240. Overcoming dating burnout

course break down this psychology of our twenties. So there seems to be this like implicit, unspoken rush, this unspoken timeline during our twenties to find God, to have found your soulmate, found the love of your life by the time you turn thirty. It may not be said out loud. Your family may not be saying your friends may not

be saying it. Society may not be outwardly saying it, but it very much does feel like if you are getting closer to thirty, if you're moving through your twenties and you haven't had many dating experiences, you haven't had much luck, you haven't found the one that you are in some ways falling behind, and that can lead to a lot of us going on as many dates as possible, really feeling the rush to find someone, feeling like dating

is in many ways a numbers game. We really really want to have that person in our lives who we can trust, who are monogamous with, who we're committed to, who we can grow with, and in order to do that, we're kind of going to have to maybe kiss a lot of frogs. See a lot of people spend a lot of time on the dating app, swiping and matching and going on lousy first dates, going on incredible first dates,

then getting ghosted. It can be incredibly overwhelming, and it can lead to something called dating burnout or dating fatigue. And that is exactly what I want to talk about today.

What happens when for a long time, for a very extended period of time, you have just found yourself in a pattern of bad dates, of feeling like everyone is disappointing you, everyone is letting you down, no one is standing out, the apps unt providing, and yet you're still putting yourself out there as much as possible with no reward. To put it quite simply, I think it feels firstly exhausting but quite unfair when you are giving your everything to dating and it's not giving anything back to you.

What I really want to discuss is what is the mental psychological, emotional impacts and consequences of feeling like you have to continue to put yourself through the dating ringer in order to find love even when dating is absolutely and completely exhausting you. How do dating apps contribute to this? You know, one study from twenty nineteen which actually examined the impacts of dating apps on our mental.

is where that fatigue really sets in. You know, if you spend countless hours over time at work pushing towards a goal and you never achieve it, you will be

burnt out. If you spend hours at the gym working and pushing yourself, you will be fatigued, If you spend hours and hours with a friend who you know you don't really connect with anymore, but you are forced to really chat to and talk to, you will experience the same thing that we experience when we date for too long with little success and little reward, and feel like all of our cognitive, mental, even physical resources are going towards this project, almost that we no matter how hard

we work, we're not any closer to finishing. That is really, I think, at the crux and at the foundation of why dating burnout affects so many single people in their twenties, with so many other things in our lives. The harder you work, the more payout you get. The harder you push yourself in your career, or in your studies, or physically or emotionally or in terms of your hobbies like, the harder you push yourself, the harder you work, the more time you commit, the better you get, the better

the outcome. And dating is not the same. It is not the same type of game. I've heard from so many of you just lamenting at the fact that you never think you're going to find someone. You are completely and utterly dejected and rejected by the modern dating world. And I want to talk about it. I want to talk about why that happens, the impact, and the signs

that maybe it's time to take a break. I also want to talk about my own experience when I was single and I was dating, and how absolutely frustrated I was with dating for a period of time, and I took a break. I took a six month break. I did a complete detox, which felt so kind of contrasting to what I really wanted, like I wanted to find love. Why would I take a break? Well, actually, it ended

up completely resetting my perspective on dating. It ended up improving my resilience, improving my self reliance and my self esteem. And it meant that when I went back out there, I actually met someone wonderful. So hopefully you can learn from my experience. I want to teach you exactly how you can counteract dating burnout in the most counterintuitive ways, along with so much more so, if this is something that you are experiencing, as we always say, you are

not alone. This is a very common phenomena. At the moment, the dating world and the dating pool is very limited and very shallow, So how can you find your way through? What do you need to know and so much more so, without further ado, let's get into navigating dating burnout in our twenties. I want to begin with a statistic that might scare you, might encourage you. I hope it brings you a sense of comfort and maybe even community between

your fellow single people. Asudy done a couple of years ago, twenty twenty two interviewed a bunch of adults between the age of eighteen and fifty four who were actively and currently dating, and it found that seventy eight percent of them were experiencing dating burnout, with a further eighty percent of them saying that that was specifically to do with

online dating. A further fifty four percent said that they had lost hope in ever finding someone on the dating apps, and twenty eight percent said they lost hope in ever finding someone ever. So, for such a big, complicated, but also common mental phenomena, it's interesting that we don't talk about it more. What exactly does dating burnout actually feel like? Well? I was going to say what does it look like? But I do actually think that it is truly a feeling.

