It will take more than a new app to fix dating. But there is still money to be made from those looking for love, so Gina Cherelus of The New York Times reported on a fresh cohort of dating apps that are trying to restore what their predecessors destroyed. As the article explained, rather than endless scrolling, swiping, and chatting, these “restrictive new dating apps promise meaningful connection by encouraging — make that requiring — slow-paced, intentional dating.”
For example, Cerca is an app that creates “a dating ecosystem filled entirely with friends of friends, by compelling users to invite their contacts to join.” Consequently, “every profile a user encounters” will be “only one or two degrees removed from someone he or she already knows.” The app uses modern tech to recreate what is “fundamentally an old-school approach to vouching for and vetting prospective partners.” Some of the other new apps limit the number of profiles users see each day and push users to commit to dates, which may even be set up by the app at prescreened bars and restaurants.
These new apps are rational responses to how previous dating apps have made an already-difficult dating landscape into a wasteland. But even if these new products catch on, they are not sufficient substitutes for real community and the matchmaking and support it provides young men and women. Setting up dates via a network of shared contacts may offer a hint of accountability, but it’s nothing like that of a real community with shared values in which lives are connected across years and generations.
The contrast between app and community was illustrated by the way in which Cherelus and The New York Times editors chose to frame the limits these apps impose on users. As the article put it, “Legacy dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Bumble took off in the 2010s thanks to the promise of almost limitless possibility; you, the dater, were in control. Now, is there an appetite for being dommed by your dating app?” Yes, that is “dommed,” as in “domination,” as in the sexual fetish.
The implication is that trying to forge a real connection by limiting one’s options (and maybe even adding in a little accountability) is just another personal peccadillo, that limiting oneself is just another option on the limitless menu. And Cherelus isn’t necessarily wrong about this. Without a normative understanding of what romantic and sexual relationships should be, we are left only with individual idiosyncrasies, with no way to judge between different personal preferences. If someone wants to use an app that limits their options, that’s fine; it’s just one more choice at the buffet of sexual liberalism.
This framework reinforces the current cultural regime of sexual liberalism. But that regime is failing on its own terms. The sexual revolution promised us that prioritizing the pursuit of sexual pleasure would lead to more authenticity, happiness, and, of course, lots of great sex. But selfish pleasure seeking tends to be self-defeating, and so sexual liberation has produced an extended, and worsening, “sex recession” that has left Americans lonelier and having less sex.
Declining marriage rates are the main reason for the sex recession. Despite endless pop culture portrayals of marriage as where desire goes to die, it makes sense that married people have more sex. After all, a committed partner is more conducive to regular (and more satisfying) sex than unstable relationships, let alone hook-ups. Thus, less marriage means less sex. The sex recession is one of the many ways sexual liberalism has hurt people while failing to keep its promises.
These empty promises give Christians an opportunity to offer a broken culture more than just a slightly improved dating app. We can provide hurting and confused people with an explanation of what has gone wrong in our romantic and sexual culture, and guidance in how matters may be put right. And we can offer a community in which to do this.
After all, The New York Times’ comparison of these apps to a sexual fetish had a bit of truth in it, insofar as they are just another form of consumer choice. To build a true counterculture amid the wreckage of sexual liberalism, individual choices need to be reaffirmed and solidified into something more enduring and permanent than an app choice. And Christians have an opportunity to provide something better to our damaged culture; churches can provide a place where real community and real commitments can flourish.
Churches can help form young men and women to be good husbands and wives, and provide a community of trust and accountability as they navigate the difficulties of dating and getting married. Churches are more than venues where marriage vows are cheered as they are made, but communities where they can be supported and strengthened over the years. Churches can provide both material help (e.g., baby showers and meal trains for new parents) and advice, encouragement, and admonition as needed.
In a relational culture of cynicism and despair, churches can provide hope and help in living the vocations of marriage and family life that most of us are called to. The best dating app can only start relationships. Churches can nurture and sustain them.