Treating Romance Like a Math Problem
Desire Digest 009: on "Materialists," the dating app market drop, the quality of AI girlfriends and trying to keep up with "Love Island"
Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.
June got away from me. I went to a wedding in Oaxaca, followed by a quick visit to Mexico City with friends. I always think I’m going to write while I’m travelling — that never happens. But I do usually come away with some good ideas, some of which may well develop into something here.
On the horizon, I’ll be speaking at McNally Jackson Seaport on July 8th on the topic of “Why Is Gen Z Having Less Sex?” Carter Sherman, author of the new book The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future, will lead the panel comprised of myself and fellow writers Sam Cole and Amy Rose Spiegel, as well as sex educator and professor Justine Ang Fonte. Tickets are $5, and available here. have some more thoughts on the book (you should buy it!) and some of the conversation it’s generated I’ll be sharing later this week or next. But for now, I’ve had a few other short matters on the mind.
On Materialists, Ambitious Single Women and the Math of Love
I’m not sure that most people look at dating as a math problem, at least not consciously. They’re not swiping through the apps assigning a composite score to each potential partner based on looks, personality, career and slotting that person in to their assigned position on a numerically sorted roster.
This concept, however, is the conceit of Materialists, a recent A24 movie about a matchmaker whose career setting up successful women with eligible bachelors has jaded her to the mysteries of romance. In her line of work, it’s all about calculations — partner X’s job and degree plus partner Y’s family background and height equals happy relationship on paper. In her own life, she comes to face a choice: pursue the love that doesn’t make sense on the spreadsheets or go for the rich man who’d make even thinking about spreadsheets a thing of the past. It’s a rom-com. You know which one she picks.
Whether the film is all that good or even all that accurate is sort of beside the point. I’m just happy for a new rom-com with a semi-fresh concept. I enjoyed it!
Seperate from Materialists, I’ve been seeing a good deal of discussion lately suggesting that all of today’s dating problems are connected to the somewhat new reality that women no longer have any requirement to financially rely on men. There are obvious issues with labelling this the source of all the problems, or really even calling it a problem at all. I’m bored by the thought of trying to entertain the argument that it’s bad that us girls can now have bank accounts and credit cards and the jobs required to put money toward them. But Materialists itself relies on this new reality, too. Without all these women of means looking for men to be paired with, there’d be no market for a matchmaker like the one Johnson plays. And in real life, there is indeed a huge market. I must get an email a day promoting some new matchmaker or service for which the primary audience is women with money who can’t find the right guy.
There’s a pervasive idea that ambitious, educated and well-off women are intimidating to men. This idea is pretty easily refutable —
has written about this phenomenon and surveyed people extensively, finding that even high-earning right-wing men don’t really care that much about their partner making more money than them. Just last week, she published an article detailing an experiment in which she created fake dating app profiles and measured which received the most likes from men based on career. She concluded that:“Generally, men have a slight preference for a higher-status job, even for women in their twenties. The preference for higher-status job generally holds true regardless of the age of the men swiping. This effect is also magnified if the men in question are upper middle class or upper class. A high-status job is more likely to boost a woman’s attractiveness among a cohort who already finds her attractive, and is less likely to make a difference if she otherwise isn’t getting a lot of right swipes.”
Nevertheless, there remains some sort of disparity here. Online, at least, it appears there is an epidemic of women who have everything going for them but can’t seem to find a boyfriend. Some say they’ve never once had a boyfriend at all. Is it that they just can’t find a guy who likes them? Or, more likely, are they struggling to find a man who meets their standards? This is one of the trickier binds of contemporary dating: women in many cities now out-earn their male counterparts, beating them out on education, too. It’s normal that they’d want a man who is more successful than they are, or at least meets them where they’re at. But what is emotionally normal may not be materially realistic. In this bind, many women would prefer to be alone than settle for less than what they think they deserve.
Materialists is, in many ways, about this specific bind. Johnson’s character skirts it in some ways, finding that the man who works best on paper doesn’t emotionally fulfill her. For a time, she chooses the route of many other women today, prioritizing her independence. In the end, though — spoiler alert — she chooses love, plain and simple, the kind that doesn’t make sense financially but makes sense in the heart. As a romantic myself, I prefer this type of narrative. Even so, I’m aware that it is itself a narrative, the kind many of us have been familiar with since the first time we watched a Disney movie.
