Let’s put it this way: many of us have this destiny program formed in childhood—a belief that fate will take care of everything. Such people are convinced that whether you’re focusing on your work, building a career, or just sitting idle, if it’s meant to be, your life partner will eventually cross your path.
But what happens? These men and women leave one of the most important life decisions to chance. In some cases, this works, but in others…
Before launching my app, despite having an American husband, I had to seriously test dating apps. I registered on different platforms, actively communicated, and went on dates. Considering my age group, most of the men were 40+. Broadly speaking, they could be divided into two roughly equal categories.
The first group consisted of men who married relatively early, had 1–2 kids during the marriage, but later something went wrong, and they divorced. The second group included those who reached this age without ever being married or having children. “How did that happen?!” I would ask. “Well, I was building my career. I started from entry-level positions, climbed the corporate ladder, became a partner at an investment fund, and now I’m 45. I’ve never been married, simply because I didn’t have time,” one attractive, impeccably dressed investment banker told me. He also believed in fate—until he realized that it could leave him alone forever. Only then did he start taking active steps. To be honest, I used to believe in fate too. I was building my career, actively socializing on weekends. Years went by, but no suitable candidates for a husband ever appeared. Until my psychoanalyst asked me: “Have you tried registering on dating sites?”
So, reason number one is the lack of readiness to take active steps in finding a partner.
Let me clarify: by active steps, I primarily mean building a candidate funnel. I spent many years working in HR, contributing to the financial system (for those unfamiliar, HR professionals are responsible for hiring and firing staff and ensuring the quality of personnel within an organization). Without exaggeration, I can say that finding a husband isn’t much different from hiring a key employee. It’s crucial to define your requirements for candidates (what you’re willing to compromise on and what is non-negotiable), build an “HR brand” (i.e., position yourself correctly on social media or dating sites to attract the right people), filter out unsuitable candidates without wasting time, and nurture relationships with the ones who show promise. This is what a well-structured funnel looks like.
The second factor is your mindset
The second factor is your mindset—removing internal blocks or programs that hinder building relationships. Here, we step firmly into psychological territory, but it’s absolutely necessary. Ideally, your dating journey should be accompanied by an experienced psychologist. If that’s not an option, help yourself: find a course on relationships, sign up for mine, or book a personal consultation with me. Just don’t make the common mistake of focusing entirely on self-improvement and working through your blocks, while forgetting about active steps and building your funnel.
The harsh truth is: who isn’t interested in you finally finding a partner?
- Your mom (even if she says otherwise, deep down she might dream of you remaining her dependent and beloved son or daughter for a long time).
- Your single friends (of course, once you settle down, it’s unlikely you’ll continue late-night adventures or spontaneously join them on a trip to Turkey).
- Your boss (overtime and weekend work might be jeopardized).
- Your psychologist who works on your relationship goals (why would they want to lose such a great, paying client?).
- A matchmaker or matchmaking agency (this is a case where your goals almost align, but not entirely. Your goal is to build a long-term, happy relationship and create a family, while for them, any relationship is good as long as it leads to contract completion and full payment).
- Dating apps (the longer you stay in the dating market, the more money they make off you).
Well then, who is truly interested in you finally meeting your soulmate? (you might ask). First and foremost, it’s you—there’s no way around it. Use everyone else solely as helpers, but never entrust your fate entirely to them.
What are your chances of meeting
What are your chances of meeting your soulmate on a dating app?
Good news: your chances are still high. “Still,” because there’s a growing trend of dating in real life—In Real Life (IRL). The top dating apps have reached their growth peak, and now many people are switching either to niche apps (like the well-known SoulMatcher, where everyone takes a psychological test and matches are based on compatibility) or to IRL dating methods.
In the US, online dating is the number one way to meet someone (39% meet online). In Europe and Russia, depending on the age group, this figure ranges from 15% to 30%. Bottom line: the chances are high, and dating apps shouldn’t be written off just yet.
Your profile is the key to
Your profile is the key to success.
And of course, your profile photo—the first thing your potential partner sees—should spark a desire to get to know you better. Unfortunately, the visual filter still dominates. The unfortunate reality is that 10–15% of the most attractive people receive 90% of all likes. This means the experience of an attractive person on a dating site is drastically different from that of someone in the other 90%. In the first case, they get 200+ likes and several matches per day. In the second case, it might take some time before finding mutual interest and a real chance to connect with someone.
I’ve prepared a free guide for you, which you can access by subscribing to my Telegram channel.
If you need help improving your
If you need help improving your dating app profile, book a consultation with me.
The Structural Reasons It Has Become Harder to Meet People
Before examining individual factors, it is worth acknowledging that meeting a compatible partner has become genuinely more difficult for structural reasons that have nothing to do with the individual. Adult social networks shrink dramatically after the mid-twenties: the institutional contexts that generated organic connections — school, college, shared living — largely dissolve, and the replacement contexts (workplaces, apps) are either socially constrained or structurally impoverished in ways that make genuine connection harder.
Dating apps create the impression of abundant options while delivering an experience that many people find isolating. The evaluation-heavy early stages of app-mediated dating — rapid assessment from photos and brief descriptions, parallel conversations managed across multiple matches, the knowledge that you are being similarly evaluated — are not environments that support the genuine curiosity and openness that connection requires. Many people who are perfectly capable of forming relationships in organic contexts find app-based dating consistently dispiriting, not because anything is wrong with them but because the medium has specific structural features that work against connection.
Personal Patterns That Make Meeting Someone Harder
Having acknowledged the structural factors, individual patterns also matter. The most common one is the combination of wanting a relationship and behaving in ways that prevent it — not through deliberate sabotage but through a series of individually reasonable-seeming choices that collectively produce avoidance. Maintaining very high standards without flexibility. Pursuing unavailable partners. Investing in connections that show early signs of poor fit. Avoiding the contexts where connection could happen because those contexts feel uncomfortable or forced.
Ambivalence about relationships is often more present than people recognise in themselves. Wanting connection and also being frightened of its costs — vulnerability, the risk of loss, the disruption of established independence — is a common and understandable state. But when the desire for connection is roughly matched by the fear of it, the result tends to be persistent stuckness: enough desire to feel the absence and enough fear to prevent the actions that would address it.
What Actually Helps — Honest Assessment
The most reliable route to meeting someone is putting yourself in contexts where genuine connection is possible with some regularity, maintaining enough openness to be curious about people who do not immediately match a preconceived image, and being willing to tolerate the discomfort of early-stage vulnerability rather than protecting against it by staying perpetually at a surface level.
Contexts that tend to produce genuine connections: activities organised around a shared interest rather than explicitly around dating, where the shared interest provides natural ground for interaction and filters somewhat for compatibility; volunteering or service-oriented activities, which attract people with particular value orientations; professional and interest-based networks in which sustained contact allows connection to develop gradually rather than requiring it to be established in a single high-stakes encounter.
The honest assessment also involves examining what you are prepared to offer. A person who has become significantly self-sufficient over years of single life, who has strong preferences about their time and space, who is selective about vulnerability — these qualities are not defects, but they require a specific kind of partner and a willingness to adjust established patterns when a relationship does develop. Clarity about this is more useful than the implicit expectation that meeting the right person will make the adjustments feel effortless.