The Death of Romance

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It didn't happen all at once.

Instead, the modern disenchantment with romance unfolded slowly,

suddenly, but still unmistakably.

Post-COVID, young people stop dating as much.

If you talk to them about why, what you hear is exhaustion with the apps.

The whole hassle of combing through matches,

chatting, finding a mutually convenient time,

and then dragging yourself out of the house to meet a total stranger.

All of that started to seem less important than seeing friends,

caring for family, getting some work done,

watching the series that everyone else was talking about.

These shifts were made one by one inside people's heads.

And then all of these individual decisions accumulated over time

and turned into something new.

Something which staff writer Faith Hill calls the romance slump.

I have a question for you as my colleague.

Are you the romance reporter?

Is that your actual job?

You know, I think I'm proud to hold that mantle.

I report on some other things too,

but romance and dating and singlehood

specifically has kind of become a big thing for me.

That's amazing.

So you are the Atlantic has a romance and relationship reporter.

And that is you.

I guess so.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

This is Radio Atlantic.

Faith spent the last several months

reporting on what she called the great romance slump.

In the last 40 or so years,

we've seen huge drops in both marriage and cohabitation rates,

especially among 25 to 34 year olds.

But there's also just a shrinking share of young adults

who have a steady partner.

And you know, in 2019, 42% of single adults younger than 40,

told Pew Research Center that they'd never been

in a committed relationship.

That is the statistic that really surprised me.

I felt the same when I saw that.

And you know, I think it's important to talk about

because it's pretty easy to shrug off the declining marriage rates

as kind of like, you know, the institution of marriage

is not as important to people.

You can easily have romance without marriage.

Or intimacy without marriage or children without marriage.

Right, exactly.

But that's not the only thing going on.

You know, it's not just about sort of views towards marriage.

And I think this is really quite a profound change.

Yeah, listening to you, I see why you called your story

the romance slump because it is something of a resignation.

Like it's kind of like a shrug.

Yes, that's exactly it.

I liked the term for that reason.

You know, it has this kind of subtle,

almost passive feel to it.

You know, it's not a sudden and dramatic plummet.

But it's not that active.

Like it's not people all swearing off romance,

but rather sort of a lot of people kind of slowly giving up on it.

Kind of captures this pessimism and fatigue.

Yeah, it's like a slight bad smell in there.

Yeah, exactly.

But it also implies that it's not necessarily permanent.

You know, you can come back from a slump.

So there's that too.

Okay, let's get into some of the reasons this is happening.

Some I can just guess right off the bat,

I did write a book called The End of Men About a Decay to Go.

So I did a lot of study into how men's and women's

relationships were changing and just the basic fact of

women being more financially independent,

women being able to buy houses.

We can have credit cards now.

Amazing.

Have any career you want.

So the basic idea that you need a man in order to survive

is just not true anymore.

What are some of the other reasons that you came across,

or at least what's your take on the cause?

I think that there's kind of a combination of people needing romance

less than they used to, which is great.

And also dating being hard in these very specific

frustrating ways.

Like you hear so much about the dating apps when people talk about

singlehood and romance.

And a lot of times I think people are talking about

the sort of distance of the technology making it easier to ghost

and people being on bad behavior because of that kind of the lack of

accountability.

And also you hear a lot about the kind of paradox of choice

like people are just swimming in options.

And I think there's truth there.

But I do kind of think, you know, the big thing that comes to mind for me

when I consider online dating is just the toll that it takes on people.

You know, when you're having to set aside time

and energy and money to meet strangers to

assess them out on the app and then meet up with them and then, you know,

try to keep the momentum up.

It just is a huge toll.

And, you know, I think that toll means that a lot of people

want a relationship but aren't going to prioritize it.

But I think the combination of dating, being kind of exhausting and time consuming

and requiring sacrifice from other areas of life and singlehood being so normal and doable

starts to make it very easy for romance to just like not be the top thing that you want to pursue.

And, you know, when you want romance but don't need it and you don't feel like it's

going to be easy to get and you don't feel optimistic about those chances or about the people

you would be dating.

A lot of people are just going to give it up.

And so if you are a sociologist, what would be the sentence?

Like what is the headline in the world of romance that merits bigger attention?

Well, I would say, you know, romance is obviously a very broad term under that umbrella,

you know, you might fit sex dating, partnership, marriage.

But all of these forms, particularly among young people, seem to be on the decline.

And I think that shift has a lot of downstream implications, you know, it's changing how and

whether people have families, how people spend their time, how they spend their money,

potentially who they vote for.

And, you know, if romance is no longer the center of nearly everyone's life, something else is.

