Dating thus is not a level playing field. Rather, it mirrors the inequalities of broader society. In this case, it has been divided along the lines of attentional “haves” and “have-nots”.
“Preferences” as a result have become a mere byword for prejudice, with countless daters openly rejected on the basis of their race or some other—often superficial—trait.
Given the history of gay men being condemned for their identity, it is tragic that we now perpetuate this shaming cycle through the exclusion of our fellows.
The end of exclusion-based dating?
The killing of George Floyd in 2020 sparked a groundswell of support for the antiracism movement.
As #BlackLivesMatter protests rocked the globe, dating services that had formerly endorsed racial exclusion-based dating appeared to change their tunes.
Some announced they would be removing ethnic and race filter options. Others declined, citing the longstanding motivation for preference filters: maximizing user choice. (Choice which I’ve argued is largely an illusion.)
Such changes could be taken as a mark of progress. They may have also just been virtue signaling.
When the powers-that-be make a concession to the oppressed, more often than not it is less a concession than a convergence of interests. The timing of this decision suggests as much.
Arguably, little has since changed in the wake of the racial filter rollback. Identity-based pecking orders remain as entrenched as ever.
How dating apps encourage exclusion
The popularity of dating apps and services depends upon their promise of greater ease and convenience, but also the pleasures offered by gamification. Exclusion-based dating exists because app design reinforces this pattern.
To explain: sorting through the sheer number of prospects on dating services requires a process of elimination. Filters present themselves as the logical conclusion.
And so users are funneled into a preset selection of behaviors, responding to each candidate on a binary yes/no basis.
Sorting through an ocean of romantic/sexual options demands significant mental energy. Our brain quickly learns to conserve that energy by autonomizing the process.
A careful profile survey is refined into a reflexive swipe. Preferences shift into hard “no”s. Full sentences degrade into monosyllables.
The apps positively reinforce our continued engagement with this pattern through instant notifications. Flashy animations and sounds signal success, assuring us that whatever we are doing must be right.
We in turn interpret our behaviors as winning strategies, leaving us less prone to questioning our own biases.
Left unchallenged, biases color our perception of the world. They fledge into prejudice, promoting “isms” such as ableism, ageism, classism, ethnocentrism, heterosexism, transphobia, and sexism.
The first step to overcoming biases is awareness. If you suspect you are prone to a particular bias, consider taking a free implicit bias test.
The second step is introducing information that directly conflicts with our automatic patterns of thinking about a particular group.1
Consider writing a letter to yourself, exploring the reasoning behind a specific bias or prejudice. Describe the experiences that may have given rise to it. Find possible flaws or contradictions in your biased belief system.
Weigh your dating preferences against your values. Do the two align, and if not, what then are you willing to do to address it?
Revising any attitude, belief, and response involves some mental effort. Dating apps on the other hand encourage us to suspend “intention, attention, and effort”2 for the sake of convenience and efficiency—then reward us for doing so.
Giving into automaticity results in us falling back on old habits. Like a car following grooves and ruts in the road, we will very quickly “tramline” our way back into bias.
Without self-reflection, we are at the mercy of our worst instincts. Only by developing awareness about our own thinking can we escape the toxic hold of exclusion-based dating.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Collecting our behavioral data for private profit is a now-standard business practice first pioneered by tech giants like Google and Facebook.
On this surface, this may seem to be a mutual exchange: products and services, in return for personal information and what The Age of Surveillance Capitalism author Shoshana Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus” data.
From this surplus, these companies are able to construct profiles that are then sold as a commodity to other businesses.
These profiles can also be used to “nudge, coax, tune, and herd [our] behavior” in a way that serves the interest of top bidders, such as through targeted advertising.
The people guiding this process—a mysterious, corporate-run “data priesthood”—operate from behind a one-way mirror. They might know everything about us, but we know next to nothing about them.
This priesthood’s practice of collecting, selling, and exploiting our behavioral data has since been adopted by the likes of dating and hookup app operators, at great cost to our privacy—and wellbeing.
The normalization of surveillance capitalism
Zuboff argues that every time we give in to these companies and sign their obscure, incomprehensible terms-of-service agreements, we are handing over exploitable information about ourselves.
We comply with these agreements only because by now they appear bog-standard, and because they are a necessary hurdle to accessing services upon which we depend.
Fashioning an image of themselves as heroic entrepreneurs or authorities, data collectors buy our trust by promising “social connection, access to information, time-saving convenience, and, too often, the illusion of support”.
Yet their true goal as Zuboff points out is to extract human experience as a raw material for profit.
But succumbing to the new form of power represented by these organizations shouldn’t seem so inevitable. We still have the power to opt out.
Here’s why it’s crucial we exercise that power.
Surveillance capitalism in gay apps
In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Zuboff explains how the social media platform Facebook uses “closed loops of obsession and compulsion” pioneered by the gaming industry to engage and captivate users.
These loops rely upon “social pressure, social comparison, modeling, subliminal priming” to generate continued usage—and even addiction.
But Facebook is hardly the only surveillance capitalist organization to employ these techniques. Consider dating apps, which I’ve previously noted bear a chilling resemblance to Skinner boxes.
