Why Dating Feels Exhausting

Have you ever closed a dating app feeling more tired than when you opened it? If you have, you are in good company. In 2024, a survey of 1,000 Americans who used a dating app in the past year found that 78% said they sometimes, often, or always felt emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted by the apps. Research supports this finding. A study of dating app users by Sharabi and colleagues (2026) found that emotional exhaustion increased over time, as did inefficacy, the sense that one’s efforts are not paying off. Users who self-reported higher levels of depression, anxiety, or loneliness were more prone to both.

The industry is under strain, too. Earlier this month, Bumble agreed to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion, far below the roughly $14 billion valuation it carried when it went public in 2021. The number of paying users has declined dramatically; in spring 2026, it had about 16% fewer paying users than a year earlier.

As an evolutionary psychologist, I find this exhaustion intriguing, and I think it stems from mismatch. The term mismatch refers to what happens when psychological mechanisms that evolved in one environment meet inputs far more numerous or intense than those our ancestors are hypothesized to have encountered. These mismatches can result in behavior that no longer serves us well (Li et al., 2018). While I cannot say with total certainty what our ancestral courtship involved, I am confident that it did not entail reviewing hundreds of strangers’ photographs in a single evening in the hopes of finding a mate.

This mismatch between human nature and dating apps explains four reasons dating may feel exhausting.

1. More options make us pickier

In 2004, psychologist Barry Schwartz popularized the idea of a paradox of choice: that having more options can leave us less satisfied. A great demonstration of this paradox is a grocery-store study in which approximately 30% of shoppers who stopped at a display of 6 jams went on to buy one, compared with only 3% of those who stopped at a display of 24 jams (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; but see Scheibehenne et al., 2010). A later review found that this feeling of choice overload is more likely when people are unsure of their preferences and when the decision is a difficult one (Chernev et al., 2015). This finding aligns well with online dating.

While having choices ought to feel freeing, abundance appears to make people more rejecting. Across three studies, Pronk and Denissen (2020) found that people grew more rejecting as they worked through a series of potential partners. The chance of accepting a partner dropped by 27% on average from the first option to the last, possibly because satisfaction with partners’ photos decreased and their sense of dating success declined. They describe people as gradually closing themselves off from mating opportunities.

These results are supported elsewhere. Thomas and colleagues (2026) found that among undergraduates using a mock dating app, those who evaluated the largest set of profiles accepted approximately 17% of them, versus about 24% among those who saw the smallest set. Further, viewing more profiles left participants feeling more overwhelmed by choice.

2. Abundance pushes us toward quick judgments

When options multiply, we economize to save brain power. Lenton and Francesconi (2010) report that when people have more potential partners to choose from, they give more weight to traits that can be judged at a quick glance, such as height and weight, and less to traits that take longer to assess, such as education and occupational status. While their data come from speed-dating events rather than apps, I speculate that a dating app pushes the same tendency further, because a photo can be judged in a moment, but much of what we want to know about a partner (especially for longer relationships) takes far longer to learn.

3. Gut-feel swiping can harm how we see ourselves

How we actually swipe on potential partners may also matter. In one experiment, the number of potential partner profiles did not affect self-esteem, but decision style did. Participants prompted to make quick, intuitive judgments reported lower self-esteem and rated their own value as a mate lower than those in the control condition or those asked to make careful, defensible choices. They also began to feel overloaded sooner (Thomas et al., 2026). These findings matter because our perception of our mate value or desirability strongly influences whom we approach. In an analysis of heterosexual users of a dating site in four large U.S. cities, Bruch and Newman (2018) found that men and women typically pursued partners about 25% more desirable than themselves, and the chance of a reply fell as that gap grew. If swiping quickly, off the cuff, using a gut feeling decreases how people view themselves, then I would predict it also changes whom they approach.

4. A profile cannot capture chemistry

Ah, the wondrous spark of meeting someone new and feeling chemistry run through your body, suggesting they might be “the one.” Apparently, it is the one aspect dating models cannot predict. Consider, for example, the findings of Joel and colleagues (2017), who made an excellent attempt to predict connection. They collected more than 100 measures of traits and preferences from participants before speed dates, then used machine learning to predict who would desire whom. The models could partly predict how much a person tended to desire others in general, and how desired that person was by others in general. But they could not predict the spark, and they concluded that this aspect of compatibility is difficult to predict before two people meet. In online dating, it is difficult to know in advance whether there will be chemistry based on what people say about themselves.

Coming next

In my next post, I will look at how this exhaustion differs for men and women and why run clubs may offer something a profile cannot. I will also share some tips for the weary dater. For now, if dating leaves you tired, that may say less about you than about the environment you are dating in.

References