How fed up with romance do people have to be before they give up?

The line is different for everyone.

But there are some patterns in people's breaking points.

Faith created a survey and sent it far and wide.

She heard back from men, women, non-binary people, queer, straight, and living in all

different parts of the country.

One loud theme that emerges from the respondents, but also from the research is a gender gap.

More women giving up on men.

Not trusting them to be supportive in the right ways, not getting what they need from them,

and not willing to give so much when they're not getting back.

One of the people that Faith talked to was a woman named Treasure, who drifted away from romance

and then did find new things to put at the center of her life.

Treasure is a 39-year-old woman in Chicago who has been single for a long time and she's loving it.

I have been single now for 10 years.

She, for many years, was trying to date seriously, trying to find someone to marry.

She was, you know, really romantic and had high hopes about it.

From 18 to about 27, I took dating very seriously.

She was engaged four different times.

In each one, she felt like she was contributing half financially,

and yet she was also doing all of the childcare she has three children.

After that fourth relationship ended the fourth engagement, that was really the last

straw for her. I'm going to get the extremely personal here, but I had had a miscarriage,

and my significant other at the time, noticed that I was depressed and noticed that I was upset,

and I kept it trying to explain to him, well, you know, my hormones are changing right now.

I was already four months along. I was like, I'm really sad right now. I know you feel like you need

attention, but right now that I can't do this, this isn't about you.

For sure, you said, you know, the one time that I need something from him, his support, he couldn't

be there. In my mind, it was like I overperformed in these relationships, and when it comes down to

the wire and something is needed for me, from them, I was not receiving it. And if that's the case,

then what is the purpose? I think she just felt really exhausted by holding everyone else up and

feeling like the mother to the partner she had had. That was the last time for me I was like,

this isn't for me. She likes to say, you know, she realized she, if she wasn't going to find a husband,

she had to make husband money. So she did a bunch of training and an apprenticeship, and she ended

up becoming a technical engineer and a union job. And that totally changed the financial picture

for her where she felt like, you know, she could be single and take care of her kids herself.

When she first gave up on dating and romance, she felt really lonely. I think it was a big change,

but she realized she just had to start replacing what she had gotten from those partnerships with other

things. I adjusted and I made more friends and I found myself again. I have new hobbies and

go places alone. I travel alone. I go to the movies alone. I go out to dinner alone. I'm literally

dating myself and I'm so much happier. I am the one for me. She wishes that she could have found

the relationship that she once dreamed about, but she said, I think at this point, it's a fantasy.

It's kind of like, how do you get it all? Is there a way? I haven't found it. I had to give up

romantic love with styles in order to achieve everything else that I wanted.

That's so interesting. It's like when Esther Perl says, we look to our partners and we expect

everything from them. And that's not realistic. It sounds like she just took everything and divided

it among people. Like, I'm going to have best friends here. I'm going to have a community there.

I'm going to make money here and maybe she just has sex somewhere else. Right, exactly.

I bet that there are women who can definitely relate to that. Does she seem happy to you now?

She really does seem happy. Yeah, she was, I think, one of the happiest people I talked to for

this story. I found that really beautiful to kind of realize that if you can sort of round that

bend psychologically, sometimes you just can grow to love your life in the way it is if you

sort of lean into it. I don't think it would necessarily be the same for everyone, but treasure

is really independent and she has great friendships and meaningful work. I think she just had had

such a hard time trying to find love that in comparison she feels so free. It's important because

I guess she counts as a post romance model. Like, it's not for everyone, but that is a template

that might work for some people because she did want to have a romantic relationship. At some

point, she saw it, she tried many times and so for anyone in that situation, this is an alternate

model that's maybe hopeful at the other side. Did you have a sense of how typical she was?

Yeah, I've talked to a lot of people who have sort of stopped searching for romance. I think

she might be a little atypical in just how much she's loving it and thriving, but I've talked to a

lot of people who say that they would welcome a relationship if it fell in their lap, but they're not

going to search for it. They just can't do that anymore. They're too exhausted. They spent too

much time on it. They want to focus on other things. I actually talked to one researcher who said,

you know, she had to stop asking in studies whether people were actively looking for a relationship

because what resonated more with people was whether they were open to a relationship.

It's also interesting because the word slump is sort of a negative word, but treasure's case implies

that the romance slump is not necessarily a negative thing because it does open up alternate

possibilities particularly for women. I think that's definitely the hope. And you know, I think for

some people like treasure who can kind of pull this off and find meaning and community in all these

other ways. It could be really beautiful. And of course, it is a great thing that this change is

happening partly because women are able to live independently and focus on other things.

