When it comes to affairs of the heart, we are all beginners. Some of us, however, at least speak with authority. Introducing Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue (2021) and the forthcoming Love in Exile (2025), whose advice caught our eye. Contact her at DearShonVogue@gmail.com for your own chance at enlightenment.
Dear Shon,
It feels like every time I go on the internet these days I see a new piece from a writer decrying the state of modern dating, saying that they’ve sworn off the apps, that everyone they meet is cold or withholding or paranoid, that Hinge is an eternal nightmare of interactions that range from frustrating to actively misogynistic, that things have never been so difficult. It’s my bad luck that this discourse has emerged when I’ve become single for the first time in eight years.
My boyfriend, who I lived with, broke up with me about half a year ago. The break-up was utterly devastating but I am now curious about dating. My friends want me to feel excited about it, but they are also almost exclusively all living with their long-term partners, and have been out of the dating game for many years. I feel frightened and out of my depth. Is there a way to approach dating that is fun and enjoyable, not the fraught nightmare that people make it out to be?
M
Dear M,
You confess you’re frightened—that’s completely natural and understandable. You were left heartbroken by the end of a serious relationship, and the ending wasn’t your decision. I imagine this may have upended your sense of security, swept away many of your hopes and plans for your future as well as leaving you bruised and sensitive to rejection. Healing from that and contemplating how you might once again invite love and intimacy, and the associated risks, back into your life is brave. Congratulate yourself on that, even if you’re not ready to start just yet.
Here’s the problem you’re having, though: as you begin to look for new connections, you’re “researching” modern dating via other people’s opinions and constantly scanning for landmines in the terrain. This sounds like a preemptive measure against getting hurt but risks becoming a very good strategy for convincing yourself out of the idea altogether. The only way to learn how to date in a way that is healthy and enjoyable for you will be to get out of your comfort zone and actually try it, I’m afraid.
Here’s a preview: You’re probably going to find dating awkward, confusing, frustrating, surprising, fun, revelatory, dull, annoying, thrilling, sexy and embarrassing. This is because “dating” is literally just meeting new people and people are often awkward, confusing, frustrating, surprising, fun, revelatory, dull, annoying, thrilling, sexy and embarrassing. Cards on the table: I have a very fraught history with the idea of dating myself, but one thing I have learned is that dating is more enjoyable when it’s embarked upon as a low stakes venture — just meeting another person to see if you hit it off and have fun.
Dating has been most unpleasant for me when I am doing it out of a sense of obligation, due to societal pressure to “get out there,” to get over someone else or to remedy emotional pain. In these instances, I am expecting more from the endeavor than simply meeting a person to see how we get on. Instead, dating becomes an arena in which my entire value—physically, sexually, emotionally—is being adjudicated upon by men in a patriarchal society. This soon generates a wave of resentment and I find I become more sensitive to perceived slights or rejection than is warranted. You mention that one of your concerns is men being misogynistic on dating apps. I’m sure you know well there are men who hate women in bars, at parties, on campus and in the office too. Yet it’s our choice whether to use unpleasant exchanges with random men on dating apps to build a catastrophic narrative about ourselves. All I can recommend to anyone beaten down by a cluster of these encounters is to take a break, focus on yourself and return when you have the headspace.
By the way, I don’t really buy the popular line that dating is worse now than in some former golden age. The French sociologist Marie Bergström has pointed out that there is no empirical data to suggest people are forming couples any less than any time before (we just break up more readily). Panics about the decline in love and marriage have been recurring since the 19th century; before online dating apps, matrimonial adverts in newspapers were similarly blamed for damaging healthy matchmaking.
What has changed more recently is that we—generally—have a lot more choice. In many ways this is good, especially for women. Yet with choice comes anxiety about how best to exercise it and with the new landscape of online dating, we often don’t have context telling us what a particular connection with someone means. Many of us simply don’t know what we want from the apps. It is worth saying that apps are not the only way to meet people; about half my friends who met someone in the past year did it offline.
Finally, some quick tips for dating I have learned along the way. Arrange a meeting as soon as possible if you like them from chatting online (to check there’s still a spark in person); too much contact too soon is as bad as slow replies and monosyllabic answers; getting a goodnight text every night after three dates isn t romantic, its poor boundaries; your friends in long term relationships won’t get it—spend time with female friends who are also single and dating for post mortems; check in with yourself to see if you’re drinking to mask discomfort and, above all else, never ever duty date (go on dates purely because your mum, your friends or society tells you to).