What’s not often discussed however is how app creators use behavior data to shape app design and to enhance the “hand-and-glove relationship of technology addiction”, to use Zuboff’s phrase.
For example, a cursory glance at Tinder reveals the creators have tuned the app design to generate more rewarding feedback, and thus more user engagement.
Consider the flashy animation and audio tone whenever you “match” with another user on Tinder—stimulation that’s likely to cause a release of the neurochemical dopamine, associated with the sensation of pleasure.
This is a form of positive reinforcement that ensures many of us keep on playing the swiping game, at least until we hit a paywall.
Paywalls in this case are used to create the illusion of scarcity. When free users swipe “no” on an interested candidate, the app will notify them they have missed a potential match, then suggest relieve the resulting fear of missing out (FOMO) by purchasing the right to chat with this other user.
Similarly, by offering a limited amount of free “likes”, the app levers loss aversion to coax users into buying a subscription.
App designers also nudge us to return to the app using push notifications. These notifications are also used to promote flash sale promotions or advertisements.
The examples provided here are blatant examples of the manipulation Zuboff describes. However, it’s the examples we don’t know about that I believe we should be most worried about.
The danger of manipulative app design
Zuboff cites studies that reveal the particular vulnerability of teenagers to social media addiction, owing to their development age.
Yet I would argue that people of all ages—gay men included—face a similar hazard in an always-online world, especially given the decline in public gay spaces in the wake of COVID-19.
As a result, we may find ourselves constructing and displaying our gay identity in alternate venues, such as dating and hookup apps.
Much like social media, these apps coerce us into continued usage through social comparison.
Combined with the addictive design of these apps, our self-value and personhood may become tethered to the ongoing gaze and approval of others.
If we don’t practice mindfulness, we are at risk of being caught in a toxic cycle, wherein “ego gratification and ego injury drive the chase for more external cues”.
To explain: when we are ignored or rejected on these apps, gratification is denied, and our ego is injured.
We may try to soothe that injury by pursuing still more gratification, returning over and over to the app for our fix.
The shallow, mechanical, and objectifying exchanges that often ensue are a far cry from the acknowledgment and affirmation we are seeking.
As we hover over our phones “anxiously awaiting the appearance of the little notification box as a sign” of our self-worth, we suffer a slow extinction by a thousand snubs.
For “Without the ‘others’,” Zuboff writes, “the lights go out.”
How surveillance capitalism hurts us
Enter dating and hookup apps with their endless stacks and grids of attractive faces and torsos.
In the case of gay men, this social comparison is taken to a new level: we aren’t just competing for the attention of other users, but also against them.
The competition for the best possible “match”, when combined with the illusion of scarcity, fuel FOMO regarding potential romantic or sexual interests.
Our interactions on these apps come to resemble some overwhelming game of chat whack-a-mole, in which we try desperately to catch, hold and hoard other’s attention.
It’s a game that often feels futile, as interest fluxes and users log on and off, often without explanation. Being shunned or ignored is commonplace, as is deception.
For instance, it’s not unusual to realize mid-chat that the person on the other end either isn’t who they claim to be—or is actually a chatbot.
Certainly, where dating is concerned, rejection is par for the course. But when identity and self-value come into question, as it so often does on these apps, the stakes often feel so much higher, as anyone who has ever found themselves caught in a flame war can attest.
Creating app-based addiction
To recap: surveillance capitalism allows creators to monitor users’ behavior and then use the resulting data to control us, for example through the gamification I’ve described above.
Like gamblers denying the odds, we keep coming back, even attempting to turn these odds in our favor by curating a profile we know will maximize user engagement, even to the point of trickery.
It is human nature to selectively present the best parts of ourselves, but these apps seem to actively encourage selective self-representation by providing profile fields that cater to one-dimensional hypersexuality.
Limiting as it is to be defined only by the minutia of one’s erotic interests, many users inevitably fall into line. Some do it in the name of efficiency or practicality, others in the name of achieving the success of a date, a hookup, or simply being messaged.
When taken to the extreme, users will adopt a completely different identity, knowing it will likely entice messages or photo exchanges.
Instant messaging is inherently rewarding, but add to this the ever-present possibility of sexual attraction or rejection, and users are pushed into heightened states of anxious arousal.
With enough exposure, we run the risk of developing an app-based process addiction.
Defying surveillance capitalism
Today’s tech-dependent world has arguably left us all pawns of surveillance capitalism.
Dating and hookup app creators aren’t in it just for paid subscriptions. They want control of our behaviors and habits, a reality that is by now an open secret.
Fuelling addiction enables these creators to expand their subscriber base. The larger the subscriber base, the greater the behavioral surplus they have at their disposal.
The greater the behavior surplus, the more practical data they can harness in the name of fuelling addiction.
If your data isn’t resold, it is at the very least exploited by app designers to keep the “hand firmly in the glove”.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism provides perhaps the most chilling argument yet against dating and hooking apps. There are still many more.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Personally, as someone with a natural tendency for obsessive compulsiveness, I find app-based dating about as stressful as clothes shopping.
My visits to the mall usually begin with a single aspiration: buying a pair of jeans. I’ll usually give myself just an hour to make a decision. But this attempt at self-discipline rarely is a good idea.
