Jared Freid & Jordana Abraham: Dating App Burnout? Do THIS 30-Day Challenge to Stop Wasting Time and FINALLY Meet the Right Person

When dating feels like fast food: why attitude matters more than apps

Modern dating has a new common diagnosis: fatigue. The bandwidth of swiping, the dopamine loop of unread matches and the endless scroll of curated lives have dulled appetite for anything that feels real. That exhaustion is less a moral failing than a symptom of a design problem — not just of technology, but of how people show up for themselves and others. A recent conversation between two hosts who make careers of decoding relationships reframes the problem: dating apps do not ruin desire, people’s relationship habits and mindsets do.

Reclaiming choice by changing how you use technology

The most useful image they offered was surprising in its ordinariness: use dating apps like you use fast food. There is no virtue in permanent abstinence and no shame in an occasional indulgence. The point is moderation and intention. If the app is your default way to spend an evening, it will erode appetite for riskier, richer forms of social life. But if it is a tool you deploy when circumstances require it — travel, a late work schedule, a relocation — it can deliver value without adding emotional hangover.

That leads to a simple experiment: a deliberate break. Delete the apps for a defined season, reallocate the time to other activities, and come back refreshed. The plan is pragmatic, not puritanical: treat July like a vacation from the scroll, not a permanent exile.

What a summer without swipes actually looks like

• Schedule one dinner a month with a couple who are in a committed relationship to expand your social network.
• Try a weekly fitness class to develop new rituals and meet people with shared interests.
• Eat out solo once a week with your phone tucked away to rebuild curiosity and presence.

Those small changes place the burden of meeting people on lived experiences — the messy, unpredictable places where chemistry and compatibility are discovered in conversation and shared discomfort, rather than in polished profile photos and clever swipe lines.

Attitude as an attractor: the underrated currency

One of the conversation’s through-lines was the radical yet obvious idea that attitude is an attractor. Happiness, curiosity and the ability to bring a full life to the table are more magnetic than any single flattering photo. People who come to dates burdened by bitterness or fatigue unintentionally sabotage their own prospects. The prescription isn’t toxic positivity; it’s honest self-accounting. If dating feels exhausting, acknowledge that feeling and change tactics. If you’re energized, you’ll naturally draw people who are excited to match that energy.

Small communication moves that change outcomes

Practicality surfaced repeatedly. One phrase was offered as a conversational Swiss Army knife: when you’re unsure how long to wait for a reply, stop guessing and offer direction. A text like, “I’m busy today but would love to see you — make a plan and I’m in,” moves the relationship out of limbo and onto a date or off your calendar. It converts passive waiting into an active decision and reveals whether the other party values the same level of reciprocity.

Another linguistic tweak was elegant in its bluntness: swap the word "confused" for "turned off." Confusion is soft and passive; turned-off names a feeling that can be communicated and fixed or accepted. The change of vocabulary forces clarity — to yourself and to the other person.

Tools as tools: texts, drafts, and ChatGPT

Technology remains neutral. Using smart drafts or AI-generated text can help someone be kinder, clearer, and less defensive in first messages or breakups — provided the output is edited into something personal. The point is not to outsource emotional labor but to use tools to behave more like the person you want to be. A first draft from a language model can be a rehearsal; the real work is adding the detail that makes it human.

The gendered math of availability and aspiration

The conversation also turned to a persistent cultural friction: the mismatch between who is available and what people are looking for. Demographic shifts, education, income expectations, and differing timelines all make dating a numbers game for many. Men and women approach selection differently — attraction can be immediate for one partner and more malleable for another — and those cognitive gaps produce confusion on both sides. The remedy is less prescriptive than humane: be explicit about needs, deadlines, and deal-breakers, and give yourself the dignity of asking for what you need early.

From potential to partnership

One theme kept surfacing: potential can be addictive and responsibility can be terrifying. For many people, staying single is less about opposition to partnership than fear of losing autonomy or making a mistake that will affect other people. For those who have chosen partnership, the speakers described an inversion of scarcity — marriage or a committed relationship often creates space to focus energy elsewhere instead of constantly hunting for the next promising lead.

Practical closing: a toolkit for less exhausting dating

• Create a short, defined break from apps instead of an open-ended boycott.
• Use structured prompts when you want a response: offer a clear time and ask them to pick it up.
• Swap vague language for specific feelings to invite honest conversation.
• Use writing tools as rehearsal, not replacement, for emotional clarity.

What emerges is not a manifesto against technology, nor a moralizing plea for a return to some imagined past. It’s a set of small course corrections: less doomscrolling, more presence; less passive wandering, more deliberate invitation. The boredom of perpetual choice is not a personality flaw — it’s a design problem that good habits, better language, and modest social experiments can fix. In a world engineered for endless novelty, the most radical act may be simply to look up and plan a dinner.

At the end of the summer, what remains is not only whether the apps get reopened but whether the person doing the opening feels more present than before.