How You Meet Has Changed. The Butterflies Haven’t.
A love story in three generations.
My parents met at a dance in High School. An actual dance, with a band and punch and probably some very awkward small talk. My dad asked my mom to dance, she said yes, and that was that. They were married for over sixty years.
Simple. Terrifying. But simple.
When I was dating, it was a little more complicated. I met people at college bars, through friends, at work, once on a train in Greece (very romantic, would recommend). You saw someone, you talked to someone, you exchanged phone numbers on a napkin. Then you waited by the phone. The actual phone. Attached to the wall…or you hoped to ‘bump into them’ again… and sometimes that actually happened!
The process had its own kind of agony, but at least you knew what someone looked like before you caught feelings.
Now? My kids and their friends (and my friends…and me, for that matter) meet people through apps. They swipe, they match, they text for weeks. Sometimes months. They build entire relationships with people they’ve never been in the same room with. They know someone’s music taste, political views, and feelings about pineapple on pizza before they know what their laugh sounds like.
It’s a whole different world. And honestly, I don’t know if it’s easier or harder. Probably both.
The Menu Got Bigger. The Appetite Stayed the Same.
I have thoughts on what happened. The options exploded, but the hunger didn’t change.
My parents’ generation had a small menu. You picked from whoever was at church, in the neighborhood, at school, or related to someone your mother knew. Limited options, but also limited overthinking. You picked someone, and you made it work.
My generation had more choices. We could meet people outside our zip code, outside our social circle. We had personal ads (remember those- it sounds so sketchy now?) and later, early dating sites that felt a little embarrassing to admit you used.
Now the menu is infinite. You can swipe through hundreds of faces in an hour. You can filter by height, by hobbies, or by whether they want kids. You can find someone who checks every box on paper and still feel nothing when you finally meet.
The choosing was never the hard part. The connection is the hard part. And no app has figured out how to guarantee that.
Texting Is Not Dating
I have another theory. And I’m not a scientist, so take this with a grain of salt. But I think we’ve accidentally created a new stage of relationships that didn’t exist before: the texting purgatory.
You match. You start talking. You text every day. You share things. You start to feel something. And then three weeks in, you finally meet and realize... nothing. No spark. No chemistry. Just a nice person you already told your middle name and your childhood trauma to.
That’s a lot of emotional investment for a first date that goes nowhere.
Or the opposite happens. You meet, and there IS a spark, but now it feels so high stakes because you’ve already built this whole thing in your head. One weird moment, and it all feels ruined.
We didn’t used to have this problem. You met someone, you felt something, or you didn’t, you moved on. Now you can fall for someone’s texting personality and have no idea if that translates to real life. And the worst-case scenario is that you fall for someone who is nothing like their texting persona or is not real at all.
It’s exhausting.
But the Butterflies? Same as Always.
This is the part that makes me hopeful. Despite all the changes, some things haven’t moved an inch.
The nervousness before a first date. The wondering if they like you as much as you like them. The way your stomach flips when they text back. The hope that this one is different.
My mom felt that at the dance in 1959.
I felt it waiting for a call in 1985….and in 2023
My daughter felt it staring at her phone in 2021.
Different decades. Different technology. Same butterflies.
That’s the part we can’t optimize or automate or swipe our way out of. The human part. The messy, hopeful, terrifying part.
A Little Help For the Journey
If you’re out there navigating this brave new world of dating, just know you’re not alone. The tools have changed, but the feelings are timeless. And if you need a little help figuring out what you want, who you’re dealing with, or whether this situation you’re in is actually going somewhere...
I made some quizzes for that
Check them out here: Compatible, Combustible, or Just…Lackluster? 👈
And if you want a modern dating sidekick, my book ChatGPT is My Wingman 👈 is all about using today’s tools to make the search a little less painful. Because if we’ve got the technology, we might as well use it, a little polish while keeping it authentic!