What begins as a low-pressure routine trip quickly ends up becoming a race to find the best deal. Wandering from store to store, I’ll compare fit, color, and price, and how each option ranks alongside those I find online.
Before I know it, the internal timer will hit the hour mark and I’ll be forced to settle on a candidate.
Head spinning, I’ll collapse into the nearest seat, overwhelmed by the possibility that for all my research, I may very well end up making the wrong choice.
This “analysis paralysis” usually results in me returning to my car, driving home, and spending the next two hours browsing online until I’ve found an even better deal.
The tyranny of choice in app-based dating
Picking a pair of jeans is not a life-or-death type of situation, but for me, it certainly feels like one. Whatever savings I may make along the way are almost always negated by the stress I accrue as a result of my exhaustive (and exhausting) search.
Worse still, when the jeans I ultimately select arrive in the mail, I’ll often discover they’re a bad fit…meaning an even longer wait for a replacement pair.
It’s a development I could almost certainly avoid if I just settled for an in-store option. So what exactly is stopping me? A little something economists refer to as “loss aversion”.
No one resents the freedom to choose, or the benefits, conveniences, and privileges it affords in today’s world. But there are instances—like the one above—where choice can tyrannize, rather than liberate.
The downside of living in a consumerist society is that it often leads to a mindset governed by what author David Brooks calls a “utilitarian calculus”.
That is, we look at everything in terms of personal utility or gain. Not even interpersonal relationships are immune to such cynical assessments.
People who have fallen prey to “utilitarian calculus” are what The Paradox of Choice author Barry Schwartz calls maximizers. When confronted by a purchase decision, maximizers almost always pursue the “best” possible option.
Maximizers are consumed by the need to be conscious and deliberate about every choice. They are extremely averse to losses but also regret. For that reason, they are more often than not hamstrung by their pursuit of perfection.
As in my case, shopping for the “best deal” when confronted by an endless array of choices can lead to mental overload. It can also deprive us of valuable time and energy.
As Schwartz writes:
“Nobody has the time or cognitive resources to be completely thorough and accurate with every decision, and as more decisions are required and more options are available, the challenge of doing the decision making correctly becomes ever more difficult to meet.”
The perils of ‘maximizing’
Consider this quote in light of gay app-based dating. A maximizing mindset seems baked into website and app design, with features that make screening, excluding, and selecting effortless.
We are able to set filters to identify people who fall within a narrow set of idealized parameters. We swipe to dispose of undesirables, and “favorite” to build a list of prospective lovers.
But as Schwartz points out, dating app maximizers sooner or later run up against the following conundrum: “How can anyone truly know that any given option is absolutely the best possible?”
The fact is, we never really can, a fact that continues to haunt maximizers well past the point of having made a decision.
This may explain why many app users avoid meeting; who ghost and flake on a whim. Barring obvious reasons—such as being on the app purely out of procrastination or a desire for validation—these individuals may feel confronted by your request for them to make a decision.
While meeting for a coffee is not exactly a marriage proposal, it does require some investment of time and energy. It is by no means a commitment, but it is a choice all the same.
That choice comes inevitably at the cost of other choices. For instance, spending facetime with one person for example means possibly missing out on facetime with someone else who happens to be available and interested at the same time.
Not a significant loss by most measures, but ask a maximizer who lives with background anxiety of loss and regret aversion and they may disagree.
This anxiety and agonizing about supposed trade-offs however can ultimately thwart the maximizer’s search.
Ignoring those of us who use app-based dating for the thrill of instant messaging and sexting, the remainder we can safely assume are looking for some form of in-person interaction.
Monitoring our usage of these services reveals that we spend a lot of time information gathering for the “best option”—swiping, starring, filtering, blocking, chatting—time that is rarely proportional to any tangible outcome.
Sooner or later, we hit a point of diminishing returns. The “fun” offered by the often gamified app-based dating services diminishes, and we log off. (And unless we delete our account, it’s likely we’ll find ourselves hopping back on again for a quick attentional fix when boredom or desire strikes.)
The illusion of choice in app-based dating
While these apps are forever dangling the possibility of a “better option”, they’re also distracting us with addictive casual gaming mechanics.
Consider the ever-shifting availability of possible partners. Attention from these individuals will oscillate, peaking at certain hours, falling during others, even dying off suddenly and inexplicably.
Consider also the fact other users harbor a variety of motives. Even supposing they happen to share ours, there’s often a difference between stated motives and true motives.
A chat partner may say they are looking to date, but that may simply be a front aimed at sustaining the interaction. Or it may also be one of many conflicting and competing motives.
What this means is that in many cases one user’s stated desire to date could be abandoned the instant they are presented with an offer of immediate sexual gratification. (To quote the Nelly Furtado song “Promiscuous”: “Chivalry is dead / But you’re still kinda cute”)
Finally, while it may seem that you have total freedom to choose a romantic partner, that freedom is not exclusive to you. The other person has the right to their own choice, which will not necessarily align with yours.
Assuming your maximizing instincts don’t first paralyze you, there’s always the possibility your decision might be thwarted when the other person fails to reciprocate your interest.
