Let me count the ways dating apps let you down. The fake profiles, the endless swiping and messaging ‘dates’, the games and ghosting, the algorithms designed to drive repeat business rather than finding true love. What started as a great idea with the birth of the smartphone has turned into a pile of disappointment.
After almost four years on ‘the apps’, I’ve lived through all the clichés. I was love bombed by a narcissist for whom nothing was too much trouble or expense (until he cheated on me), I suffered a horrible run-in with someone I thought owned me after two dates, I endured the guillotine. I’m just not sorry,’ and I tried many times to make things right with men who were clearly wrong.
Helen Down Was Disillusioned With Dating Apps For Years, Until Love Found Her On LinkedIn
After leaving my ex-husband in 2020, my post-divorce relationship with dating apps was at times wild, passionate, and exhilarating, but more often it was exhausting, slow, and discouraging.
At my ripe old age of 50, it seemed like all the good men had been kidnapped and love in middle age was impossible.
I once stopped bothering my neighbors by repeatedly crying the chorus of Wolf Alice’s Don’t Delete The Kisses: ‘What if it’s not for me? Love’ – I committed to transforming all the disappointments, false hopes and many funny anecdotes into creative fuel for the novel I am writing.
But then, out of nowhere, it came. I found love. Or rather, he found me… and in the most unexpected place. Not Hinge, not Bumble. And certainly not Tinder. He found me on LinkedIn.
No, this was not a romance scam. It started after I wrote an article about my disillusionment with middle-aged men on dating apps. Suddenly, strangers started sending me messages. From university professors and television producers to physiotherapists, teachers and “entrepreneurs”. Some were from colleagues of colleagues, but most were completely random and I struggled to understand how they had sent me private messages (although I now realize it was a privilege they had paid for through a premium membership).
It started to feel a little creepy. Sometimes it’s also confusing. Was that former client who now ordered a coffee a new business inquiry or an appointment request?
However, the LinkedIn invitation that changed my life was very different. When the message arrived in my inbox in March of this year, I felt less scared and more surprised. He was the man who had flayed my 21-year-old heart three decades earlier. How dare you!
Dating apps can let you down, thanks to everything from fake profiles to the endless datemin of swiping and messaging, says Helen Down (model photo)
Maybe I should have felt angry. The audacity to contact me again after leaving me for a trip to Australia when I was still in art school and he had already graduated. For a moment, that fragile 21-year-old whispered her fears in my ear. But I assured him that it was okay, that all those years spent in the ring had made us wiser, bolder and more confident.
However, what he felt most was great curiosity. There awaited me a nostalgic Polaroid montage of our first meeting: New Year’s Eve 1994. Drunk, exuberant smiles full of optimism. I was surprised he had kept it…maybe even treasured it? – these photos for 30 years.
I was even more surprised when I read his message: ‘I hope you remember that we had a brief but quite intense relationship that started with a crazy New Year’s Eve and ended when I left for Australia. I often think back on that moment very fondly, but in the end I wasn’t very kind, so I apologize.’ I was shocked and slightly pleased to discover that a part of me had stayed with him.
It takes guts to do what he did. So I agreed to meet for a couple of drinks in a pub in London.
When we met weeks later, I remembered how he had captured my heart so easily. Funny, kind, intelligent, creative, gentle. The blonde was now gray and inevitably not so fresh-faced. Working silly hours in the music industry and raising two kids will do that to a man (three intervening decades and one child did that to this woman, too). However, it was still, without a doubt, very pleasing to the eye.
And, what’s more, it was untainted by the cruelty of contemporary dating. In the ten years since he split from his now ex-wife, he continued to move in and out of relationships with friends and colleagues, and had never used a dating app. My God, how he showed himself. No games or bragging. Just vulnerability, honesty, and an enthusiasm that seemed genuine rather than desperate.
On a wine-soaked Saturday afternoon, he regaled me with stories of how we survived on nothing but Smirnoff and Pringles, how I supposedly corrupted him (I disagree), how he cried the night before leaving for Oz.
We had only spent four months together, but those months were intense and showed more promise than my other, longer-term relationships. He remembered a lot more than I did about our time together. As a scorned woman, I had made a pact with myself to never think about him again. I threw my heart in the freezer and moved on, slaying the next few relationships in heavy armor. However, this time forgiveness was easy.
We have now done everything we can to make up for 30 years of lost opportunities. Since April, we’ve laughed together, cried together, raved together, gone on vacation together, and even gone to the dumpster together. From the high-octane to the mundane, we’ve fallen into easy intimacy made possible by a trust-filled, app-free connection.
Any sane person who has spent more than six months on the dating app merry-go-round eventually feels bad. After exhausting yourself by taking the moral high ground, ghosting, breadcrumbing (maintaining interest by dropping crumbs of uncommitted attention), and benching (placing someone as a backup) suddenly become acceptable. I sometimes wonder if these apps are partly responsible for the apparent decline in decency and kindness.
Every generation has its dating challenges, but in midlife we have to deal with a shrinking set of options and excess baggage. Furthermore, we are not digital natives. Taking selfies sets us back. It’s no wonder that many women my age feel like apps aren’t designed for them. Guess what, they’re not.
“Middle-aged people can feel uncomfortable swiping, connecting, and talking to multiple people,” explains Claire Macklin, divorce coach and author of Break Up: From Crisis To Confidence. «They often invest more from the beginning and therefore have more to lose. If the date doesn’t start, it’s demoralizing to have to start all over again. That’s why more and more middle-aged women are paying for matchmaking services.
Helen Down at her London home
These services, which range from £5,000 to £15,000, are not cheap. So what is the alternative? It takes a brave soul to chat with someone in real life.
The same could be said for LinkedIn, and despite my experience, I don’t recommend it as a dating platform. Getting asked out on LinkedIn seems even less sought after than chatting at a bar. And no, the platform is not about to launch a feature called ‘LinkedIn love’; that’s an online myth that gained popularity this summer. A LinkedIn spokesperson told me: “Romantic advances and harassment of any form are a violation of our rules and do not belong on our platform.”
So my story isn’t about encouraging you to use LinkedIn for dating. Sure, my ex did it. But only because he had no other means. My story is about finding love after rejecting apps.
That saying that things happen when you least expect it is true. It turns out that they also happen where you least expect it. So maybe it’s time to trust Hinge, the “designed to be deleted” app, at its word. Continue. Delete it. And look for love elsewhere. Look up from your phone, maybe even look into your past. But don’t stop searching completely.