Between Tinder swipes, Lulu hashtags, and Match winks, dating is more dizzying than ever. Who has time to focus on finding Mr. Right when you're texting with Mr. Tonight?
Chances are, Shannon Truax is going on a date tonight. The only question is with whom?
It might be Mike*, whom she took home last week after drinks at a chic hotel bar, or Amrit, with whom she sparked up a conversation at a work event last month — or another of the 11 (yes, 11) guys she's currently juggling in her romantic rotation via Facebook, Twitter, text, and e-mail.
"Eleven is the high end, three is the low end, and six is the sweet spot," says the lively blonde social-media director from Seattle. To be clear, she's talking about the magic number of men she may multitask at any given moment.
"There's a tier system," explains Truax, 34, who notes that, with the exception of scattered makeouts, she "fools around" with only one guy at a time. "I've had plans to have dinner with one guy and then somebody I like better will text me about drinks and I'll do that instead. The way I see it, I'm researching and homing in on what's important to me in a man. It makes sense that you would swap out somebody for somebody else. There is always somebody else."
So it goes in the dizzying era of Attention Deficit Dating. For better or worse, it's harder than ever to focus on just one person when a continuous feed of guys — conveniently mapped out within your zip code! — is just a tap away on rapid-fire, location-based dating apps. Between Tinder swipes, Match winks, Facebook Likes, and good old-fashioned late-night sexts, young, single women (and their male counterparts) are high on dating options and low on attention spans.
Option Overload"A single date is no longer as precious as it once was. People are like human bumper cars out there," says Dan Slater, author of A Million First Dates. "Technology has really changed the way people approach their dating lives. You don't feel as pressured to fall into a relationship when you have so many options." ADD dater Nikki Tuck, 24, an advertising executive in New York City, casually sees about three guys at once, upgrading or dropping men as she sees fit. "If I don't hear from a guy in a few days, I just go on Tinder and I'm like ... next!" she says. Soon, "I have four 'Michael Tinders' in my phone," Tuck laughs. With no clue as to their last names, she labels guys with identifying details to prevent confusion. But even after one becomes "'Michael Tall Tinder' and another becomes 'Michael Maybe Tinder,'" she says, "there are not enough adjectives in the world that will help me organize my online-dating phone numbers." When Tinder swipes do turn into dates, Tuck follows a strict "either you got it or you don't" policy. Forget the urban legends about bad first dates that turn into second chances that turn into marriages. Tuck's recent first date with a "great-looking" 29-year-old from Tinder was also her last: "I didn't feel sexual chemistry, and we never talked again."
ADD dating may sound a little empty and icy, but as Alison Schwartz, cofounder of the girl-power-infused, man-rating app Lulu, says, "Who has time to waste? We're busy women." Ladies on Lulu help each other speed up the man-filtering process by reviewing guys with prewritten hashtags like #CantBuildIkeaFurniture, #GreatListener, and #KinkyInTheRightWays. This Yelp-ification of men is just another handy way to date with ninjalike efficiency. In olden times (circa two years ago), a girl might show up for a date with no clue as to whether a guy #GrowsHisOwnVegetables or #Gives AmazingCuddles. She'd have to find out for herself over tapas and mini golf and fumbling hookups. But in the impatient age of ADD dating, you can save yourself from a bad date — or worse, a bad relationship — with some sage advice from your digital sisters on Lulu.
"Nobody lets a total stranger babysit her kids. You make sure to check out her references," Schwartz says. "So it makes sense that you'd want intel about the guys you might jump into bed with."
Making Us Numb?Swipe left, swipe right, refresh, refresh — is ADD dating hardening our hearts and turning us into romantic robots? The downside, says Slater, is that "a person can become flat-out thick-skinned. You get this idea in your head that no one relationship is that important because there's always something else around the corner." Tuck admits that going out with a buffet of guys "can be a bad thing," warping her sense of reality and making her feel like a mad scientist creating the online dating equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. "If only I could have his personality with his looks and his height," she'll wonder. "You can't help but try to piece together this perfect guy who doesn't exist."
For some singles, ADD dating acts as a convenient defense mechanism to avoid feeling vulnerable when someone doesn't return your affections. Despite balancing an impressive roster of men, Truax has experienced heartbreak. One of the men in her rotation who planned to visit her for the weekend from out of town recently stood her up without so much as a phone call, leaving her "crying over my salad in the middle of the work day" ... although not for long. "What if I miss something on those two days I stayed home in bed crying? I need to get back out there and increase my odds," she says. Carlyn Topkin, a 25-year-old JDater from Saint Petersburg, Florida, admits she uses ADD dating as a defense mechanism. "You go out with this great guy on a Tuesday and you're so excited and you start planning what kind of flowers you'll have at your wedding, but you don't want him to break your heart," she says. "So you find someone else to get a drink with on Wednesday. It's a way to protect yourself from getting too hurt by one person."
Winning the Dating GameBut ADD dating doesn't have to mean numbing yourself to the possibility of love. Playing the digital dating game has become a rite of passage for women who are figuring out what they really want before settling down later in life. "Some [men] might break her heart, and she may break a few hearts herself," Slater says of the typical ADD vixen. "Ideally, she's going to come out of that better suited to find happiness in a relationship." During a marathon week of ADD dating last fall, Elaina S. (not her real name), a 35-year-old who works in finance in New York City, met her boyfriend, Jack, via Tinder — although she almost passed him over for other options. "I thought he was nice, but I didn't fall head over heels in love over one glass of wine at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday. I left and had another date with someone else afterward ... and another date that Saturday," she recalls. "I was kind of indifferent about him, but then he texted me and something he said made me laugh." Jack persisted. While Elaina still wasn't invested, it took a friend saying "You should go out with him again because you never really gave him a fair shake" to change her mind.
Date two was amazing ... and the rest is history: "I went from being in his phone as 'Elaina Tinder' in October to going away on vacation with him in November to both of us deleting Tinder from our phones." They've been together for five months now. That Tinder turned tender despite the couple's once-incessant swiping? "We both think it's kind of miraculous."
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