Confusion, commitment phobia, and ‘gaming’
The opposite of a maximizer is the satisficer. Like the maximizer, the satisficer will be discriminating when it comes to selecting a romantic partner. They are also capable of being satisfied with excellence, as opposed to some impossible ideal of perfection.
Where maximizers are picky about finding “the best”, satisficers carefully weigh the options before accepting “good enough”.
Schwartz says the distinction is essentially a philosophical one:
“A chooser is someone who thinks actively about the possibilities before making a decision. A chooser reflects on what’s important to him or her in life, what’s important about this particular decision, and what the short-and long-range consequences of the decision may be. A chooser makes decisions in a way that reflects awareness of what a given choice means about him or her as a person. Finally, a chooser is thoughtful enough to conclude that perhaps none of the available alternatives are satisfactory, and that if he or she wants the right alternative, he or she may have to create it.”
When juggling options on Grindr, Scruff, or Tinder, we exercise our rights as romantic and sexual “consumers”. But what we don’t do is reflect on what’s motivating our behavior.
Yet effective dating arguably can only happen once we have a clear and consistent understanding of what we’re seeking, and why.
How do we arrive at such an understanding? We apply the Five W’s and the one H:
Who we are looking for (what kind of person)?
What type of interaction are we interested in (hookups, dating, relationship etc.)?
When do we want this interaction to take place?
Why this interaction in particular? (To put it another way, how will this interaction contribute to our long-term goal?)
How do we intend to establish that interaction? (What methods will we use?)
Sounds obvious. And yet more often than not, our focus is confused. There are simply too many options that maximizers are forced to treat app-based dating as a game of elimination.
Our focus in this game is less on identifying a suitable partner than it is removing options from the dating service pool, often for the most arbitrary reasons (“I don’t like his hairstyle”, “He seems too needy”, “He lives on the other side of town”).
Gamified app designs, such as the swipe mechanic used by Tinder, encourage users to continually “prune” options, often to the point of distraction.
Another factor is that we as a culture are commitment-phobes. More often than not when dating, we become locked in a maximizing mindset, hellbent on securing an option that ticks off an often superficial, if not an impossible shopping list of personal traits.
Forever scanning our grid or swipe stack, we “trade up” prospective candidates like indecisive children in the candy aisle, stricken by the possibility that the one candy we select comes at the exclusion of other, possibly better selections.
Maximizing also can lead to “gaming”. Caught up in maximizing rewards, our initial goal (“meeting someone with whom I share chemistry and/or compatibility”) becomes something more vague and insatiable (“getting as much validation as possible”).
To put it another way, we go from treating romantic attention as the means by which we achieve some kind of relationship, to attention exclusively becoming the ends.
Caught up in the fun game of projecting desirability and provoking engagement, we spend our time manipulating the attention-based economy of dating services in order to get our attention fix.
‘Shoulda, coulda, woulda’
When our focus is confused, when we shy from committing to a choice, and when we’re caught up in gaming app-based dating, we treat self-awareness as an obstacle to our purpose.
Yet so long as we’re driven by blind instinct rather than introspection, that purpose risks becoming more and more unclear.
More effective and productive use of our time would involve choosing with purpose, rather than selecting on a whim. Namely, satisfying, rather than maximizing.
If we give in to maximizing, we may find ourselves prone to bad decisions, anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction, and even depression, Schwartz warns.
To maximize means to be driven by a fear of loss and regret, to succumb to “shoulda, coulda, woulda”-style doubts.
Regardless of what our moment-to-moment motives on app-based dating services are, what we are all seeking as human beings, ultimately, are meaningful connections.
But where such connections are concerned, one can only maximize so far. People are by nature imperfect, so pursuing “the best” is a quest that – let’s be honest – is doomed from the outset.
Takeaways
Recognize that “maximizing” is driven by loss aversion.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Throughout my twenties, I stumbled from one unsuccessful gay relationship to another, thwarted by the fact my partners and I were often operating at cross-purposes.
The first time this happened, I had just confessed to my then-boyfriend Kohei* that I didn’t anticipate ever wanting to have kids of my own.
Having a vague awareness of my own dysfunction, and fearing I might unintentionally inflict it upon my children, it seemed the sensible thing to say.
I was also barely out of my teens, and in no way ready to even contemplate the possibility of parenthood.
“Gonna be honest, that really has me worried,” Kohei replied. I shook my head.
“It’s just not my thing.”
“… So you’re not even going to consider it?” Kohei said.
“Sorry,” I said. Kohei’s gaze fell to the floor.
“Well, I can’t see myself dating someone who doesn’t share my long-term goals.”
Feeling cornered, I grabbed my backpack from his couch and stood up.
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t date me.”
Stepping out onto Kohei’s front porch, I called out a polite farewell, hopped on my bike, and pedaled home.
When a gay relationship just doesn’t “work”
My reaction was, in hindsight, unfair. But truth be told, Kohei’s ultimatum had given me the escape hatch I had long been looking for.
My boyfriend’s puppy-like devotion had arrived at my door, premature and unqualified – like a Christmas gift in July. It had left me with deep-seated suspicion.
Was Kohei really interested in me, or was he just afraid – as we all are, on some fundamental level – of being alone?