Maybe this itself is the core of what is dividing dating today: an abundance of competing narratives. We’re searching for a life that allows us to prioritize ourselves, our careers, our bank accounts and the idea of a perfect true love all at once. And if we do the math on that, it probably won’t add up.
Further Dating App Decline
Dating app Bumble announced on Wednesday that it would be laying off 30 percent of its global workforce, or 240 roles. At its peak in 2021, the company was valued at $15 billion, down to $500 million now. Obviously, that’s not great for them. But does it signal something broader about the future of dating apps writ large? I’m not so sure.
The decline of Bumble may parallel the decline in MySpace, or even just a trendy bar falling out of favor. What’s popular and successful shifts, but it doesn’t necessarily speak to utility. Tinder has solidified itself as the “everything” dating app, the first name people turn to in their quest for online dating. Hinge, meanwhile, is perceived as the one you pursue when you’re ready to take things a little more seriously. A dozen or so new apps seem to be cropping up each month, each attempting to fill in some other niche gap or solve a particular problem presented by the dominant apps — I’m working on a bigger essay about this now. With all this, where does it leave Bumble? Who is it for? Originally, Bumble was marketed as a women-forward app, where we had to make the first move. By dropping this requirement, they lost some of the identity that separated them from the rest of the pack.
Yet even still, some of that women-forward identity remains. And while movies like Materialists, my recent New York Magazine story on dating coaches and the matchmaker revival all highlight women’s willingness to “invest” in their romantic futures, a subscription to a traditional dating app isn’t typically part of that investment. Men continue to be the gender most likely to spend money on the apps.
In any case, I’d love to hear from some current Bumble users of any gender about their experience. What’s it like on there? Are you paying to use it? Comments are open!
Love Island Seems Exhausting
I respect reality television as a medium, but I often find that it moves too quickly for me to really get a firm grip on it. By the time I catch up on the interpersonal lore of a group, we’re already on to the next thing. This season of Love Island US, a popular dating show that essentially just involves putting hot people in a luxury villa on an island, has magnified this phenomenon. Rather than adhering to the usual weekly release schedule we expect from a TV show, Peacock has been airing new episodes of Love Island *daily* with the exception of Wednesdays. I figure there’d be plenty of material there for me to better dissect the state of our sexual culture, but by the time I catch up with the 20+ episodes (most of which are over an hour long!), the story would be over.
The speed of the medium does say something on its own, though. For television to keep up with short form content and the turnover of the Internet, it’s gotta move even faster. But of more concern to me is the cultural vacuum the show and its success in this format suggests we’re living in. People complain constantly about not having the time to juggle work, friendships, romance, fitness, cooking, cleaning, whatever — and yet a good chunk of them are managing to keep up with a new hour of Love Island every day. Again, I generally like reality television and completely understand why this show is entertaining (should I let people enjoy things?), but the pace of this just does not square with the narratives some of us spin about how we live our lives.
Can AI Relationships Be Better Than Real Ones?
I think you know my take on this one. I addressed the question in a column over at Playboy last week, and I’ve love for you to give it a read. By the way, I am absolutely loving working with Playboy this summer. I’ve been freelance for the last several years, but it is so fun to have coworkers to speak to again — even if just over Slack. Anywho, keep an eye out for more of me over there.
“We’re searching for a life that allows us to prioritize ourselves, our careers, our bank accounts and the idea of a perfect true love all at once. And if we do the math on that, it probably won’t add up” – just so good and well observed as always thank you!
I am in my late 50s and am an on and off Bumble user. I tried it a couple of years ago after a long dry patch and separation, at urging of a younger friend who sold me on the woman makes the first move concept. It was my first experience with an app. I suspect algorithm favors new users. I had a lot more interactions on it then. But still found it frustrating when chats would fade out rather quickly, and was ambivalent about dating anyway. Now it seems every match goes no where.
My only other experience is with Facebook Dating, which is interesting because you can see 2nd degrees of connection and check out people off the app. But also provided me with my first catfishing attempt experience!
It's a wild world out there!