Relationships

Why is dating so hard? Because it gives you rejection without information

By Matthew Firth, founder of NexSpark · Nov 4, 2026 · 8 min read

Dating feels hard mostly because it has no feedback loop. You get turned down over and over, and almost none of those rejections come with a reason. A match disappears. A chat goes quiet. A first date says “this was fun” and there's never a second one. You don't find out whether it was fit, timing, a photo, or something you did, and nobody gets better at a game that won't show them the score. So effort turns into burnout. That's my argument on this page. Below you'll find what survey data says about whether dating has really gotten harder, why apps strip the signal out, how it lands differently on men and women, and a simple way to build your own feedback. One disclosure first: I run NexSpark, a matchmaking service, so I have an interest in this argument, and you should read it with that in mind.

Is dating really harder now?

The best long-running answer comes from Pew Research Center. In a survey of 4,860 U.S. adults fielded October 16 to 28, 2019, 47% said dating is harder than it was 10 years ago, 19% said it's easier and 33% said it's about the same. Among people who were single and looking, 75% said it had been very or somewhat difficult in the past year to find people to date, and 67% said their dating life was going not too well or not at all well.

It didn't get better afterward. When Pew asked single-and-looking adults again in February 2022, 63% said dating had gotten even harder during the pandemic.

So you're not imagining it, and you're not alone. But look at what Pew heard when it asked people who'd struggled why. The top answers were finding someone looking for the same kind of relationship (53%), finding it hard to approach people (46%) and finding someone who meets their expectations (43%). Those are mostly matching and approach problems, and you can't fix a problem you can't see. That's the piece most explanations skip.

The real problem: rejection without information

Think about how people get good at anything. You try, you get a result, you adjust. A tennis player sees where the ball lands. A cook tastes the soup. The quicker and clearer the result, the quicker the improvement.

Dating removes nearly all of that. Here's what a bad stretch looks like from the inside:

• The vanishing match. You match, and they unmatch before replying. No reason.
• The quiet thread. You have a good chat, suggest a drink, and it just stops. In the Survey Center on American Life's December 2022 survey, 24% of Americans, and 29% of those who were single, said they'd been ghosted by someone they were dating.
• The missing second date. The evening felt fine. Next day you get a kind “you seem great, but I didn't feel a spark.”

Each one is a rejection, and each carries close to zero information. The cause might be fit (you want different things), timing (they'd just started seeing someone), presentation (a photo that doesn't look like you anymore) or behavior (you talked about your ex for twenty minutes). From where you're standing, all four look identical.

When every outcome looks the same, people tend to go one of two ways. Some change everything at once: new bio, new photos, a new opener, a new personality on dates. They still don't learn what mattered, because they moved every variable together. Others change nothing and just do more of it. Neither group improves, and both get tired. I'd argue that's what most dating burnout really is. It's effort with no link to results.

Why apps take the feedback out

I don't think anyone at a dating company decided to hide feedback from users. It falls out of how the products are built, and this part is my reading of their design, not a measured finding:

• A left swipe is invisible. You can't learn from a no you never see.
• Unmatching is silent. Telling you why would add friction, and apps are built to remove friction.
• Volume dilutes every outcome. When you're talking to eight people, one going quiet doesn't feel like data. It feels like weather.
• The business model rewards activity. Subscriptions and boosts earn money while you keep swiping, not while you work out why your last three dates didn't go anywhere.

You can see the strain in the numbers. In Pew's February 2023 report on online daters, 46% of people who'd used a dating site or app said their experience had been very or somewhat negative, and 55% of current or recent users said they'd at least sometimes felt insecure about the number of messages they got. A Forbes Health survey, run by OnePoll among 1,000 Americans who'd used a dating app in the past year and fielded March 27 to April 1, 2024, found that 78% had felt emotionally, mentally or physically exhausted by dating apps at least sometimes. If that's where you are, our guide to dating app burnout covers the reset.

Why is dating so hard for men? And for women?

Both sides lose the signal, but in opposite ways. Men mostly get silence. Women mostly get noise.

Pew's 2019 survey found that 57% of men who'd dated online in the past five years said they didn't receive enough messages, while just 6% said they received too many. Women were five times as likely as men to say they got too many (30% vs. 6%), and only 24% said they didn't get enough. Pew's February 2023 report found the same shape: men were far more likely to say they'd felt insecure about how few messages they got, and women far more likely to say they'd felt overwhelmed.

Silence is the purest form of no-feedback rejection. If you're a man sending messages that mostly go unanswered, you can't tell a bad photo from a bad opener from a crowded inbox on the other end. Approaching is also a sore spot. Among people who'd found dating difficult in Pew's 2019 survey, 52% of men called difficulty approaching people a major reason, compared with 35% of women. That's a skill that only improves with feedback, which is exactly what's missing.

