A couple of weeks ago, a guy I was dating ended things with me because he’d started seeing someone else. For context: we had been on three dates, I didn’t have strong feelings towards him and I was also seeing other people. Another important detail here is that I rarely cry. Yet, I found myself in floods of tears upon receiving this message, and I spent the next day unable to even make small talk with my flatmates without getting tearful. 

My friends made the logical assumption that I was so upset because I had strong feelings for this man and was disappointed about the relationship, short though it was, ending. And, of course, I did feel a little bit sad that it had come to an end, but not sad enough to be crying into my cereal, which was what was happening. Instead, the source of all this emotion was utter exhaustion, and not because of this one, fairly harmless interaction, but as a result of the constant disappointment and stress of modern dating.

If you’ve been single or if you know anyone who has been at any point in the past five years, you’ll know how common short-term relationships (or situationships, which might be the better word here) are. In the past couple of years, I’ve met countless people and gone through almost exactly the same cycle: we date and speak constantly for a month or two, telling each other things that most people don’t know; we develop emotional and physical intimacy, and then never see or speak to each other again after I either send or receive a three-sentence WhatsApp message ending things. 

At the time, it’s easy to laugh off these short-lived relationships coming to an end – “I only knew them for a few weeks” – particularly if their behaviour was problematic – and, let’s be honest, it frequently was – and they live on as tragic but entertaining stories to tell my friends at dinner, rather than real experiences of lived trauma. 

But despite generally enjoying the two and a half years I’ve been single and dating casually, I realised that the constant cycle of hope and loss had caught up with me and I felt totally worn down – the last thing I wanted to do was open Hinge to potentially put myself through it again.