One of Life's Greatest Joys Dies in The 21st Century

Love in the 21st Century

This isn’t your grandparent’s world. Most people who got it correct are rolling in their graves regarding things like honor, commitment, love, and family. Unfortunately, things like love and lasting relationships are dying. The idea of love, marriage, relationships, and forever slowly dies as the world turns a blind eye.

Single-person households are at an all-time high. Marriages have dropped from roughly 10 per 1,000 in 1990 to 6 per 1,000 in 2024. With marriage rates plummeting, relationships aren’t what they were before the 80s, 70s, and earlier. So, what happened?

There was a time when it was simpler, compared to today. As Valentine’s Day approaches, a holiday traditionally celebrating love and relationships, things in 2025 are different than 40 and even 30 years ago. There was a time when you would see someone in a room, stare at each other, and one of you would take the leap. Slowly, if you were lucky, a romance would build.

Now, it all comes down to numbers. Algorithms, developed dating profiles, and the fun of swiping left or right are the beginning phases of a relationship. The 21st-century Cupid's arrow is fired from miles away through an internet connection instead of in person. And if you’ve looked at one of the apps in the last few years, they’re often filled with trainwrecks waiting to happen. Or so some would think, meaning there’s a stigma with being on a dating app.

Dating applications are convenient. They aren’t guaranteed to work. Even the famed Eharmony has its limitations in the real world. Unless you live in a major city or large metropolitan area, the likely matches often come from one, two, or even four to five hours away. The convenience dips off drastically when you add lengthy distances.

People can be whoever they want, say whatever they want, and act any way they want online. That alone means there’s an inherent question of trust, or legitimate intent when scouring the dating sites for potential matches. Reading many dating profiles, the phrases “I don’t have time for games,” or, “no games please,” are repetitively used.

When you make contact with one, you’re likely making it because of a photograph, or some demographic piece of information the other side used to describe their lives. A picture might be cute, but you’re no longer in a place where the potential new love in your life is in the same room. And if you’re only going off the picture, be prepared to be disappointed. Pictures can be manipulated, practiced, and older than the shoes on your feet.

Why is everyone on Match, Eharmony, or some other site? It comes down to a matter of convenience, and sometimes a shortage of ideas. The bar scene is often wrought with problems. Alcohol leads to bad decisions, bad decisions lead to mistakes and regret (and the occasional accidental pregnancy), and that’s the bar scene. It’s fun in college when you’re not looking for forever, but by 30, even 40, you’re starting to mature and think differently about your life and the future.

The Baggage Curse

We all come with a certain amount of baggage. But I hear people swear they’ll never find love. Some swear they’ll never again find it. Why, if you found it once, can’t you?

There are many different types of baggage. Most of the baggage you’ll encounter comes down to whether or not you’re strong enough to deal with it, or is it too much for you. The truth about baggage is when you’re looking for love or a relationship, are you leaving your baggage at the door? If you’re not, then you’re cursing things from the start.

At sixteen, meeting a high school sweetheart, you’ve got some baggage. Either you’re insecure about your looks, embarrassed by your parents, or you’re dealing with a complicated issue or trauma. Baggage is a generic term for the effects living in an imperfect world has on you.

Trust appears to be the common issue single people haven’t dealt with. It’s important: trust, but people who wish they had a relationship or someone special in their lives need to ask themselves a question. Why don’t you trust this person? They didn’t do anything to you, did they? If your answer is yet, you’ve got to work on your trust issues. Nobody wants to be punished for someone else's sins!

The Past

Have you been in a relationship that failed, and wondered why? Did the person you were with have a great love story? Chances are, they were still haunted by a past romance gone wrong. And it’s not that you were punished for someone else’s sins.

People who’ve had a great love story, or an intensely passionate relationship, can struggle with comparisons between the past and today, and then ruin tomorrow. For many reasons, it’s understandable. The biggest reason is that losing someone intensely special to you is akin to mourning the death of a loved one. In some ways, it might be harder. When someone passes away, particularly when it’s at a young age, it’s tragic, but it’s finite. There’s closure.

When someone is alive and you’re grieving them, it’s harder to reconcile them not being in your life. Deep love, particularly when you were lucky enough to feel like it was with your best friend, can cause you to struggle with moving on. What-ifs haunt even the person who leaves the relationship.

One way or another, when you’ve been in the so-called “best” times of your life, and they’re over, you might want to find that feeling again. The dopamine high is something you want to have again, and your greatest memories will come to mind at the strangest times. You can find yourself comparing the new person you are with to the old, and trying to hold them to the standards the old one lived up to. It’s hard to live up to that pedestal.

Other Factors

As cultural changes have taken over parts of our lives during the past forty years, things like traditional gender roles have evolved. This can create uncertainty in dating and romantic relationships. It’s a comedic trope in sit-coms, but not far from reality as people now struggle to figure out who they are in the picture, and what their role has become.

Some men can feel uncertain about their role due to the changed dynamics of leadership, being a provider, and emotional expression. Anybody who’s got children in their 20s and 30s has likely noticed some of the movement away from masculine traits. Things like toxic masculinity have inundated dating and relationships, making it harder to know the difference between being “nice” or “chivalrous” and being overly manly.

Besides the shift in gender roles, there’s been a decline in traditional family values. Marriage was once one of the pillars of society, but cultural priorities have shifted and led to marriage being devalued. Unlike your grandparents, or even your parents' generation, marriage is viewed from a different perspective, and til death, you do part was replaced by taking the easy road when things got rough. That alone has slowed some down when it comes to commitment and marriage in the dating scene.

Why buy the milk, or perhaps sausage in the ladies' case, if you can get a taste for free? The rise of hookups and casual dating is ever more popular, and there are videos where even women brag about their body count. Everyone should look for personal fulfillment before being married, mostly so they know themselves and love themselves before expecting someone else to. But the lower moral standard has done little to help the dating scene, or those hoping to find forever.

Takeaways

Dating and relationships have taken a beating in the 21st century. Whether it’s the changing cultural norms, the daunting fear of commitment because of horror stories, or the rise in the popularity of dating apps keeping us from developing social skills, the statistics aren’t in favor of love. It’s a sad commentary on the future of humanity.

There’s something to be said about finding that one true love of your life. But, unfortunately, the love of your life may not see you as the great love of theirs. That erodes trust in people when they go through it, making it tough for them to restart their search.

In a time of such great uncertainty, it’s hard to recognize what to do and what not to do. Things have changed over time, and entering the dating pool after you’ve been out a while requires a scorecard. In today's world, the 21st century, it’s believable that you could find a woman who’s as horrid as men in the 80s. Maybe that’s the equality they were looking for. Too many horrible people, self-involved, and self-aggrandizing, have threatened the future of one of the great institutions in human history.