For all its apparent shrewdness, slow love leaves many on the dating market dissatisfied
Like a lot of people in her (and our) generation, Lea Hecht, a single 36-year-old psychiatrist from Philadelphia, resents having to date online. She told us she especially hates the protracted texting period: “I find that if there is too much of a lead-in, then there’s too much of a well-formed idea in their minds of who you are. And then, inevitably, you refute that when you meet them in person.” That’s assuming that an in-person date happens at all. “A few years ago I would go on so many bad first dates. And it’s such a waste of your time and their time,” Julia Capeloto, a 39-year-old senior marketing manager from San Francisco, told us. Now she doesn’t have to worry about taking Ubers to and from a bar, or wasting time meeting someone she might not get along with; it’s far “more efficient” to meet someone first over video, she said. Better for the bad first encounter to happen from the convenience of one’s own home. When we asked Lea about how newly popularized dating formats such as videochat might improve her dating experience, she dismissed the idea out of hand. Video screening, she suspected, would serve only as another barrier to real connection. “It would take a lot for me to actually meet someone in person,” she told us.
For Chantal and many other young people on the dating market, slow love stands in direct conflict with their reproductive timelines
Slow love is not just a dating tactic; it’s a whole orientation toward romantic lifemitment is postponed, and as the relationship gets stretched out, it can become brittle. Chantal Lunderville, a 35-year-old physician from Orange County, California, met her boyfriend online during the pandemic. When we spoke with her, she had just completed a round of egg freezing and told us she would like to try to start a family as soon as possible. Continue reading “For all its apparent shrewdness, slow love leaves many on the dating market dissatisfied” →