Women's version is different but just as uninformative. When your inbox is full, sorting it takes the energy that should go into the few people worth meeting, and the volume makes it hard to tell real interest from reflex. And among people who told Pew in 2019 that dating had gotten harder, women were twice as likely as men to cite increased risk as the reason.

So who has it worse? Most Americans won't pick a side. In the Survey Center on American Life's December 2022 survey, 62% said neither men nor women have a more difficult time dating, 17% said men do and 19% said women do. My honest read is that the pain is shaped differently, and the fix is the same for both.

If you're a woman wondering where the men worth meeting actually are, our piece on where all the good men have gone walks through counting your real pool instead of trusting a national headline.

Build your own feedback: the three-question date log

If the system won't give you a signal, you can collect one yourself. It's simple, it takes about five minutes a date, and it hasn't been tested in any formal sense, so treat it as a tool rather than a guarantee.

Within 24 hours of each date, write down three answers in a notes app. Keep them short and keep the questions the same every time, because fixed questions are what make patterns visible:

1. Did I want a second date, and why, in one sentence? This tracks your own side, which most people forget to record.
2. When did the energy change, up or down? Name the moment: the topic, the question, the point where you checked the time.
3. What's one thing I'd do differently that's in my control? Not “be taller.” Something like “ask more about her work” or “don't pick a place that loud.”

When the outcome arrives, add one line: second date or not, and who ended it. If it ended quietly, mark it “no reason given” and don't guess.

After five dates, run a pattern review. Read all five entries in one sitting and sort each outcome into one of four buckets: fit, timing, presentation or behavior. You won't be sure about every one, and that's fine. What you're looking for is repetition. If the energy dipped at the same kind of moment three times, that's your signal. If you didn't want a second date with four out of five, the problem isn't rejection, it's who you're choosing to meet. Then change one thing for the next five dates and see whether the pattern moves.

Add one human debrief. Pick one friend who'll be honest, not just kind, and ask a narrow question: “Does my main photo look like me now?” or “Here's how the conversation went. Where would you have lost interest?” A narrow question gets a usable answer. “What's wrong with me?” gets reassurance.

If you're meeting people in person rather than on apps, the log works even better, because you'll often see the same faces again. Our guide to dating without apps explains how to set up that kind of repetition on purpose. And if nerves are the moment the energy keeps dropping, start with dating anxiety.

Where a matchmaker fits

Here's the founder part, kept short. The most direct way to get the missing signal is to have someone collect it for you. A matchmaker who hears from both people after a date can pass back what landed and what didn't, with tact, which is something no swipe will ever tell you. That's one of the reasons matchmaking exists, and it's part of why I started NexSpark. It isn't the only route, though. The date log above works without paying anyone, and if you've kept it for a while and you're still guessing, a blunt friend is the next cheapest source of outside feedback.

What this is based on, and what it isn't

Common questions

Sources

• Pew Research Center, Nearly half of U.S. adults say dating has gotten harder for most people in the last 10 years, August 20, 2020. Survey conducted October 16 to 28, 2019, among 4,860 U.S. adults. Used for 47% harder, 19% easier, 33% about the same, and women being twice as likely as men to cite increased risk.
• Pew Research Center, Personal experiences and attitudes of daters, August 20, 2020. Used for 75% finding it difficult to find people to date, 67% saying their dating life is going not too well or not at all well, the 53%, 46% and 43% reasons, and 52% of men vs. 35% of women citing difficulty approaching people.
• Pew Research Center, Most Americans who are single and looking say dating has been harder during the pandemic, April 6, 2022. Survey conducted February 7 to 13, 2022. Used for 63%.
• Pew Research Center, Users of online dating platforms experience both positive and negative aspects of courtship on the web, February 6, 2020. Used for 57% of men vs. 24% of women saying they didn't receive enough messages, and 30% of women vs. 6% of men saying they received too many.
• Pew Research Center, The experiences of U.S. online daters, February 2, 2023. Used for 46% describing their experience as negative, 55% feeling insecure about the number of messages, and the men-insecure, women-overwhelmed gap.
• Survey Center on American Life, From swiping to sexting: the enduring gender divide in American dating and relationships, February 9, 2023. American Perspectives Survey conducted December 9 to 18, 2022, among 5,055 U.S. adults. Used for 24% (29% of singles) ghosted, and 62% / 17% / 19% on who has it harder.
• Forbes Health, dating app fatigue survey, conducted by OnePoll March 27 to April 1, 2024, among 1,000 Americans who used a dating app in the past year. Used for 78% feeling exhausted at least sometimes.

Figures are as published by each source on the dates shown. See each source for full context. Journalists and writers are welcome to cite this page, just link back so others can find the sources too.