For Anyone Who Feels Like They Won’t Find Love

Dating in the app era is hard. Here’s how I’ve made it easier.

The author and girlfriend, being grossly, annoyingly cute.

I’ve seen a lot of writing online lately about how:

• The search for modern love is chaotic
• The apps have cocked everything up
• Men and women nationwide are in some sort of classic Western high noon standoff, pointing metaphorical guns at each other, saying, “No, you change, then I’ll be with you”

At this point, I’m watching the headlines of these articles flash by from my safe castle of coupledom, marveling at the struggles of the plebians.

But trust me, I’ve gone through it too.

My search for love has crossed a decade and several continents, and I’ve done it wrong more times than I can count.

I’ve met a lot of lovely, amazing people who put the nonsense that I’m reading on the internet to the test. There are so many well-intentioned people out there who just want to be loved and aren’t squinting at their keyboards at 2 am tweeting out studies about how “modern men are x” or “modern women can’t stop doing y.”

But that’s fodder for a different article.

Today, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring by structuring an interaction I had on…