Dating advice from someone who has not dated in two decades

I haven’t dated in 20 years.

Elysha and I started dating back in the spring of 2004.

We moved in together during the summer of that same year.

On December 28, 2004, I asked her to marry me on the top step of Grand Central Station in New York City while two dozen friends were hiding in the holiday crowd, witnessing the event firsthand.

Eighteen months later, on July 15, 2006, we were married.

So, admittedly, my dating experience is a little dated, but here is what I know for sure:

Many of my single friends, many of the single people I meet, and all of the single people I hear tell stories about dating are constantly complaining about using dating apps.

I never used an app. Dating websites existed when I was dating, but I did not partake. Elysha and I worked together for nearly two years before we began dating.

Before Elysha, I met previous girlfriends at work, through friends, at school, and at parties, amusement parks, bowling alleys, dance clubs, beaches, parks, and bars.

I once asked a woman out through open windows at a stoplight, and it worked.

I once waved to a car full of women as they drove by on a boardwalk in Laconia, New Hampshire. The car stopped, and I ended up dating one of those girls inside for over a year.

I once asked a girl out in an arcade while she was playing Pac-Man. “If I clear this level,” she said, “I’ll go out with you.”

She cleared the level, so I took her to Newport Creamery for Awful-Awfuls.

I was often the one asking girls on dates. Sometimes, girls ask me on dates. Sometimes, I was doing the flirting. Sometimes, the girl was doing the flirting. Sometimes, miraculously, we were flirting with each other simultaneously.

It wasn’t always easy. The possibility of rejection was constant, and asking someone out often required enormous courage.

But it was also a lot of fun.

If you hate dating apps, for which I admittedly have no user experience, here is what I know for sure:

You can still date the old-fashioned way.

You can still meet people at work. Your friends can still introduce you to possible romantic matches. You can still meet people at parties, amusement parks, dance clubs, bowling alleys, beaches, parks, and bars.

You can still meet people and ask them on dates in the very same ways I did two and three decades ago.

Even better, today, you can meet people at a pickleball court or while sitting in a Starbucks. You can strike up a conversation with someone at the dog park or the charging station or while flying your drone. You can flirt with someone in an escape room or at an axe-throwing bar.

The list is endless.

And you can still ask someone out at a stoplight. You can still wave at cars filled with people, hoping they might stop and you’ll meet a possible romantic match.

According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, 53%of single adults under 50 in the U.S. looking for a partner are currently using or have used a dating app or site in the past year.

That leaves almost half of all people looking for partners who do not use a dating app.

And according to recent surveys, somewhere between 20-40% of all committed relationships began with a dating app—slightly higher for same-sex couples—which still leaves a large number of committed relationships somehow beginning without an app.

Old-fashioned dating turns out to be not so old-fashioned.

It’s just dating.

So if you like using apps to find possible romantic partners, fantastic. Bully for you. But if you despise the apps but continue to use them (and relentlessly complain about them), maybe don’t.

The ways people met before the apps have not disappeared, nor have people stopped using them. Dating apps provide a new way of dating—one containing perhaps less friction, much less serendipity, and considerably less courage to land that first date—but they have not supplanted the old ways of dating that have existed for many years.