Guest post written by author Andie J. Christopher
USA Today bestselling author Andie J. Christopher writes sharp, witty, sexy contemporary romance about complex people finding happily ever after. Her work has been featured in NPR, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Post. Prickly heroines are her hallmark, and she is the originator of the Stern Brunch Daddy. Andie lives in the Nation’s Capital with a French bulldog, a stockpile of Campari, and way too many books. Thank You, Next is out now.
I write romance novels, but I’m terrible at dating. It might sound inconsistent, but it actually makes sense when you think about it. Being in love and writing about love is awesome, but dating is absolutely awful. I can’t do it anymore. If I found myself stranded by a snowstorm in a charming cabin with an oddly shirtless woodsman and there was only one bed, I could probably figure out how to put together a love story for myself.
But if it comes down to swiping right on a dating app, where a run-in with a #westelmcaleb is de rigueur, I’m totally screwed.
Looking back, the last straw for me was when a I tried to confirm a second drinks date with a guy I’d met on Hinge, but the guy told me he didn’t want to go out with me again because I didn’t have sex with him after the first date. I’m not sure why he thought that his insecurity and patchy beard would render me overwhelmed with passion, but I thought he was a nice enough guy. The date was marginally better than watching the Chris Evans scenes in Infinity War on repeat. In retrospect, I only enjoyed the date because the bar he’d chosen had a resident English Bulldog. On my therapist’s advice, I was giving guys a chance to grow on me. I’d resolved to go on three dates before deciding that I wasn’t into someone.
Now, I’ve never developed an attraction where there was a complete void of chemistry, but I was willing to give it a try. After all, it’s a little embarrassing that I write stories about people like me finding long-lasting romantic relationships, but I can’t seem to string three dates with the same person together to save my life. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to want a little hint of a spark.
Romance novels have a bad reputation for cultivating “unrealistic” expectations of romantic relationships, and I think that’s bullshit. Very few romance readers actually expect their love interest to present them with a bag filled with the decapitated heads of their enemies. But they do expect love, respect, and intimacy. If that’s “unrealistic,” then I want no part in that particular school of pragmatism.
I grew up believing in love. My maternal grandparents had a romance so epic they had to get married twice. They were still playing grab ass in the kitchen when I was a preteen. My aunt and uncle have been together for over thirty years after my aunt saw him at a party and was kissing him against a fridge minutes later.
The guy who expected first-date sex wasn’t the last guy I went out with. I had a long-distance flirtation that fizzled after he made fun of the fact that I write romance and I went on two dates with a TV writer who I wish I’d wanted to kiss. And I went on a walking date with a guy from Tinder. He was nice, but I guess the lack of attraction was mutual, because he never reached out for a second date.
The advice from my therapist, my friends (especially the married or coupled ones who haven’t spent time on dating apps), and countless dating “experts” on TikTok would be to form a new strategy and keep swiping and going on terrible dates no matter how many dick pics and gross comments I receive and no matter how anxious and depressed the slog makes me. After all, during the pandemic, there’s really no other way to meet people.
This prescriptive advice reminds me of another area of life rife with terrible tips. Every January, ads for weight loss plans and dating apps are ubiquitous. At this point, as a result of decades of work by fat activists, there is widespread skepticism of what those ads are selling. Many people understand that losing weight is unlikely to be sustainable and that being thin isn’t the solution to all of life’s problems that WW and Nutrisystem ads make it out to be. There’s also research that strongly indicates that attempts at intentional weight loss, particularly in the form of fad diets, largely fail. People peddling weight loss plans (or “wellness”) generally just want to take the money and run, knowing that they’ll be able to find new and repeat customers in April, once “bikini body” season comes along.
Alongside the weight loss ads, dating apps sell a similar idea—that this is the year that you find someone to share your life with. As long as you’re willing to put in the work. Hours of swiping, days or weeks of messaging, boring Zoom cocktails, rejection because you don’t want to meet in person without a negative rapid test and three rounds of shots—all in the hopes of a real, in-person date that rates anywhere from “meh” to “glad I didn’t get murdered.” And then you get back on the app and start the whole process again until you delete the app in frustration, only to download it months later out of boredom or tequila.
When compared with online dating, Noom starts to look like fun. And that’s the problem—love is supposed to give us connection and meaning. It’s supposed to bring joy and pleasure to our lives. It’s the joy and pleasure that makes us want to do the work of growing into a more authentic version of ourselves.
But you wouldn’t know that by scrolling through TikTok, which is full of dating “experts” coaching (mostly women) to start “dating intentionally”—the intention being marriage to a “high value” (read: wealthy) individual. There are steps, protocols, and fifteen essential questions to ask on a first date.
There’s also the bewildering yet inescapable advice that singles should be wary of “butterflies” when vetting potential partners. One popular dating coach likes to say that “chemistry is a liar.” The logic goes that someone only gets a fluttering in their belly when the person isn’t healthy for them—the butterflies are a sign that the person is withholding or critical like their father. Chemistry is apparently a smoke screen designed to conceal red flags. Besides, passion doesn’t last, so why not just start as you mean to go on? It’s really better to date someone you feel indifferent towards but share values with—you can’t come down off the high of being in love if you never feel it in the first place.
Seems like a recipe for contempt and boredom. By the way, I’d really like to see some actual research on this. Some science. Because, as a romance author, people are always telling me their own love stories. This is all anecdotal, but very few of those stories start with, “I didn’t want him to touch me, but he was so nice that I continued to date him until he wore me down.”
It’s clear to me that chemistry and shared values aren’t sufficient on their own, individually. It’s impossible to make a relationship work long term if you can’t keep your hands off each other or dinner on the table. And all the shared values in the world won’t keep a relationship together if there isn’t even the memory of why you enjoyed each other in the first place. Shared values and chemistry are like brick and mortar. It’s hard to build something that lasts without either one.
Most of the stories aren’t romance novels, because life doesn’t work in tropes. We can’t edit real, flawed people into main characters. Even marrying a duke isn’t always a fairy tale. Life is messy and complicated—ambivalence and contempt plot to sneak into the internal narratives at our lives at every turn. And some people don’t require sex or attraction and connection or feel like building a family is worth compromising on those things. Maybe dating apps work better for someone who wants to use Hinge like LinkedIn for a baby daddy. But that ain’t me. I want more.
The similarities between modern dating culture and diet culture are uncanny. Keeping people—mostly women—consumed with starving themselves and spending money on shrinking their bodies reduces the amount of resources they have to expend on making sure they have true bodily autonomy. And, as Lyz Lenz recently posited in her excellent newsletter, keeping people—mostly women—focused on forming long-term heterosexual partnership reinforces patriarchal values on the populace, because women are the social safety net that the government refuses to provide.
I know for a fact that love and connection are two essential ingredients for human growth and flourishing. And dating apps are designed to keep us small, afraid, and addicted. Plans with steps for how to identify the best candidate for a relationship are understandable—we’re all so fucking confused about love—but futile. But not listening to the “butterflies” and exploring where they might lead leaves us disconnected and filled with doubt about our choices.
I don’t know how to fix dating culture or diet culture. But I do know that I want no part of either. I want to eat vegetables and exercise because it feels good. And I want excitement and passion in my love life, because that makes me feel alive. After the past two years, it’s important to me to feel alive. Maybe someday I’ll find someone who shares that particular value.
