Tired of having failed serial dates?

Dating sites have promoted a custom that previously only a few ‘casanovas’ and ‘mataharis’ had: linking one date after another without ‘staying’ with anyone, not even long enough to get to know them a little bit. In the end, these types of platforms and apps are a very wide catalog of possible couples, lovers, hookups or whatever we want to call them. And what happens? That this excess causes the selection to be much more complicated than through ‘natural’ channels, where we rarely have such a wide assortment to try.

That is to say, what psychologists call ‘choice overload’ or ‘Netflix effect’ occurs: the brain gets confused because there are too many options. It’s the same thing that happens to us on the famous audiovisual platform (and in free buffets): very excited to have a universe of possibilities within our reach, but in a short time we end up fatigued and without discrimination. As a reaction to this reality, in the world of online love, ‘slow dating’ is hitting hard, that is, not being in a hurry and recovering the art of flirting over a slow fire.

Because, when we get into a dating loop –failed, of course; if not, there would be no such loop–, we get used to not thinking in the medium or long term. And there are more and more people who do not take it well. “A lot of disappointment is generated and, after a while, many people end up not wanting to know anything about couples, because they feel cheated, used, they have been ‘ghosted’ (disappear without explanation)…”, says Sara Navarrete, psychologist expert in couple relationships and director of the Center for Clinical and Health Psychology of Valencia.

As he indicates, the loop develops in this way: «You enter the dynamic of having many relationships or superficial dates, in some cases you end up linking too much, but it goes wrong and you realize that you have wasted your time. So, you feel bad, you abandon that dynamic and you don’t want to know anything about anyone… until you see yourself pressured again because you don’t have a partner and start all over again,” Navarrete describes. She speaks from a professional and also a personal point of view. According to her account, she is now happily married with a child, but it has not always been like this and she knows first-hand what this process is like: «It involves tremendous fatigue ».

For this reason, she advises the people who come to her that the only way to break this drift is “that you take empowerment to your behavior.” That is, if we are not satisfied having a lot of ‘dumb’ serial relationships (eye, there are also people who are), let’s do something. “Before finding the yes we have to say many times no. We also have to adjust the filters before a date to see what we really want », she encourages.

return to romance

In this sense, Zoe Strimpel, a historian at the University of Sussex, and Suzie Hayman, a sentimental counselor, warn that “‘trying’ is fatal, since it weakens us, tires us and stimulates negative feelings about ourselves and others. the rest”. If you don’t feel like it, don’t go into the inertia of staying. If you don’t like someone, don’t repeat yourself, the BBC experts advised. Don’t ‘shoot’ everything, set yourself goals.

The fact is that the rise of ‘slow dating’ has already led some dating sites to promote this option. For example, the app Adopte (former Adoptauntio), after detecting that many users –surprisingly, many of them young– were interested in putting the brakes on and looking for deeper relationships, have opted to “return to romanticism… and, although sounds incoherent, online ‘dating’ can be a great ally to recover it”, consider those responsible. Laura Solé, Country Manager of the firm – present in eight countries and with millions of users – believes that “more and more people are putting aside the rush and throwaway relationships”.

As he points out, the pandemic has contributed to reinforcing this trend: a recent survey revealed that, after confinement, 70% of singles who previously sought sporadic encounters now preferred longer-lasting relationships. Question of fear of contagion or affective need? It could start as the first and lead to the second. “We need to recover real relationships – they sentence from Adopte -. We are at a time when we appreciate time more than ever.”