Up until this point, I had been seeding our conversations with prickly challenges, less out of a desire to antagonize Kohei than a wish to test whether he would stand his ground, or rollover. And time and time again, Kohei had done the latter.
When the morning after our confrontation, Kohei attempted to patch things up with me, I insisted that he was in fact right: we were not compatible.
The “don’t date me” comment was, I knew, the culmination of many attempts to test him. Kohei’s willingness to overlook my take-it-or-leave-it attitude seemed to me proof enough that the two of us were, in some inexplicable way, out of alignment.
Too needy, or too neglected?
Where I had kept Kohei at arm’s length, come the next relationship, I found myself cast in the opposite role.
Remo* was accommodating, but not in the way Kohei had been. Unlike Kohei, asserted himself where he needed to, and I respected him all the more for it.
Here was a person capable of withstanding me at my bossiest and gently putting me on notice. We were, I wanted to believe, a good match.
The day I called to reveal I had just been made redundant, I got my first hint of the growing distance between us.
“So…I’m out of a job,” I said, my voice breaking with emotion.
“Well, you know what you have to do,” Remo replied.
“What do you mean?” I replied, stung by his lack of sympathy.
“Look,” Remo said. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll text you later.”
Feeling kind of put out, I grew first apprehensive, then adversarial.
“You know, you could be a little more empathetic,” I said during a later conversation.
“I think you mean empathic,” Remo sniped back.
Sensing his withdrawal, I pressed him for emotional support. But the bullishness Remo had once excused had suddenly become a problem. He ended it not long later, claiming he no longer “had the time” to hang out.
In fighting for my boyfriend’s validation, it seemed I had unwittingly driven him away. Heartbreak and an unexplained sense of shame followed.
What is attachment?
When gauging a gay relationship for compatibility, there is perhaps one factor that trumps all, and yet is often overlooked: attachment style.
Attachment styles in short are about how we form attachments to other people. Our styles are largely the result of our first relationships with our caregivers.
When however our caregivers inflict trauma such as sexual abuse or emotional neglect or fail to properly “attune” with us, our attachment is ruptured, and we develop an insecure attachment style.
Those suffering from insecure attachments not only struggle to maintain consistent self-worth – they are also more likely to struggle where it comes to forming healthy relationships.
Levine and Heller identify two insecure attachment styles as the most common: “anxious” and “avoidant”.
Those with anxious attachment styles typically seek closeness and intimacy in their relationships. They fear abandonment and may engage in “protest behaviors”, which include excessive attempts to reestablish contact, withdrawing, hostility, and manipulation.
Avoidants on the other hand like to keep their distance when in a relationship. They do this by engaging in “deactivating strategies”: refusing to verbally commit or say “I love you”, dodging physical or emotional closeness, nitpicking their partners, flirting with others, and longing after a “phantom ex”.
Levine and Heller believe about 50 percent of the adult population have a secure attachment style, while roughly 25 percent are anxious, and the remaining 25 percent are avoidant.
Notably, relational trauma can also shift securely attached people towards insecurity. The fact that “betrayal, abandonment, abuse, and chaos” is a gay relationship rite of passage for many, according to The Velvet Rage author Alan Downs, makes us even likely as a population to suffer from attachment issues.
Which attachment styles are compatible?
Secure + secure OR secure + anxious/avoidant: Those with secure attachment styles can form strong relationships with each other and with the insecurely attached (anxious and avoidant). “Secures” are generally able to provide a “safe base” for their insecure partners, sometimes even help “heal” their attachment problems. But not always.
Anxious + anxious OR avoidant + avoidant: Anxious-anxious and avoidant-avoidant partnerships are less likely to work by virtue of their mutual difficulty forming healthy attachments.
Anxious people seeking reassurance from other anxious people are naturally a difficult proposition. Likewise, avoidants are not likely to date avoidants because of their mutual desire for distance and independence inevitably forces them apart.
Anxious + avoidant: Avoidants’ tendency towards distance and independence is likely to unsettle their anxious partners, who thrive in an affirming, supportive environment.
When avoidants withhold intimacy from their anxious partner, the partner may confuse the resulting turmoil for passion. Attempting to re-establish relational equilibrium, the anxious partner may double down in their demands, only for the avoidant to withhold affirmation even more.
The pair thus will find themselves caught up in a spiraling push-pull dynamic that is sometimes confused for romance.
Forging a fantastic gay relationship
According to an attachment style quiz devised by Levine and Heller, I myself have a predominately anxious attachment style. Considering the behavior of my first boyfriend Kohei, I’ve concluded that he too was likely anxious.
Kohei’s constant need for affirmation and intimacy might have been a non-issue for a securely attached partner. But for me, it was overwhelming, and I coped in the only way I knew how: by challenging and thereby trying to create distance.
Kohei’s anxiety about the relationship understandably grew, until at least he issued a challenge of his own: either change my future parenthood plans or kiss him goodbye.
Remo on the other hand was most certainly avoidant. I was never permitted to get too close, and the more I sought reassurance, the more he withheld. My attempts to re-establish contact were met with veiled contempt.
Until I discovered attachment theory, the mechanics of a successful gay relationship eluded me, and gauging romantic compatibility was hit-and-miss.