It's a gut feeling, It's a gut reaction. To a situation into an experience whereby dating is not giving you any more joy or satisfaction. It's not exciting, it's not fun as it's meant to be. You will feel like dating is a chore, like it's something you have to do each week. You know, go grocery shopping, clean my bed sheets, clean my house, go on a date with Bill from Hinge, Go on a date with two to three people to keep my numbers up because you know,

maybe eventually this person will be the one. You often feel exhausted and hopeless when you're swiping. When you're meeting new people, there is this interesting experience where a lot of the time you're already anticipating that it's going to grow badly. You're already anticipating that they will reject you. In some situations, you even kind of hope that they do. You hope that they cancel, because you just cannot take another failed moment of hope. You cannot take another failed situationship,

another almost their kind of situation. I want to return to this idea of feeling like when you're meeting new people, when you're swiping, that you can't even be bothered because

you already anticipate that they're going to reject you. This is actually a mindset known as the rejection mindset, and according to a recent study by Hinge, found that a lot of us who are actively dating end up feeling this way and it makes us feel particularly exhausted and like the dating pool is particularly lacking of any promise.

So a rejection mindset, it basically means that we focus primarily on all the rejections that we've had, and we start to believe that that pattern of rejection is going to follow us into the future. So we come to expect that whenever we need a new person, it's going to end up poorly. Those situations where it has before are really the first to come up in our memories. What does this end up doing?

buttery and smooth and liquid. It's just beautiful, a beautiful date. In the back of your mind, you might be thinking, all right, don't get too attached, hold back here, hold the horses, don't put your best self forward, don't put too much energy into this, because it's going to end exactly like all the last ones, and that can really

close us off. Right naturally, it's going to close us off because when you are used to being so intensely vulnerable and allowing people to come into your life having that big or open heart, if you are experiencing a great deal of dating burnout or rejection, you're going to pretty soon, you know, learn that that is the easiest way to be hurt. It's quite sad, really, how our dating experiences can almost change our personality and how open we are to love. There was this really interesting study

that looked into this back in twenty nineteen. Specifically, it looked into the rejection mindset and dating apps, and what they did was they put people in a fake dating app scenario. So these researchers literally recreated that made their own dating app, and they asked people to swipe on fake profiles and decide who they wanted to date, who they would like to day, who they were going to

reject versus accept. They also had another condition, and this was in real life, and the participants got to meet all these amazing people, and they were told, all of these people already like you, they already want to go on a date with you. They've already said that they're

attracted to you. That's why they're here. What they found was that the participants immediately when they were on the apps rejected a whole lot more people, expecting that if they were to you know, match with them, swipe yes on them, say yes to them, they would be rejected anyway. So they took themselves out of the game, despite despite not having any information to indicate that that was the case.

Whereas in the other condition, when everyone was already confirmed to be available to them, the level of rejection decreased

by twenty seven percent. Because of the kind of nature of online dating and how we anticipate other people's responses based on our own perspective or mindset, it actually turns out that we reject ourselves a lot more, and we naturally close ourselves off from dating, and the secondary finding, of course, was that this is more likely to be the case if the participant was reporting signs symptoms indicators

of long term dating burnout. Here are a couple other signs before we move on to exactly why this tends to happen. Another really important indicator is if you have started contemplating what would really mean to be single for the rest of your life, if that is a scenario that is regularly playing through your head even though you don't want it to be the case. So that's the

important distinction. If you're thinking about being single for the rest of your life with joy and a positive outlook and being like, yeah, actually I love that idea, and you're not dating at all. I don't think that's a sign of dating burnout. I think that's a sign of almost maybe acceptance of where you're at, an acceptance of what you want from your future. But if you are facing this like uh, pull and push this like tug between I just want to ditch the dating apps. I

don't want to see anyone ever again. I'm just going to be alone forever, and then you know, the next week redownloading the apps. That almost feels like an addictive cycle. That is a sign of dating burnout, That is a sign that you keep being drawn back into the promise of maybe finding someone, but then immediately disappointed because you are burnt out. Think about it in comparison to a workplace burnout or burnout in a professional situation, where we

typically think about it when we see burnout. There, what will happen is that people will take, you know, a day off. They'll be really really stressed with work, their boss will be like, no, just take a day off, and then they'll come back for maybe a couple of days and immediately step right back into the stress and feel like that day off, that time off did absolutely nothing for them, because actually they didn't treat their burnout, They just treated some of the symptoms. Same goes for dating.

And the thing about this contemplation of a permanent singlehod status right is that it actually feels quite likely. It feels like this is a potential scenario, especially in your twenties and your early thirties, where there has been a cultural shift towards non monogamy or towards a lack of commitment.