So I definitely don't think the shift is all negative. At the same time, you know, the majority

of single people do still say that they want a long-term partnership. And so for me, that's kind of

at the heart of the story, you know, what happens to the people who want love and are struggling to

find it or give up on it altogether. I do think that there's real loss there that we can take

seriously even if, you know, it does open up sort of new ways to think about purpose and community in

meaning. Next up, the man. What's their experience of the romance slump? That's after the break.

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on apple.com slash college. Okay, we've talked about the women's point of view. What about the men?

I want to talk about one of the guys you interviewed Arthur. Can you tell me about him? Arthur is a guy

in his 40s who has spent many years dating. He's had one-off dates here and there. He's

dated some people for a month or so. He said some one to two-year relationships. But he's always

felt like it just kind of hasn't totally worked out. He was always like kind of like hedge by

them saying, look, I hear nice and everything. We've had some good times, but honestly,

you're not really right for me. Some exes have kind of told him that they feel like he's almost

too nice. I'm not sure how to wear that. I mean, I will be the man and you know, make all the

plans and it's a huge and everything if you want. You know, they want him to kind of be more

decisive, be the man in the relationship. But I mean, that does kind of come across to me being

someone who is supportive and more demanding because it kind of has to be that way.

One person said that he has dad energy. I'm not 100% sure what that means, but I'm guessing it's

not very sexy. Oh, right. That's trauma. Yeah, I mean, that could be great, I guess, but it sounds

like he did not take it as a good thing. Right, and I think this person didn't take it as a good

thing in the romantic context. She wasn't looking for dad energy. Yeah. That gets into something

very important, which is the impossible dilemma that men seem to be in. It's very hard to know

how to be because you mentioned earlier that part of the problem between treasure who we talked

about and lots of women was that men could not see their needs or weren't open or communicative

enough. And yet, here is poor Arthur, maybe trying to be that way and getting dinged for it.

Did you hear men talk about their confusion over roles? Yeah, absolutely. I think we're in a

kind of confusing in between time where there are sort of these new standards for men that they're

trying to reach, like this being kind and communicative and emotionally open, but at the same time,

the old standards haven't really gone away fully. So a lot of men did still feel like they were

expected to pay for everything on the dates and kind of take the lead on everything, initiate,

flirting, kissing, and they felt sort of torn between those two and confused. They were trying to

kind of exemplify all of these traits at once, like be sort of masculine and sturdy, but also

gentle and empathetic and just feeling like they were sort of always falling down on the job

on one of those sides. And did Arthur have any positive experiences? Like, did he have any

success or things that worked for him? He definitely had some relationships that ended in friendships.

And so it hasn't been all a bad time, and yet I think he felt like he was just putting so much

into it. He's still very deeply wants to find love. I'm human, right? I want to go out and meet

people and just the pretty ladies and all that. But he just feels like he can't be prioritizing it

anymore. There's so much going on. I've had all this stuff that I need to learn. I want to go play

with my niece and my nephew, you know, and I mean, well, something had to get on my side. He's kind of like,

you know what? The disromantic stuff is not going from my way anyway. Instead of being like, well,

top three things in my life, let's bring it down to maybe the bottom of the top top.

So he's kind of pulled back from it. He's focusing on being a good uncle, a good person,

a good employee. So he's like, let me just focus on myself and being the best person I can be. And

that has been a real, you know, sort of grief that he's carrying. It really brought my heart to

feel like I find my person. Like, it really did. I carried that. It was like, it was like, I lost a

parent. Like, you really felt that hard. He feels like he kind of had to at least temporarily say goodbye

to this partner he kept expecting to show up. Did Arthur have a moment in the same way that treasure

did like a moment where he thought, you know, like treasure's miscarriage moment where he thought,

I, I got to stop. I think for him, it was a little bit more gradual over time. Like, just realizing

sort of how draining this was. He also talked about COVID. There was a huge pandemic dating recession.

And a big part of that was just young people not meeting as much. You know, single-hood rates rose

a lot after COVID. But there's also another element, which is something that Arthur talked about,

which is, you know, feeling like he actually lost some social skills when he was isolating in COVID.

You know, he just was obviously not seeing people as much for a long time. And then when the

world kind of opened up, there, you know, it takes a while to sort of get back into the social

life he used to have. The world slowly started opening up again. And I found myself feeling awkward.

You know, it's like being 17 again and like more afraid to talk for the brief release.