Levine and Heller thankfully provide detailed strategies for coping with avoidant or anxious attachment styles. Their key advice is to seek out a more balanced pairing: secure + secure, secure + anxious, or secure + avoidant.
To determine the other person’s attachment style, Levine and Heller suggest following these steps:
Determine whether your partner seeks intimacy and closeness.
Assess how preoccupied s/he is with the relationship and how sensitive s/he is to rejection.
Don’t rely on one “symptom” – look for various signs.
Use effective communication: express your needs, thoughts, and feelings. Then assess your partner’s reaction.
Listen and look for what he is not saying or doing. Trust your gut feeling.
A final word of caution to secures: helping someone with an insecure attachment shift towards more secure attachment patterns isn’t always possible. Sometimes your partner may insist on clinging to their old ways.
The question therefore is, are anxious or avoidant behaviors something you are ultimately willing to overlook in your bid to forge a gay relationship? Can you learn to be satisfied with your partner’s status quo?
For those with anxious attachment styles, remember that you’re more likely to experience an avoidant out in the wild than any other attachment style.
Avoidants after all spend more time dating than in actual relationships, on account of their struggles forming healthy attachments.
Secures are also a lot harder to come by. Why? The ease with which they form healthy attachments means they’re more likely to remain in relationships and are less likely to ever appear in the dating pool.
Takeaways
Identify your attachment style: secure, anxious or avoidant.
Use the five steps to determine your partner’s style.
Seek compatible partnerships.
* Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of all individuals discussed in this article.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Being time-poor is no longer the exception – it’s the rule. Using gay dating apps seems, on the face of it, easier and less time-consuming than more traditional forms of dating.
On the apps, the pool of potential partners is infinitely bigger. The ease of use trumps the complications of in-person interactions.
You can do your vetting anywhere, be it the comfort of your bed or a bathroom stall.
Text-based communication allows you to reply at your own convenience. To bask in the attention of multiple apparent suitors.
Present your ultra-refined, whip-smart, sexy, side-cracking funny ideal self. Never face the pain of real rejection.
1. Gay dating apps ask us to forgo being authentic
Out of necessity, we change to suit our audience. We become whoever we need to be, curating images and text in order to secure whatever it is we want at that moment of time, be it company for dinner or a bedfellow for the hour.
In doing so, we avoid the risks involved with being vulnerable. But we also lose touch with our fundamental desire to be seen, recognized, and accepted for our authentic selves.
2. They force us to trade our deeper needs for transitory wants
Gay dating apps ask us to select romantic or sexual partners on the basis of specific traits.
While this is supposed to help us narrow our vast options, it forces us to take a very limited view. We prematurely choose or reject candidates on the basis of our current, often superficial ideas of what we think we want.
But what we “want” is not necessarily consistent, but contextual and ever-changing. For example, we all have our dealbreakers, but we also have “negotiables”.
Depending on our mood or appetite, we might be open to one trait today, and another tomorrow.
My point is this: by treating online dating as a game of elimination, fixating on a preset “shopping list”, we lose sight of what we are all truly need and are seeking: meaningful connection.
3. Gay dating apps leave us stuck in a state of perpetual ‘looking’
Keeping interactions going on the apps can often feel like a war of attrition, with our conversational partners appearing and disappearing suddenly and often without reason.
So we are forced to participate in relational multitasking, maintaining multiple interactions at the same time. This guarantees us a stream of almost constant attention, and therefore validation.
In order to sustain the game of juggling candidates, we have to cast our nets wide and keep our options open.
Having revised our ever-shifting tastes, we then rinse and repeat, in a neverending cycle.
4. They trivialize ourselves, and others
Admit it: the apps have at one point made you feel this way. Some of us even actively engage in such trivializing, advising other users to “relax, it’s just Grindr” while professing to “not take this app too seriously”.
It’s true that for many, gay dating apps are just – and will only ever be – a means of fun distraction. Got a few minutes to burn?
Hop on, ping a few cute strangers, trade some banter, swap a few photos, before inevitably turning your attention back to real life.
They employ mechanisms to keep you entertained and to reward engagement, be it through audible notifications, features like “woofs”, “taps”, or other apparent acknowledgments of your worth or attractiveness.
These mechanisms trivialize interactions, resulting in the following shift in our priorities:
Seeking connection →
Seeking entertainment
“I want to forge a genuine connection with another human being.” →
“I’ll treat interactions as just fun and games, and other people as a means for personal validation.”
Being focused →
Seeking distraction
“I would like to pursue a single, valued person on the basis of a connection and compatibility.” →
“I’ll put my eggs in a few baskets, with minimum investment, and no specific, consistent goal in mind.”
Being purpose-driven→
Being opportunistic
“I am seeking the companionship of another person to help satisfy my need for connection.” →
“I’ll seek whatever I want, according to my current desires and the options on hand.”
Seeking entertainment and distraction opportunistically guarantees you some amount of “fun”…but not a whole lot else.
5. They foster dependency
Gay dating apps put us in a state of imbalance. In order to keep conversations going, we must lend them our attention across the day and night.
Continued use means continued validation. Our self-value may become contingent upon positive reinforcement from others.
