Why does dating feel so exhausting right now?

Dating feels exhausting right now because the way most people date asks for a lot of effort (profiles, chats, first dates that go nowhere) and gives back very little clear feedback. You’re not imagining it, and you’re not uniquely bad at this: in a 2024 survey of recent app users, more than three in four said the apps had worn them out at least sometimes.

Is everyone this tired, or is it just me?

It is very much not just you. In a 2024 Forbes Health/OnePoll survey of 1,000 recent dating app users, 78% said they had felt emotionally, mentally or physically exhausted by the apps sometimes, often or always. The top reason, picked by 40%, was simply not finding a good connection.

That echoes older numbers. When Pew Research Center asked recent online daters in 2019 how the experience had left them feeling, 45% said more frustrated, compared with 28% who said more hopeful.

And the tiredness isn’t only about apps. In the 2026 “Dating Recession” report from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute, which surveyed 5,275 unmarried adults ages 22 to 35, only about three in ten were currently dating. Among the personal factors people said had held them back: lack of confidence (49%) and bad past dating experiences (48%). Bad dates add up, and they leave a residue.

Why does it drain me even when nothing goes wrong?

Because a lot of dating now is low-grade work with no finish line. Think about Dani, 31, on a Thursday night. She’s in five chats. Two have stalled at “haha yeah.” One is lovely but the person never suggests meeting. One is planning a drink for Saturday. The fifth just asked, for the third time this year from a different stranger, what she does for fun. Nobody was rude. Nothing bad happened. She still closes the app feeling like she ran a meeting that went nowhere.

Researchers have a name for the pattern underneath that. In a 2024 study in New Media & Society, Liesel Sharabi, Paige Von Feldt and Thao Ha followed single, active app users across four surveys over 12 weeks. They measured burnout the way it is measured at work: emotional exhaustion, a sense that your effort isn’t working, and growing detachment from the people on the other side. Over the 12 weeks, exhaustion and that sense of inefficacy went up.

So if you feel more tired now than when you started, that fits what the research has found. It is not a personal failing. It is what repeated effort without much payoff tends to do.

Why am I getting pickier and more negative?

You might notice you’re quicker to swipe left, or that everyone starts to look the same. That may partly be the format talking.

In a 2020 paper, psychologists Tila Pronk and Jaap Denissen ran three studies on what they called a rejection mind-set. The longer people kept browsing profiles, the more they rejected, and the chance of accepting someone fell by 27% on average from the first option to the last. The drop was explained by people becoming less satisfied with what they saw and less optimistic about their own chances.

In plain terms: scrolling a lot can make you more pessimistic, and pessimism makes it harder to feel anything for the next person, which makes the whole thing feel even more pointless. Tiredness and negativity can feed each other.

Does it say something about me that I’m this worn out?

Mostly, it says you’ve been doing something tiring for a while. But the Sharabi study adds one honest wrinkle. People who started out lonelier, more anxious or more down were more likely to burn out over time, and people whose app use felt compulsive got more exhausted.

That doesn’t mean you caused your burnout. It means dating hits harder when the rest of your tank is already low, and that looking after the rest of your life is part of looking after your dating life, not a detour from it.

Should I quit, pause, or push through?

There is no single right answer, but there is a useful way to decide. Look at whether you still feel anything.

• If you’re annoyed but still curious, adjust. The problem is likely the setup: too many chats, too much browsing, too long before meeting.
• If you’re dreading it, pause. A deliberate break with a planned restart is different from drifting away and feeling guilty.
• If you feel nothing, step back. When a decent date produces no reaction at all, more volume rarely brings the feeling back.

Take Theo, 30. He’d been on four first dates in a month and couldn’t remember which one had the dog. He didn’t delete anything. He turned off notifications, kept the one conversation he actually liked, and told himself he’d revisit in three weeks. When he did, he felt like himself again, which is the whole point.

What can I do tonight and this week?

Tonight

• Close every chat that’s been stuck at small talk for more than a week. Unmatching is allowed. So is a kind “I don’t think we’re a fit, good luck.”
• Move apps off your home screen. Make opening them a choice, not a reflex.
• Notice how you feel after five minutes of browsing. If it’s worse, stop there.

This week

• Set a small daily limit: a handful of profiles, read properly, instead of a long scroll.
• Cap open conversations at two or three. Ask to meet sooner, for something short like a coffee or a walk.
• Say yes to one plan with people you already like. A good night with friends refills what dating drains.
• Pick your mode (adjust, pause or step back) and write down when you’ll check in with yourself.

What doesn’t the research show?

• The 78% figure comes from an online poll reported by a newspaper, not a peer-reviewed study. It is useful as a temperature check, not a precise measurement.
• The burnout study is about app users only, and many participants dropped out before the end, so it may not describe everyone.
• The rejection mind-set studies looked at short browsing sessions, not months of dating.
• None of this proves apps cause burnout. The findings show patterns and associations, and plenty of people date happily with and without the apps.