You have 23 matches. So why are you still single?
I need to say something that the dating apps don’t want you to hear:
A match is not a connection. A conversation is not a relationship. And swiping is not dating.
You already know this. But somehow, every evening, you find yourself back on the apps—swiping, matching, messaging—telling yourself that this time might be different.
Let me tell you what I see in my coaching practice: people who have been on dating apps for years. Hundreds of matches. Thousands of swipes. And they’re lonelier than ever.
The Illusion of Progress
Dating apps are brilliant at one thing: making you feel like you’re doing something.
Every swipe feels like action. Every match feels like progress. Every conversation feels like it might be leading somewhere.
But here’s the truth: swiping isn’t dating. It’s shopping. And you can’t shop your way into love.
I recently worked with a man who had been on three different apps for four years. He’d had maybe five actual dates in that entire time. But he spent 45 minutes every night swiping.
“I feel like I’m putting in the effort,” he told me.
He wasn’t. He was putting in time. Effort would have been going to events, asking someone out in person, or actually meeting the matches he already had.
What Apps Actually Provide
Dating apps provide three things:
The illusion of options. Endless profiles make you feel like there’s always someone better one swipe away. This makes commitment feel risky and settling feel stupid.
Low-stakes rejection. When you’re rejected by someone you’ve never met, it doesn’t sting as much. But it also doesn’t mean as much when someone says yes.
Something to do with your loneliness. Swiping fills time. It gives you something to do with that ache in your chest. But it doesn’t actually address the ache.
What apps don’t provide: genuine connection, embodied presence, or the kind of chemistry that can only be discovered in person.
The Time Trap
Here’s what kills me: the time people spend on apps could be spent actually meeting people.
The 45 minutes a day you spend swiping? That’s a young adult event. A coffee with someone from church. A hobby class where you might meet someone organically.
The apps promise efficiency. “Why go out when you can meet people from your couch?” But the efficiency is a lie. Four years and five dates isn’t efficient. It’s a trap.
St. John Paul II wrote that we discover ourselves through “a sincere gift of self” (Gaudium et Spes 24). You cannot give yourself through a screen. At some point, you have to show up.
The Conversation Problem
Even when you match with someone good, the app structure works against you.
You text for days or weeks. You build up expectations. You create a mental image of who this person is based on their curated profile and witty messages.
Then you meet in person and discover they’re… different. Not bad, necessarily. Just not the person you imagined.
This is inevitable. Because the person you imagined was never real. You were dating a profile, not a person.
A Different Approach
I’m not saying delete the apps entirely (though some people should). I’m saying: stop letting them be your primary strategy.
Use apps as one tool among many—and not even the most important one. Meet matches quickly (within a week of matching) or unmatch. Don’t let texting substitute for meeting.
And please, for the love of all that is holy, spend more time meeting people in the real world than you spend swiping.
The apps want you to believe that love is a search optimization problem. It’s not. Love is found through presence, vulnerability, and showing up—none of which can happen through a screen.
Your Homework
This week: For every 30 minutes you spend on dating apps, spend 30 minutes doing something social in person. Young adult group. Coffee with a friend. Mass at a new parish where you talk to people after.
You don’t have to quit the apps. But you do have to stop believing they’re actually working.
Matches aren’t relationships. Conversations aren’t connections. And your phone can’t introduce you to your spouse—only to their profile.
The real person is out there. But you’ll have to put down the phone to find them.
In Him,
Katie
Katie Palitto is a Catholic relationship coach and the creator of Game of Love.
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