You can see that in the invention of new phrases like friends with benefits like situationships where there is more of a gray area when it comes to relationships compared to in previous generations where it was like, all right, there's three things, right, the single, dating, or married, and the shift the movement between those three things probably takes around a year or two. Of course, I think the trend away from that is probably very healthy in some ways.

You know, it indicates that we aren't just marrying the first person that we meet and then enduring perhaps an unhappy situation for the next sixty years. But it's true there is a lower, lesser tendency towards commitment in this generation, and a twenty twenty three study found that millennials and Gen z we are much less likely to be looking for monogamy or to state that monogamy or commitment are one of our top dating priorities. So this contemplation of like,

am I maybe going to be single forever? And perhaps a almost like fear of that and a sense of panic, but then also a sense of disappointment when you try and counteract that by dating. That's a big sign of dating burnout, just being exhausted, being tired, you're sick of telling your friends about your first dates. You're sick of going to you know, having to get dressed up every

single night. It's not exciting. So why does this happen? Well, we've talked about this briefly, but the biggest reason that we experience dating burnout is because we continue to put ourselves in a situation that is not fulfilling. Because of this pressure to find someone, Our society overly invests and places a huge preference on romantic love over anything else. It is always at the center. So what that means is that when you are not dating, you kind of

feel like you're letting maybe society down. This is a priority that you should be having, and so not doing it means that you're falling behind means that you're losing out. Maybe there is an element of fomo there, and so you continue to do so, You continue to go on the bad dates, You continue to be kind of like almost just dipping your toe in the water, even though you would prefer not to get wet, because there is

this expectation and pressure to find someone. We also experience dating better app because meeting new people constantly, especially people where you kind of have to contemplate a potential or think about their potential as a mate or as a partner. That is incredibly emotionally draining, especially if you don't have the spoons or if you're introverted. Oh my god, dating is such a time investment, Like it is an incredible

time investment. Even if you're only going on like one date a week, one date a month, that can still be three to four hours of getting ready, if getting there, or having to talk to someone. I don't know if I even have that much time for some of my closest friends at times in my life, you know, having to fit in dating with having a fulfilling social life, having hobbies, talking to your family, making sure that you're working, running your side hustle, taking care of yourself. Now, that

is hard. And so when it feels like the rest of our plate is already stacked up with things, and yet here we are dating and feeling like we're just constantly pushing this heavy rock up a hill with no success, Inevitably we're going to feel pretty fatigued by that situation. Finally, I think dating burnout occurs because with each new person you meet, you do have to be on, but there is also this pressure to come off as a certain person,

to come off as your best self. If you've got to remember, you know, dating, regardless of your investment in it, still does feel like it has quite high stakes, Like you know, the next date you go on that could be your soulmate. And so there is a real sense that when you show up you have to be giving everything. And sometimes that creates a lot of pressure as well.

I keep using the word pressure. It create you place an expectation on yourself to really show up perfectly and to really be impressive, and to be on maybe to be a little bit fake because they might like that version of you more. That takes a lot of energy to do that constantly, to do that for a slew of new people every month, every year. It all ends

up taking its toll. And of course it takes it's toll primarily emotionally because it's just kind of like all this energy that you would rather protect for yourself as being leached out, but also like physically and socially, if you don't have the battery, you don't have the time, you don't have the resources cognitively to invest in this.

So that is basically what leads us to a point of burnout to that place of just feel completely dejected, disappointed, frustrated, but almost feeling like you have to continue participating in this activity in order to be meeting society's expectations or in order to get the thing that you want, Like you want to be loved. Why does the process in order to get there feel so grueling. It doesn't have to feel that way. And that is my big promise to you today. Dating does not have to feel like

a chore. It doesn't have to feel like a punishment or at prison. It can be fun. You can bring the joy and the spark and the excitement back into it. So I want to talk about how to counteract dating burnout and how to actually be more successful in your dating life after this short break. I really think that if you're struggling with this at the moment, if you just feel like every day you go on is a dud, every person is disappointing you, it never works out. It's

not you. It is the entire culture of dating that has made it feel very transactional, very fast, very convenient,

and ultimately disappointing. So I really reached this point probably like two and a half years ago, where it had just been like back to back situationships, back to back, you know, four to five date situations where you're just about to get your hopes up and you're like, yeah, maybe I like have met my person, and no I have not, and you're disappointed and you're let downlet again yet again, and you know, there is this almost like emotional vulnerability hangover for a couple of weeks, and then

you're like, no, I'm not going to let this get me down. I want to find love, so I'm going to get back out there, and the cycle repeats itself. I found that I was getting I was way too attached to the people that I was matching with, all the people that I was meeting, because in them there was this whole great future that they could unlock. You know, if they were the one, suddenly all my woes with dating would be over. I would be kind of able

to tick this off my list. I could rest easy, I would have love and great, I'd done the thing that I needed to do. And I just had this epiphany that that was the complete incorrect attitude. It was the incorrect attitude because anyone could come along and be let straight through the door into my heart, into my life because I was so done with being single and I was so sick of dating. This is what I did.

