The end of courtship: Dating in the 21st century

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a trad-wife, a mistress, therapy, or indeed all three. I believe it was Stevie Wonder that said that love is blind (no, it wasn’t), but in today’s generation of hook-up culture, tinder dates turned true crime, and seemingly endless supply of misguided self-help books (see any twenty-something’s bookshelf), everybody seems to be either eternally single, eternally of bad taste, or eternally reading Wattpad.

Romance, once a structured dance of intent and expectation, has been reduced to a swipe, a situationship, and a soft launch on Instagram. Courtship has been replaced with logistics. Chemistry is now something you “circle back to,” and emotional availability is considered a red flag unless you’ve paid for it by the hour.

As we approach the end of courtship, it seemingly becomes a competition of who cares the least, and many now choose to ghost someone before even sending the first hello

With the majority of Gen-Z’s most stable relationship being with a bottle of wine (or Tesco’s own-brand vodka), longest commitment a 12-month Netflix subscription (cancel anytime), and closest thing to intimacy requiring batteries, it’s hard to search for the optimism behind the nine-to-five nonsense. If you’re hoping for a sultry candlelit dinner, concert outing, or even a cheeky Nandos then you’re probably best-off hopping in the DeLorean and heading on back to 1973 – when people still rang doorbells, and pretending not to care was considered rude, not attractive (here’s looking at you, Mr Big).

As we approach the end of courtship, it seemingly becomes a competition of who cares the least, and many now choose to ghost someone before even sending the first hello. ‘Mr Right’ has been demoted to ‘Mr Right-Now’, definitelys are now maybes, and mortgages have been replaced by a Klarna for some avocado toast. Emotional investment is rationed like wartime sugar, and vulnerability is something you joke about before immediately undercutting it with irony.

Even our fictional Prince Charmings don’t hold up under modern scrutiny: Mr Darcy was at best emotionally constipated, and at worst a straight-up misogynist, whilst Noah (Ryan Gosling) from The Notebook was a restraining order shy of a stalker. Romance, it turns out, was always flawed – we’ve just stopped pretending otherwise.

Pop culture has been trying to warn us for decades. David Bowie sang about constantly being under pressure, Outkast about how roses actually stink, and Ylvis about what does the fox say, in a clear metaphor for trying to understand the innermost thoughts of those around you in a world where real social connection and understanding is becoming as unwelcome as the dog’s pointy-eared, garbage-eating cousin. The fox is trying to decipher the inner thoughts of someone who’s left you on read for three days, but still watches your Instagram story within minutes.

A generation raised on instability learning, slowly and clumsily, how to want things again – without irony, without apology

Please forgive me for sounding bleak: it’s the sober talking.

It is within this new cultural landscape – a spectrum from Patagonia vests to CP Company goggles – that I find myself cluelessly navigating. Never one much to date before, I am of little experience and my opinion is probably of even littler value. I am both participant and observer, acutely aware that I am criticising a system that I am reluctantly enrolled in.

Yet despite the cynicism, the irony, the collective emotional fatigue, there remains a quiet hope that courtship isn’t dead, merely dormant. That beneath the ghosting and the detachment, people still want to be known, chosen, and occasionally bought flowers that aren’t a thinly masked apology.

Perhaps the end of courtship is not an ending at all, but a pause. A generation raised on instability learning, slowly and clumsily, how to want things again – without irony, without apology, and without the mask of an anonymous Wattpad username.

Until then, I’ll be over here, curiously observing, mildly terrified, and pretending not to care – just like everybody else.