Many of us will be giving up dating apps in the New Year – but in a world that’s become so used to digital flirtation and finding partners via technology, how do people still find love the old-fashioned way? Olivia Petter has the answers. If you’re single, chances are you’ve been trying to get off “the apps” for a while. These days, dating app fatigue is a well-worn and much-discussed phenomenon; perhaps it’s only a matter of time until it becomes a recognised psychiatric disorder – again, if you’re single, you’ll understand.
![[Be open to meeting people wherever you are, experts suggest]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/31/12/iStock-1781675156.jpg)
But what happens after you triumphantly delete Hinge, Bumble and Tinder from your phone and you’re suddenly slung back into the real world? It’s not exactly easy to meet people out and about – or “in the wild”, as is common parlance today, which in itself perhaps indicates how feral modern dating has become. If it was easy, the apps wouldn’t be popular in the first place. But now we’ve grown so accustomed to them that trying to meet people the old-fashioned way can feel like totally foreign territory.
![[‘The more you do it, the more you’ll feel comfortable putting yourself out there’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/31/13/newFile-2.jpg)
It’s something all of us should be trying, though, regardless of whether or not we still have the apps on our phones. Being more open to having meaningful interactions with strangers can widen more than our dating pool; even if you don’t end up in a relationship with the person, they might be able to introduce you to a whole new network of singletons. Plus, it’s worth remembering that only around 10 per cent of people in committed relationships or marriages met their partner on a dating site or app, according to data from the Pew Research Center in 2023.