Over time, the stress of having to constantly seek this reinforcement compounds, corroding our sense of wellbeing and feeding anxiety and depression.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Rarely do they involve something as dramatic as a blow-up or a betrayal. Rather, they usually are the culmination of a thousand cuts.
Many of the people I have interacted with seem paralyzed by choice, requests for emotional availability, and the possibility of commitment. Those lacking in self-awareness will often resort to sabotaging a possible relationship, if only to avoid decision or perceived danger.
The most common form of sabotage is the mixed message: a man claiming to want one thing while indulging in behaviors that ran counter to it. “Looking for dates”, the dating app bio will read, “but open to everything else”.
Should someone make an earnest attempt at courtship, that same man would sooner skirt complications altogether by embracing the easy and “safer” alternative of casual sex.
I first met Rayan* online during college. Years after our first date, he reemerged on Tinder, enthusiastically requesting we meet again.
While I had enjoyed Rayan’s company the first time, I’d felt that our lifestyles and interests were somewhat out of sync. Still, I figured there was no harm in giving it another shot.
We spent the first few minutes of our second date bringing each other up to speed on how our lives had changed in the intervening years, talking broadly about our dating experiences. Rayan expressed frustration about the difficulty of finding someone willing to take the time to get to know him.
About an hour into our conversation, he invited me back to his place for tea. But when we got there, Rayan’s initially chivalrous interest faltered. “Tea”, as it turned out, was a euphemism.
Feeling uncomfortable, I reiterated my intention to date, then noted it was getting late and that I really needed to get home. A conciliatory Rayan offered to walk me to my bus stop and I agreed.
While stopped at a pedestrian crossing, he raised the subject of arranged marriages. In what I can only guess was an appeal to our shared Middle Eastern heritage, Rayan spoke of relatives who would serve as matchmakers to heterosexual bachelors, and lamented the absence of equivalent services for gay men.
“Sometimes I wish I had an auntie who would find me a man to marry,” Rayan told me.
“I wouldn’t have any say in it. She’d choose and that would be it. We’d just have to make it work.”
Rayan laughed at the wistful impracticality of such an arrangement. Yet it seemed to me that for all his facetiousness, part of him meant what he had said.
Rayan’s desire for the implied simplicity of an arranged marriage was understandable, and yet both of us knew this was not something most gay men would ever realistically settle for. Accustomed to the sea of options offered by gay dating apps, to sacrifice those options for many would represent a considerable loss.
The fact Rayan had floated such an alternative to modern dating while on a date struck me as evidence enough of this. What on the surface it was a throwaway joke, it also felt like an offhanded dismissal of my attempts to get to know him.
Rayan over the span of our encounter had gone from stressing he wanted to date, to propositioning me for sex, to lamenting the difficulties of dating – a series of contradictory actions I suspect most people would struggle to decipher.
Like many men I have dated, Rayan either did not know what he truly really wanted, or feared admitting it and sticking to his guns.
When confronted with the emotional danger of being authentic, Rayan had resorted to humor as a defense mechanism, trying to create distance from that perceived danger.
The problem of gay dating apps
Those of us regularly exposed to the toxic environment of gay dating apps are intimately acquainted with the push-pull of wanting more, but fearing what that might entail.
We know it not only just by our own internal experience, but by the inconsistency of our dates who are hampered by the same contrary desires.
Previously I’ve noted how these apps can create an unhealthy dependence, asking us to engage in inauthentic behavior, while keeping us locked in a perpetual search and encouraging us to trivialize both ourselves and others.
At the heart of the current gay dating app crisis is a fundamental shift in our orientation from seeking connection and being focused and purpose-driven, to seeking entertainment, distraction and being opportunistic.
The gamified reward system used by these apps tempts many of us into adopting such a stance, thus undermining our search for wholesome, meaningful relationships.
The promise that gay dating apps will economize our time and effort may lead us down a downwards spiral of risk aversion, leaving us less willing to take a chance on others, even if all that involves is the price of a coffee and an hour of our time.
The illusion of always being connected offered by text-based communication may also allow us to temporarily stave off loneliness while creating conditions that ironically feed that same isolation.
Text-based communication is also designed with personal convenience in mind, enabling us to effortlessly retouch our self-presentation, while avoiding situations that necessitate vulnerability, which is crucial to forming connections.
The antidote
Not that long ago, dating apps were seen as a somewhat unsavory fringe alternative to traditional dating.
Now, in an uncanny inversion of roles, they have become the new norm, with real-life for many gay men assuming the title of “alternative” – for which we can find any number of excuses.
The bar and club scene? Not quite your jam. A matchmaking service? An unnecessary expense. Gay hobby groups? Too much of a commitment.
But to end our seemingly interminable search for an ideal partner, we must be willing to abandon the ease and comfort of text-based communication and truly invest in others.
In order to forge authentic relationships, we must give up the immediate gratification of texting andallow ourselves to risk vulnerability,
What I am advocating here is not a complete flight from text-based communication. Nor am I suggesting seeking out matchmakers or arranged relationships. Neither promise a true end to the crisis of choice that is modern dating.
What this crisis calls for, rather, is a return to basics. Namely, the crucial art of making and building friendships.
