Dating app burnout.
It’s not that you’re bad at it. It’s that it’s exhausting by design.
You’re in good company. Eight in ten women on dating apps report burnout, more than men. Most apps downloaded in 2025 were deleted within a month. If you’ve just deleted yours, you made a pretty common, pretty reasonable decision.
What actually wears you out
The moderating
Women get several times the likes men do, and with them, the job of sorting. More than half of women under fifty who’ve used the apps have been sent something explicit they didn’t ask for. You signed up to meet someone. You ended up running a filter.
The openers
“Hey.” “wyd.” “You up?” Most people say they hate getting a single word and nothing else. A lot of the messages are exactly that.
The fade
A good exchange, a real question, then nothing. Nobody owes anyone a reply, and still, after the fortieth time, it adds up.
The math
Hundreds of matches, a handful of conversations, fewer that go anywhere. It’s built to keep you swiping, not to finish.
What you might be missing instead
Plenty of women who quit the apps find what they miss isn’t the dates. It’s the rare good conversation: someone asking a real question, reading the whole answer, and writing back like they wanted to.
That doesn’t have to come attached to a date. Friends, a book club, an old colleague you keep meaning to call. Or this.
Related: decentering men, and why nobody listens.
What this is
The Small Hours is one person, Cal, writing back to you by the next day because he’d like to know what you think. It is not dating. No photos to rate, no matching, nothing heading anywhere but the next letter. $25 a month.
I’m starting with a small number of people, because it falls apart if I don’t keep up. Leave your email and I’ll tell you when there’s room.