I think a lot of people can relate to that, right? Like in the dating context or otherwise, just

like feeling weirdly socially rusty. And that does not make making good chat and being charming

with a stranger easy. Like dating is already pretty hard socially. Yeah. Yeah. You said that Arthur

was focusing on other things. How do you hear something like that? Like do you hear that to mean

he's given up on romance? He's not actively dating. I think that's kind of one of the big

questions of this piece, you know, how much is this a sad thing for people or how much is it

kind of a triumph that people can have other priorities? And I think it's a big mix, you know, I do

think he has a meaningful and full life and he's getting a lot of purpose and enrichment from

the relationships and the hobbies he does have. But at the same time, you know, he says himself that

he is yearning for a partner. You know, he wants to do all of this with someone.

I do want to find somebody that I can wake up in the morning and struggle with,

you know, for the next 20 or 30 years. And so I think it's kind of both at once, you know,

I'm very happy for him that he is able to find a meeting in these other ways and that he has taken

kind of a, you know, a break from dating when it was not feeling good, but at the same time,

he's not getting something that he wants. And I want that for him. So your romance reporter,

you're also an adult woman looking for a long-term partnership. So I'm curious what this

reporting experience has done to your outlook. Did you talk to all these people and feel

comforted and more hopeful? Or did you talk to all these people and think, oh, we just have to

really accept a new reality? Like we are entering a kind of post romance post-marriage age and we have

to be creative about how we adapt to it. Yeah, it's a little bit of both. I definitely feel comfort

in the sense that there are so many great people who just have been struggling with this for a

really long time and it does make one feel less alone in it. So there's something really important

about knowing there are like structural forces at work and and a lot of luck to like it's not

just me like the world is conspiring against me in some way. Right. Exactly. But at the same time,

of course that makes you feel like a little more pessimistic, right? Because it's not like I can

just change something about myself. It's like, yeah, you know, dating is really hard right now and a

lot of people are in the situation and we can't just sort of fix all of the things that are making it

hard. Yeah. You've mentioned the yearning a couple of times. I wonder if that made you pessimistic

or hopeful. Like when I think of tens of thousands of young people yearning for a partner,

it makes me sad but maybe also makes me happy. Like it's a motivating factor. How did you receive that?

Yeah. I think the yearning is kind of a beautiful thing. I mean, it's a human emotion, you know,

and it's, it can be positive in that it drives people forward to look for something that they really

want. And I love to hear when people can sort of find peace with singlehood and close that door

if that makes their life better. And yet at the same time, I think that's the thing with the slump,

right? Like a lot of people who do want partnership are just kind of giving up. And I think the yearning

is one thing that is going to kind of keep people having hope and still trying, you know, I wouldn't

want all of that to go away. And I also hope that, you know, people can maybe channel the yearning

into other parts of life. Like I do think there's not such a clear objective divide between

the romantic and other forms of love and passion. And, you know, I think maybe these single people

who are turning their attention elsewhere are really bringing a lot of their heart and soul

because they're looking for other ways to kind of fill the center of their life and like give love.

And I think that makes them, gives them sort of a powerful energy. Yeah. Can I ask, did you shift in

any way, like after doing all this reporting and talking to all of these people and finding all

of this company in the looking for romance in an ambivalent way? Did you make any decisions about

your own life? I didn't make any clear ones, but I will say, you know, when I talk to people who

have stopped dating and, you know, a lot of those people are enjoying their life more now than when

they were dating because they weren't having a good time. That's why they stopped. So it does feel

pretty tempting. And I do start to think, you know, of all the different things I could be doing with

my time. Like I feel like I might be a better daughter and a better friend. And maybe I could like

start writing fiction or, you know, my mind starts racing. And I do, I think those are good things

to be thinking about. We all do have limited time on this earth and we have to make choices about how

to use it. So that's something I'm considering, but I also know that some people I talk to, you know,

when I checked in after we had had an interview, they had, you know, some dates with someone they

were really excited about or, you know, I talked to at least one person who was like, oh, I found

someone like he's the one I am not right for your story anymore. So that also was a reminder that,

you know, if you do keep trying for a lot of people eventually, like there is, you know,

someone who makes the rest of it all feel like it was worth it to lead to that. So, I'm split.

We can never give up on the romcom ending. It's just how we are. We're just built that way.

Well, Faith, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Rosie Hughes with help from Jacob Smollin

in Gena West. It was edited by Kevin Townsend. Rob Smurciak engineered and provided original music.

We also had music from Break Master Sillinger. Backtracking by Genevieve Finn and Alex Moronio Porto.

Claudine Abade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdes is our managing editor.

Listeners, if you enjoy the show, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists

when you subscribe to the Atlantic at theAtlantic.com slash listener. I'm Hannah Rosen. Thank you for listening.

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