I did a complete six month hiatus. Previously I had tried to do this, but I would, you know, get in like a couple of weeks and then I'd redownload the apps, or I would like find myself flooding with someone or going on like a couple of dates, and it was right back to the beginning. So I made a promise. I said, I'm going to give myself six months to not talk to anyone in a romantic sense,

even if someone happens to come along during that time. Actually, we're going to have a real hard line that no, the door is not open, the heart is not open. This is a time for me to reprogram and really dig around in my brain and dig around in my heart as to why I've become very susceptible to this way of dating, in this sense of rejection and disappointment. So I started, and I did six months successfully of

no dating, complete dating hiatus, a dating detox. And it was really really hard, especially since I'd spent my entire adult life always like going on dates and being present romantically. That that was a huge component of my social life and who I was. But I found that it was incredibly freeing. It was incredibly freeing, and it made me realize how reliant I was on the validation of these people to get me through the day and to ensure that I was confident and assertive and that I felt

good about myself. And suddenly, when I no longer had that source of validation, as simple and shallow as that validation was, I had to really get deeper, and I had to become more of my own best friend and more of my own lover. And I know that sounds quite strange, like I was my own lover, but I really was for that six month period. And then guess what happened, Almost like clockwork, I finished the sixth month

dating hiatus. I think I met someone, Like two weeks later, I think I think I met someone, not someone I met like the love of my life. I met the man that I am still with. It's a bit been like a year and a half. We're still together. We're so so strong. And I'm not saying that it was my period of my dating hiatus that led me there. What I am saying is that it was my change in attitude. It wasn't that I suddenly came back and

there was all these more options. No, it was that I came into it with a much more relaxed attitude, a much more relaxed state of mind, and it meant that I was more authentic. When I did actually meet Tom my partner, I was more authentic and I didn't get attached and put so much pressure on the early days of our relationship, which meant that it was actually able to blossom and we actually were able to form a connection that wasn't based on this real fear factor

for me or this real loneliness factor. It was organic. Although you know, we did meete on a dating app like, it felt like the connection was not artificial. The other component of this was that I really actually had fun. I did go on like some dates with other people around that time, and it was fun. It was fun, and it was easy to be like no, I don't want to see you again, or like yeah, why not without me being like okay, is this the one contemplating

the wedding? And so I think also that six month period or however long you would like to take, is also the time that if we were considering burnout in a normal sense is probably the timeline that most of us would be on. Six months to a year. I would say that is how long it takes to recover from normal burnout, because you really have to completely heal and rejuvenate and pour energy and pour love back into the places in which these resources have been depleted by

your situation. The other thing that I think really helps us get over dating burnout is to take a step back firstly and really focus on what you're looking for, What do you actually want. Not every single person that you're going to come across deserves a first date, to be honest, deserves a first message. You cannot see the potential in people from a profile or from a first meeting and expect them to follow on with that potential

and to completely fulfill it based on your expectations. You've got to trust that the first not the first thing you see of them, but the information that they give you initially is the truth. So if you are looking at a dating profile and this person just looks a bit off and it says, you know, I'm not looking for monogamy, oh I like I drink a lot and you don't, or like, oh yeah, I live here and it's quite far from you, but all you're seeing is potential.

You're gonna be like, yeah, Okay, I'll go on a date with this person and you're going to make time for them in your day. You're gonna make time for them in your week, and they are going to be disappointing. And then you're gonna look at yourself and be like, what's wrong with me? Like, what's wrong with me?

