The Dating Recession
We recently spent some extended time with a group of young adult singles. Dating came up repeatedly in our conversations, and much of what we heard was a variation on the same theme: exhausted, wary, yet quietly still hoping.
Some had been hurt and were hesitant to risk vulnerability again. Many felt overwhelmed just keeping up with life – study or work, the cost of living, the pressure to get established before they could even think about a relationship.
Others were tired of searching for someone who shared their faith and values and dreaded having to fend off hook-up expectations on a first date. A few said dating in the ‘serious Catholic’ world came with its own pressure – first dates that felt more like job interviews than a chance just to get to know someone.
Why Singles aren’t Dating
It turns out we weren’t just hearing a handful of stories. Around the same time, the US Institute for Family Studies published its 2026 State of our Unions report, focused on young adult dating habits.
The findings were striking and led to what the authors called a “Dating Recession” where less than a third of unmarried young adults are regularly dating.
Here’s the twist: it’s not that singles have given up on marriage. In fact, 86% of them still expect to marry one day. Money worries, low confidence and past hurt were the main reasons people gave for staying on the sidelines.
And when researchers asked what people actually wanted from dating, nobody said, “keep it casual”. Rather, they wanted to build an emotional connection. They wanted something serious.
Today’s singles aren’t opting out of love. Nor are they afraid of commitment. They’re stuck, discouraged, and worn out by a dating culture that rewards low-stakes swiping over real intimacy.
Tired of Swiping
It’s worth naming what’s happening: a whole generation has been handed more ways to connect than any generation in history and somehow ended up lonelier and more hesitant than ever.
That’s not a personal failing. It’s what happens when a culture treats relationships like low-commitment consumer choices – another option is always ‘just a swipe away’.
Maybe it’s time to recover an older, almost countercultural idea: dating with intention, or what previous generations called ‘courtship’.
Not a casual “let’s see what happens”. Not “dating as an audition”. Something in between – fun, low-pressure, but serious enough to honour what it’s actually for: forming a healthy friendship with the possibility of a deeper relationship that could lead to marriage.
Courtship, done well, is the opposite of pressure. It’s dating as genuine discernment – taking time to know someone as a whole person and asking whether this could be a life shared together.
The Relationship Formation Gap
One of the surprises from the 2026 State of Our Unions report was the request for relationship education. Many respondents believed that explicit instruction in how to develop a romantic relationship would give them confidence to date.
This is an area that has long been promoted by various thought-leaders in the marriage formation space, yet it remains under-resourced. Most of the focus goes into creating opportunities to meet a potential mate, not into how to prepare oneself personally for a romance nor grow it once it starts.
The prevailing belief in the community is that once one has found ‘the one’, intimacy is instinctual and no instruction is required. Our own experiences and observations – and now this report – suggests otherwise.
In a community where courtship culture has collapsed and there is no longer a common understanding of marriage as a sexually exclusive, life-long union we need to create new traditions and processes drawing on old wisdom.
The desire for lasting love hasn’t gone anywhere. What we have lost, are the skills and social infrastructure that enable that desire to bear fruit in a healthy – and intentional – dating culture.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, our parents taught us basic social skills, which school reinforced. School also required us to learn basic public speaking. In general, we were expected to progressively handle life on our own. Having been an adjunct college professor, I saw firsthand the decline in all of these skills. When you cannot do the basics, forming deeper relationships is even harder.
Agree – this generation has been cheated of so much.