Don’t date. ‘Friend’
Friendship is the foundation of any sound romantic relationship. It does not carry the same emotional risks as gay dating, nor the ambiguity of app-based interactions. It facilitates not a dropping of boundaries and headlong plunge into sexual relations, but the slow and steady building of rapport and trust.
It stands to reason, therefore, that those of us seeking to date should make it our number one priority. We must be willing to shift our outlook from the limited confines of seeking a sex partner or significant other that ticks all the boxes, to the endless horizon of friendships.
How do we form friendships? Former FBI agent Jack Schafer offers the following formula in his book The Like Switch: Friendship = proximity x frequency x duration x intensity(PFDI)
Schafer defines proximity as being close to the subject in question. Frequency is relational to the number of times you’ve been in contact. Duration is the amount of time you spend together. Intensity measures how much you are able to satisfy others’ needs through your actions.
So, what are some settings that are conducive to PFDI?
1. Hobby groups
A hobby group or sporting group is the perfect PFDI nexus. They connect you to a community of like-minded people (proximity), and they give you an excuse to regularly gather with others (frequency, duration) to participate in a shared interest (intensity).
You can find an array of options on Google, Meetup.com, or social media. If you’re feeling particularly intrepid, you could try establishing your own community. Setting up a group on Meetup.com, for example, is easy enough, although it does involve recurring fees.
2. Online communities
Online communities organized around a common interest can also provide regular relationship-building opportunities. This is presuming they are, again, gay-oriented and regularly organize in-person meetups in your town or city.
One possible place to look for these is on Reddit.
3. Meditation or spiritual groups
Shared values are a great basis for connecting with other people.
Whether you are dabbling in mindfulness, practicing yoga, or were raised with a religion that remains near and dear to your heart, chances are you’ll find there is already a gay community that shares your practices and is waiting to embrace you with open arms.
4. Talks, presentations or conferences
Find a talk or attend a conference that aligns with your interests. If it is gay-themed, all the better.
You will stand a better chance of making friends if you attend after-event drinks, networking mixers and bar crawls.
5. Volunteering
If you’re not comfortable putting yourself out there, volunteering – particularly for an LGBT-related cause – is a great way to meet other mindful individuals just like yourself.
Not only will you be doing a valuable service for your local community, but you’ll also be putting your values into practice. This is an incredibly effective way to reinforce your sense of self-worth.
People who are confident in this sense tend to be more attractive to others, thus further improving your chances of meeting someone.
Watch out for the toxic trio
Whatever you choose to do, remember to avoid gatherings that replicate the dynamic of gay dating apps.
Be on the lookout for what I call the toxic trio: objectification, judgmentalism, and competition.
These three things are to friendship what concrete is to grass, suffocating any possibility of growth.
Some sports leagues, for example, can produce an unhealthy atmosphere of competitiveness, in which you may feel compelled to constantly prove your athletic ability and in turn your personal worth. Should you fail to measure up, you may face subtle and even overt forms of exclusion and judgment. Hardly the kind of environment that is conducive to friendship.
Depending on the kind of social gathering, you may get the vibe that other attendees are less focused on connection than they are cruising. A common telltale of this is what I call the “wandering gayze”, in which the person you’re talking to looks over your shoulder, constantly scanning the room for better-looking prospects.
The wandering gayze is the scourge of many an interaction between gay men. It sends a very clear message to one’s conversation partner that their value as a person is pending review.
Besides being a covert form of judgmentalism, the wandering gayze indicates that this person has an agenda, even if that agenda is simply to keep “trading up”. No one should ever feel forced to fight for another person’s attention or respect.
Keep an open mind
Always being on the lookout for the next best thing is counterintuitive to the dating process. Should you find yourself falling prey to the wandering gayze, you should remember that your goal here is to build connections based on mutual interests and camaraderie.
For these to be possible, you should approach these groups and events with an open mind, rather than a specific motive. Of course, your end goal may be a romantic relationship, but being too fixated on the goal closes you off to possibilities.
Strict adherence to a nonnegotiable shopping list is one reason gay dating apps feel so sterile. By remaining open-minded, you will be avoiding squeezing every interaction into a predefined box.
Instead, you are granting yourself permission to freely engage in a sharing of self through conversation, laughter, and flirtation; to let down your guard and be vulnerable. Andvulnerability is where the magic ultimately happens.
In joining one of these groups, you may not find a life partner. But you will likely build rich, rewarding friendships that increase the possibility of further introductions.
Remember that you are playing the long game. You are investing in other people in the hopes they will in turn invest in you.
This may feel like a somewhat inefficient, if not risky process. In abandoning the pretense we employ while texting, we may say or do the wrong thing. We will likely face pressures and discomforts we might have otherwise avoided, had we remained behind our phone screen.
What we won’t do, however, is leave these encounters empty-handed. Given the right company, we’ll instead walk away with the warm glow of a fun conversation, a shared joke, or an exchanged smile.
And after so much time spent in the gay dating apps wasteland, in the company of men apt to send conflicting messages, is that so bad?
Takeaways
Swap gay dating apps for in-person interactions.
Aim to find friends – not dates.
Consider attending events or groups that offer proximity, frequency, duration and intensity.
Embrace vulnerability by remaining open.
* Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of all individuals discussed in this article.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
