Shreya Sen-Handley | Ditch That Smartphone, Get Out, Get A W/Life

Life’s been so demanding in this second decade of our marriage, that my husband and I’ve barely managed to accommodate our traditional ‘date nights’. Oh, we get out loads, for groceries, doctors’ appointments, children’s school functions, even memorable family holidays — talking, laughing, and holding hands plenty, but strictly romantic occasions rarely materialise.

It was unfortunate, therefore, that on the one night recently that some couples-time was scrounged, the only cinema show we found to watch was The Materialists. Whilst this isn’t a review, because I won’t add to the glut, I feel obligated to warn my readers to stay away from this snoozefest, rendered more ridiculous by its somnambulating lead, Dakota Johnson.

But its premise isn’t as pointless — that modern men and women are kept apart by the demands they make of their dates. Not the occasion as with Hubby and I — entertaining would have sufficed — but the person they hope to engage. What essential qualities must peeps possess to interest the partner-seekers of this age?

Both men and women, I’m told, not just by this film but hundreds of articles, harbour impossible expectations of prospective liaisons. Women, it would seem, won’t stoop to dating men below six feet, or if they’re short of a quid or two billion. Whilst men, apparently, insist on flawless beauty, barely legal nubility, and an eagerness-to-please that’s pure fantasy (shaped by porn too often).

Further alarm is raised by reports of ‘recalcitrant’ women refusing to have children, or keen to ‘self-partner’, but though the Emma-Watson-coined term is hysterical, the decision isn’t remotely, based as it is on our gut-wrenching gender history. This simple supply-and-demand dynamic has shrunken the pool of available women, empowering those who remain to be more selective.

Broadly speaking, historical proscriptions had compelled women to depend on men financially and men to prize childbearing bloom in women above all else. But there’s nuance to the nitty-gritty. In Regency-era ‘Pride and Prejudice’, if the opening line implied marriage was transactional, you’re soon made to realise it was equally a meeting of minds. And for every Indian matrimonial ad making impossible financial and aesthetic demands of prospective brides, as many circumvent that system to marry in as romantic a fashion as Austen’s heroines.

Stratospherically more worrying is the rise of the ‘Incels’, or Involuntary Celibates, huddles of hate-blinded men on the dark web turning their violent frustrations with the world’s inadequacies on women. Because women aren’t persuaded by their ‘charms’ to have sex with them! But this is a hornies nest for which I don’t have enough column space!

Fact is that the economic and biological imperatives of relationships lessening allow us wider choice, not less. Despite the persistent narrative of options narrowing, the anecdotal evidence suggests companionship is still desired by many. Just like women who’ve opted out of romancing aren’t the majority, nor are those who insist upon stature, tight abs, or fat wallets in men. Brutish Incels too are a minority, and good men exist as do kind women. But are we looking in the wrong places?

Humans have always struggled to spot the right ’un for the long run, with clarity only setting in with time and concerted familiarity. And time for us currently is particularly curtailed, perennially chained as we are to screens. In fact, these smartphones and laptops on which our days play out are the biggest deterrents to reclaiming our lives, alongside deeper relationships.

Online dating has skewed engagement experts now opine, heightening our baser tendencies to focus on superficialities, pushing us to seek instant gratification with instantaneous rejection of those who don’t comply, manipulated by algorithms restricting choice, providing neither range nor thought-through matches (which, to be fair, only you can do for yourself, with time and good sense). On top of which, because so little is actually revealed about the person behind the profile, this mode of dating leads not only to disappointment but danger as well.

Nor are dating apps and agencies the only culprits, social media with its endemic catfishing and addictive properties fence us off from reality, including genuine human connection. With airbrushed influencers and AI beauty myths preying on the impressionable to mould their views on desirability, alongside porn sites and extreme forums further distorting beliefs, resulting in brutality, bigotry and self-absorbed maladjustment at the very least, who really is keeping millions from finding companionship? Picky women, nasty men, or puppeteering tech bros minting money from our misery, moving ever closer to world domination?

We definitely need to get out more. Like our laptops and smartphones, our metaphorical blinkers are ball and chain too, fogged as they are from our echo chambers. So, drop ’em all and embrace (figuratively at first) living, breathing, well-meaning people. Find them in places of interest to you, in the flesh, warts and all in evidence. Peeps are much easier to suss out then, and you waste less time in consequence, with greater chance of forging an association that lasts, rooted as it will be in reality. They may not even look like your ‘ideal’ (but weren’t you brainwashed?), or be rolling in dosh, but that’s immaterial if you crave a BFF, with whom you share that extra spark that will light the long way home.

So, get out more, even if you end up watching a dud like The Materialists on the one night you’re untethered — it’ll be worth it for the laughter, handholding, and Vietnamese seafood after. What really matters is what you make of the imperfect.