Dating: What Are We Trying Not to Fall For?

Most complaints I hear about dating are not about the lack of people, not really about time, nor even about the apps themselves.

In 2026, we solved most logistical problems. You can learn almost everything about someone before they’ve said a single word to you. What they look like, where they travel, what they eat, what they believe in, and what kind of humour they perform online. And still, something feels off.

The complaint is quieter than that and more subtle to grasp.

Dating today seems to have organised itself around one central idea: reducing the surprise element, emotional risk management. Reducing uncertainty and with it the possibility of getting hurt.

And maybe that is where part of the exhaustion comes from. But what hurts, or what is it that humans try to protect themselves from?

The gap:

The hardest part of dating today is not even the date itself—it’s the gaps.

The silence between messages.

The waiting for a response.

The uncertainty of not yet knowing what the other person thinks of you. Not knowing where the other stands.

You meet someone. You decide you like them. Then suddenly something starts moving inside. Simple tasks start feeling like a life-or-death situation. You send a text, and your phone becomes a psychological experiment.

“If they respond in two hours, that means interest. End of day means possibility. Tomorrow morning means they probably don’t like me.”

Like a professional statistician, your mind starts running through probabilities, trying to predict every possible outcome before it happens, all for the sake of not being taken by surprise.

Meanwhile, the body goes through its own sequence: excitement, anticipation, tension, irritation. The strange thing is that excitement and anxiety can feel almost identical in the body. The difference often lies in the meaning we attach to the sensation.

And the gaps give us very little certainty to hold onto. So, the mind fills them.

Rarely with neutral material. More often with old drawers: difficult encounters, painful experiences, disappointments, and moments that taught us to be careful. The body then reacts not necessarily to what is happening but to what the mind has retrieved.

Our systems dislike uncertainty. They like prediction. Anticipation creates a temporary sense of control.

Yet the funny part is that what people are often looking for in dating is precisely what cannot fully be predicted.

The encounter:

Not the checklist. Not the profile optimisation. Not the perfectly managed interaction.

The encounter is usually remembered differently.

The conversation that was supposed to last one hour ended at 2 am.

The eye contact in a random bar that lasts slightly too long.

The person who arrives and quietly shuffles the cards again.

Not violently, just enough for you to suddenly see yourself, or your life, from another angle.

Something that disturbs the peace a little.

Love stories are almost always built around this element. Two different worlds colliding. Someone unexpected appearing at the wrong moment. A surprise encounter that reorganises something internally.

It’s strange how, as humans, we are attracted to the surprise element, yet spend enormous amounts of energy trying to protect ourselves from it.

Too little surprise and life starts feeling flat. Too much of it and the system overloads.

Perhaps what people are actually searching for is a tolerable form of surprise.

The protection:

So we develop ways of protecting ourselves from the gaps.

Some through checklists, a heavy set of criteria that the other person must satisfy before they are granted access to the possibility of an encounter. Others through controlled patterns: the same rhythm, the same emotional distance, the same exit points.

Some keep multiple options open at once, so that no single encounter carries too much emotional weight. Others research the person endlessly beforehand, attempting to predict who they are before meeting them.

Different strategies, perhaps, but organised around the same idea: reducing uncertainty.

People today have become remarkably skilled at reading others—their patterns, their signals, the shape of their likely trajectory.

Yet sometimes, in the process, they lose the ability to read themselves.

Because underneath all the analysis often sits a much simpler fear:

I do not know what will happen if I let this affect me.

And maybe this is where confidence actually matters.

Not confidence in controlling the outcome. Not confidence in performing perfectly. Not confidence in never being rejected.

Something quieter than that.

The confidence that if the encounter disappoints us, unsettles us, or even hurts us, we will still recover.