This is what happens when you quit dating apps

“When was the last time you went on a date?”

The question landed lightly, but answering it took longer than expected. I tried to respond and realised I couldn’t. It had been more than a year – long enough that the difficulty of recalling it revealed how far removed dating had become in my life.

For most of my adult years, dating had been constant background noise, most persistently through dating apps. When Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel arrived in Singapore in the early 2010s, they felt genuinely transformative. Dating became efficient and abundant. Attraction was streamlined into a series of small decisions. Swipe, match, chat, repeat.

For a while, it worked. Or at least it felt productive.

But systems built on speed tend to reveal their limits. Conversations decayed quickly. Ghosting became etiquette. Emotional availability was inferred from response times. What was once a connection began to resemble cognitive overload – too many profiles, too many half-conversations, and too many almosts.

Switching apps didn’t solve much. After a while, it was the same faces rearranged across platforms, like a limited cast rotating through different productions. The promise of infinite choice began to feel less like freedom and more like a loop.

Swiping left on dating apps

This fatigue isn’t unique. In 2024, a YouGov survey found that while 24 per cent of Singaporeans have used dating apps, many remain unconvinced by the experience: 27 per cent cited concerns about fake profiles, while others said they prefer meeting people in person or doubt that apps lead to serious relationships – a gap that helps explain the persistent dissatisfaction around swipe-based dating.

A CNA article also expresses a growing sense of burnout among younger Singaporeans, many of whom describe app dating as emotionally draining and performative, with online chemistry rarely surviving first contact offline.

Somewhere along the way, instead of optimising harder, I stopped.

Deleting dating apps wasn’t a grand declaration. I did it almost absent-mindedly, partly to clear space on my phone. A year or so passed on. What surprised me, now that I think about it, wasn’t the absence of dates, but the absence of withdrawal. There was no itch to reinstall nor late-night curiosity about who might be out there.

That pause coincided with a broader recalibration. As faith, family, friendships, work and health took clearer priority, dating quietly lost its urgency. Knowing your worth has a way of narrowing the field. Time and emotional energy feel finite. You become more deliberate about who and what you let in.

Which made this story assignment mildly inconvenient. To understand what dating looks like now beyond apps, I had to step back into it, starting with a singles’ social mixer.

Single and ready to mingle?

If dating apps optimised romance for efficiency, social mixers seem designed to make room for real interaction again.

In Singapore, these events have been gaining quiet traction, particularly among millennials and Gen Zs disenchanted with swipe culture. Groups like FriendZone, Fishbowl and Offline sit alongside more structured concepts such as Never Strangers, a Singapore-founded social experience that has since expanded to Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Cebu, Ho Chi Minh, and Hong Kong.

Never Strangers requires participants to create a profile beforehand, submit a recent photo and link their Instagram account – a form of light curation, organisers say, to ensure intent.
Upon arrival, attendees fill out a questionnaire and are algorithmically matched with someone who shares similar values. The algorithm’s primary role is to get people into the same physical space. After which, conversation does the heavy lifting.

The evening unfolds through ice-breakers at Avenue Lounge, compelling movement and conversation. Social skills and curiosity matter, and there is little room for shyness or silent judgment if you want to shoot your shot.

I realised early on that nothing romantic was going to come of the night for me. Instead of forcing it, I drifted into a different role – a wingman, observer, and an instigator. Watching people find their footing was unexpectedly satisfying.

However, the post-mortems were more revealing than the pairings.

“He’s really cute,” one woman said, “but the moment he opened his mouth, I knew it wasn’t going anywhere.” She’d asked what he did for a living. His answer: “I’m in compliance.” Compliance for what? When she pressed, he clarified: “HR.” Short answers. No follow-ups. “Is that why all these guys are here?” she asked, half amused, half exasperated.

At the other extreme was a man who admitted he’d talked himself out of a connection. In 10 minutes, he’d covered his entire career and forgotten to ask the woman he was interested in a single question. By the time he noticed, the moment had passed. Still, there was something reassuring about his self-awareness.

Another thing that stood out was how familiar many of the complaints felt. I spoke to at least eight strangers that night, all describing variations of the same disappointment. Many were tired of hitting it off online only to feel disappointed in person. The chemistry, it turned out, was far more convincing on screen than across a dinner table.

Toward the end of the night, participants receive messages revealing their closest matches. In my case, the results were surprisingly accurate: two of my three matches were women I’d already had warm, easy conversations with earlier in the evening.

Before the evening concluded, I’d made a few genuine connections and exchanged Instagram profiles with people I’d happily see again, including my matches.

Looking back

Will I attend more mixers? Probably, though not so soon. Sustained social engagement with strangers, as refreshing as it may be, demands more energy than my 37-year-old body is willing to supply.

I didn’t leave the mixer feeling reinvigorated or disillusioned – just clearer. Dating, at least in this season of my life, no longer feels like a default setting or a problem to solve. It’s something I might return to when it fits, rather than something I feel compelled to chase.

And that’s what my lack of a dating life signals: not an absence of romance, but a recalibration of how much space I’m willing to give it now.