they're just burned out swiping altogether, and nearly half felt the apps only led to surface-level conversations, and in extreme cases, fodder for another “Date from Hell” TikTok video.

The question for us Christians is pretty straightforward: does this system actually help us form intentional relationships, or does it train us to shop for a potential spouse like we're comparing products on Amazon?

As the apps lose their shine, something old is making a comeback: young Christians are returning to meeting people in real life, on purpose, and through communities that already share their faith and values.

Think Christian campus events, church youth groups and dinners, and even "unsingling" gatherings that are primarily for fellowship. The draw usually isn't "come find a spouse." It's the chance to know people organically, like we used to.

We have come full circle, and the Church has had the blueprint the whole time.

Intentionally embracing singleness instead of treating it as a waiting room, or something you need to escape, is the new trend. They call it “Solomaxxing.”

WIRED describes it as young people choosing independence and deliberately opting out of the dating treadmill. Psychotherapists are describing it as people redirecting the time and money they'd spend dating into their own lives instead: travel, savings, skills, peace.

You've seen the thousands of reels and TikToks celebrating that freedom, with people proudly posting solo trips and saying they don't want to give up their singlehood.

Apostle Paul got there 2000 years before WIRED did.

In 1 Corinthians 7, he describes singleness as an actual calling, not a spiritual consolation prize. Marriage is good. So is being single. Our identity isn’t placed in either phase, but in Christ alone.

Family dinners, friendly catch-ups, and even sermons often circle back to the same question: "So when are you getting married?"

It's an easy trap to fall into, treating marriage as a measuring stick of adulthood and spiritual maturity.

Getting hitched doesn't make us better Christians, it's how familiar we are with the Word. Better Christians make better spouses, and not the other way around.

This sounds trivial, but it's becoming a serious part of the relationship conversation.

There's a growing, very public discussion about women who are financially independent, career-oriented, buying homes on their own, and running into men who have complicated feelings about that independence.

Women don’t need a breadwinner anymore and they have ring cameras. Men who once prided themselves on being providers and protectors are now forced to learn new skills and qualities just to make themselves marriageable.

Women want a man to be able to pay for dinner, and also treat them as equals. Be sturdy and masculine, and also empathetic and thoughtful.

I think it's safe to say we're moving away from the question “should women have jobs” to “can two Christians build a marriage where neither person's calling has to disappear so the other can grow?”

The more I spectate on other people's dating lives (or lack thereof), the more I realize that there is a very, tragically, obvious gap between the person they're seeking and how to find them.

A gap that can't be bridged by apps, hookup culture, or parasocial attachment and fanfics (yes, I'm looking at you). 🫵🏽

At our core, God created us to be in community. It's why we suddenly realized working from home kinda sucked.

In this "Romance Slump," as Christians we have the upper hand: we do have the church.

Not just a physical building in your local area. Rather, a global body, present in almost every city, binding us together in our strongest commonality, our faith in Christ.

Our platform isn't built on algorithms. And that is our superpower.

The best (and occasionally the worst) takes on love, dating, and relationships from around social media this week