Dating app stigma is still a thing i nearly missed out on my now husband because of it glamour uk


I nearly missed out on the love of my life because I was fixated on the idea of meeting IRL, rather than on an app
We never talk about ‘the one who got away’.
I nearly missed out on the love of my life because I was fixated on the idea of meeting IRL, rather than on an app
When Tinder - the first dating app that was aimed at younger people - hit, I was in a relationship and so never gave the idea of meeting this way a second thought. However, several years on, one breakup, one makeup and another breakup later, I found myself single and having to face the idea of dating apps with fresh eyes.
But even though I wasn't really meeting anyone IRL, I was still dismissive about the idea of meeting someone via an app. “It's just such a boring story,” I would tell friends. “It's not exactly a romantic tale to tell the grandkids is it?”
But romantic or not, my dating app-using friends were finding themselves loved up and, after two years of refusing to even download one, I was not. Suddenly, weekends full of girly brunches became accompanying friends to wedding shows and swapping stories of going back to our ex's turned into listening to my nearest and dearest rave about healthy boundaries and great sex. I was becoming lonelier, but still, my steadfast grip on the idea that the perfect movie-style meet cute was waiting just around the corner for me, meant it took me a further two years to join one myself.
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Then I matched with my now-husband (thanks, Bumble). I felt butterflies when his pictured flashed up, we matched immediately and spoke until the early hours before we went to sleep. The next day I could barely concentrate at work, I just flicked through his picture gallery on the app again and again, wondering what he was doing with his day. And though my friends suggested that I wait a few days until messaging him (he'd left his number for me at the end of our conversation), I couldn't help myself.
It was the summer of 2017 and I spent several happy, though entirely sleep-deprived, weeks messaging this man - reading snippets of our conversation to friends, daydreaming about meeting him for the first time and feeling distinctly as though this was ‘it’.
Had our eyes first met across a crowded room? No. Had I stopped the lift doors from closing on him and then been unable to look away? No. But then had I met any of my other boyfriends - all of whom I had met IRL - that way? No, no I hadn't.
I'll spare you the details of our first few meetings (beers on Primrose Hill, dinners in central London and an embarrassing moment with a sleep-inducing antihistamine) but, as you probably guessed above, I married him five years later. However, it took me all of one date to decide that that this was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me. Had our eyes first met across a crowded room? No. Had I stopped the lift doors from closing on him and then been unable to look away? No. But then had I met any of my other boyfriends - all of whom I had met IRL - that way? No, no I hadn't.
But, what did happen was that he was the only person I ever really spoke to on a dating app, the only date I ever went on from one and the only man I could think about as soon as our first online conversation happened. And, there have been many romantic stories to tell since our initial meeting - love is not a one-chance to get a happy ending situation, it's a string of little moments that help to create your once-in-a-lifetime story - a fact that I had misunderstood for all those years previously, when the moment of meeting was the only aspect that mattered to me.
We never talk about ‘the one who got away’.
Now I will tell anyone who listens the story of how we met, and I tell it with great pride. And I'm not the only one, many of my friends who met on dating apps - lots of whom are now happily married - will also tell you their own romantic stories. In fact, according to a recent survey, over 75% of young people in the UK use dating apps, and today, in 2022, online dating remains the top way couples meet. According to The Knot 2019 Jewelry and Engagement study, 22% of couples meet online and end up getting engaged and this number has risen exponentially given the pandemic.
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On top of this, the same study referenced that marriage breakups were reported in about 6% of the people who met online, compared with 7.6% of the people who met offline, and those who met online were more likely to experience higher relationship satisfaction.
So why, with all this positive data, and many of us knowing people with glowing dating app reviews, is there still a stigma around meeting online?
So why, with all this positive data, and many of us knowing people with glowing dating app reviews, is there still a stigma around meeting online? Why did I, like many others still do, see it as a ‘lesser’ form of dating? In fact, so prevalent is this stigma that many daters lie to family members (or avoid telling the full truth) about how they met their significant other if they matched online.
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The question is though, why?
“Despite the most recent stats which suggest that 70% of couples now meet on a dating app, many people are loathe to admit this to friends and family,” dating coach Kate Mansfield tells GLAMOUR. “Why the stigma? For many, dating apps still evoke the idea of hook ups, affairs and only for the desperate and lonely.”
In fact, there are hundreds of threads of forums like Quora that show members' asking, ‘is using a dating app desperate?’. It seems that we are a society so concerned about how things look to the outside world that we are willing to forgo true love in order to maintain a perceived perfection.
“I have had many clients in the past who are worried about telling their friends - and particularly older family members who might not understand modern dating - that they met their partner online,” founder of TS Therapy, Tami Sobell explains. “And several who refuse to touch dating apps at all due to their own stigma around them, even if they are struggling to meet someone they connect with in their day-to-day lives.”
“We seem to live in a world that feels that it isn't ‘cool’ to be looking for love, that it should just find you, and if you are in search of it, you are somehow desperate or not ‘attractive enough’ to be ‘wanted’ in your offline life,” she adds. "We need to reframe the idea that meeting online is a confession that you can't find anyone offline.
“There are myriad factors that stop us from meeting people out and about: perhaps we're really busy or feel uncomfortable when we are approached in bars or restaurants and so shut the conversation down. Maybe all our friends are in relationships themselves and so we have less opportunity to meet new people as our social circle ceases to expand and fluctuate in the same way it did at school or university."
We asked the experts.
And the thing is though, beyond this stigma and perceived judgement, the love of your life might be waiting to take you for beers on Primrose Hill (or the equivalent wherever you live). “If you can put aside these outdated judgments, online apps are quite simply the most effective way to find and keep a suitable partner,” Kate says. “90% of my clients meet a partner online, once they find a strategy that works. Dating apps nowadays cater to many niches, interest groups and bypass the terribly embarrassing faux pas of approaching someone in a bar, only to find out that they are already married.”
"My advice is this," she concludes. “Before you embark on looking for a partner, either online or off, make sure that you are clear what you’re looking for. Do some work on yourself if needed, have good boundaries and learn to communicate clearly and honestly. Dating sites provide an endless pool of all kinds of people - the good, the bad and the crazy ! But if you keep going you’ll eventually find ‘the one’ for you.”
So, I wish you love at first swipe, or love at first sight, whichever is going to leave you happiest, most-fulfilled and loved-up.