Well, the full title is: Odds of meeting someone you actually like online (and then actually dating them)
It can feel like the odds of meeting someone you actually like (and then actually dating them) are slimmer than the odds of finding a planet somewhere in the universe that has just the right conditions to sustain life. Science points to a probability of greater than zero, but it's easy to doubt it's something you'll see within your lifetime.
That's a tad dramatic of me, but really, we all know the challenges with online dating. Dating sites are at best a blunt tool to connect with someone that is available and interested in dating. As two-dimensional profiles, we are easily commodified. Our attention to viewing profiles and engaging in messaging is scattered at best - there is always the possibility of other dates out there and swiping can be so much easier than thinking of a decent response to someone you have never met - that shit takes work. On top of all that, even if you do meet someone you enjoy and are attracted to, timing matters. Do you both have the emotional and mental energy and focus to actually turn a connection into a relationship? Is that even something the both of you want, and if it is, do you share similar enough styles/values that you talk about it in a way and at a time that doesn't put off the other person?
See? It's a fucking miracle that anybody actually gets together these days.
Hinge recently announced they were redoing their approach to dating. They want to move away from a format that optimizes swiping and instead promotes connection and relationships. I don't know if the changes will actually help, but perhaps it's a step in the right direction.
In the meantime though, patience, a healthy mix of asserting your needs and embracing uncertainty, and a dose of optimism will have to suffice. And in my heart of hearts, I'm a romantic. I believe in the power of Love and in our capacity to build meaningful relationships and be there for one another and to sometimes fuck up but to be sincere in our efforts to make amends. I believe in that and I value that and I guess I'll go on dozens of more shitty dates to find it.
Want More Love for Your Soul? Here are some random ones on love:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anaïs Nin
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
― Alfred Tennyson