have been invested elsewhere. So I want you, right now, if you are actively dating, to really sit down and write five things that you absolutely definitely want in a partner, Five things that really matter to you that you will not compromise on. And if you can't, think of five things that might be a problem that might be indicative that actually, you know you're you're not picky enough. I

think each person should have at least five deal breakers. Otherwise, again you get into that scenario that I was very much into. This isn't I really hope this isn't coming off as coming from a place of judgment, But I myself was in that position where I had like two things that I was like, yeah, this is a deal breaker, but it actually meant that, you know, the fishing net was quite wide when really I needed to be using a fishing pole and going selectively for certain peace people

who I know I would be quite compatible with. So get clear on what you want. Take the pressure off by taking a break. Those are my first two steps. I also think that when you go on a bad date, when something doesn't work out, don't let it ruin your perspective on everything. Don't let it be the defining experience for you. Something that really helped me, because you know,

rejection does happen in this cutthroatating world. Something that really helped me build my resilience, because you need a whole lot of resilience if you're dating in this decade was to have statements that I would repeat to myself after something didn't work out. One of the ones I remember using was I am love, so love will find me, but it's not all that defines me. I am love, so love will find me, but it's not all that defines me, And that was really really important and valuable.

I also did affirmations of like, I attract beautiful people because I am a beautiful person. The love I pour into will be poured back into myself. What were some others someone? Oh, you know, just small things like someone's inability to see my value doesn't mean that it's not there. That was a great one, and also it was very validating to remind myself that there are so many people in this world. It is impossible for me to be an end. For you to go about your life and

not eventually encounter someone who thinks you're freaking amazing. And if you have an open heart, if you're not burnt out, if you're actually excited about the prospect, if you know what you want, if you know what you want, not what the other person wants, You know what you want, that might actually be exactly what you need. It might be where the spark really catches is when you're prepared. Finally, I really want you to let go of the timeline.

As I said at the very beginning of this episode, many people consciously or unconsciously subscribe to an internal dating timeline. You want to meet someone by twenty five, get engaged by twenty eight, get married by thirty, etc. Etc. That timeline, which feels imposed on all of us, is arbitrary. It's actually a social construct, and it's very detrimental to your

dating success. Anytime we place these concrete limits on ourselves, however they may look, we also place limits on our sense of curiosity, our sense of fun or excitement, not just when it comes to love, but when it comes to anything. When it starts to feel like a job or it starts to feel like there is something restricting our freedom within that space, Suddenly it's a task that needs to be completed or ticked off. It's something that is very rigid and very defined and inflexible, and so

that becomes a lot less enjoyable. It's like when you have a hobby or like a creative skill or something that you really love doing. As soon as that becomes like a job, as soon as you feel like you have to do it, that all the enjoyment gets sucked out pretty quickly. So see the timeline. Acknowledge the timeline. Acknowledge that people are going to perhaps I don't know.

Still try and enforce the timeline on you and remind yourself that there are a lot of people who do not meet that timeline and still have very fulfilling, deep love, who still have all the things that they enjoy and love and deserve and wanted from life. And there is no one way of going about this. There is not one particular version of love and dating and the transition from first meet to you know, forever together that looks

the same. So when you're thinking about who whoever you're comparing yourself to, because we all do, remember that it's going to look differently for you. Date because you really want to date, Date because you are excited and curious and you want to meet new people. Release yourself from this pressure to perform to a given time frame. All of this will actually help ease your anxiety and your stress, and with that bring about much deeper and richer dating experiences.

Mean you have much better boundaries, mean that you are much more discerning, You're better able to say yeah, actually no, I don't want to go on a second date with you, or you know, actually I really like this guy or I like this person, And even if I imagine that I'll be rejected, I'm just going to do it anyways, because I'm here to have fun. I'm here to meet great people. I'm here to have one good conversation at a time, and that is all that I'm asking from

this situation. And with that, a real feeling of liberation and freedom and flexibility comes over you. So I want to say thank you for listening to this episode. If you are dealing with a little bit of dating burnout, the thing, I recommend, once again, take a break. It's okay. It's actually going to be a really great investment in the long run if you have energy and if you have the patience and the capacity to enjoy this experience. I'm also just sending you a lot of strength and

a lot of support. Dating is freaking tough, especially in this climate, in this social context. Gosh, it's rough. So you're not alone. You are most certainly not the only one dealing with this. But most of all, I can promise that you will find love very simple. If you're waiting for someone to confirm that for you done, I will confirm it. You will find love right now. It might just not be your time. You might just be experiencing a bit of cognitive and mental exhaustion when it

comes to the dating process that gets you there. But it will come eventually. Just make sure you're having fun with it. As always, if you did enjoy this episode, make sure that you are following along on Spotify, make sure that you're following us on Instagram at that Psychology podcast.

Please feel free to give us a five star review wherever you are listening, and yeah, if you have more episodes suggestions, if you have feedback, if you have your own dating burnout experience you want to share, send us a DM. We would love to hear from you. And until next time, stay safe, stay kind, please be gentle with yourself. We'll talk very very soon.