My dating life in 2022: the agony and the ecstasy

Has it really only been the first full year in three that we’ve been allowed to date without restrictions?

At the beginning of 2022 experts promised us that “home dating” would be a thing of the past— “oystering” (going out and getting it all) would be the new Zoom call, and “untyping” would see us extending our ideas of who our future could unfold with.

But what really happened? Here’s a lowdown of all that was hot, and what was not, in the year of dating.

NEW YEAR

THE LONGDEZ-VOUS

Those who found themselves still youngish, free and single after a horrific two years in a world of Covid fell into a restriction-free 2022 with gusto. It was all about oystering — the world was your oyster — and longdez-vous dates which lasted more than two hours.

In the spirit of this, I decided to take The Pianist I was seeing on a long weekend at Homewood Hotel in Bath to quiz him about whether we might be going anywhere. He swam about in a huge Jacuzzi with only his eyes visible, telling me he was a crocodile, and I decided that he was kind of nice, but it was probably time to shuck someone else.

GROUNDHOGGING

We’ve all been there: someone with a certain personality trait or job attracts us again, but the results are no different than before. How strange, we think, maybe next time. Or worse: “It must be me.” But by February, research by Inner Circle revealed that while three in four people believe they have a “type”, four in five reported that dating their type wasn’t going well; they named the trend Groundhogging. This is perhaps why Tinder’s new Blind Date feature, which paired members before allowing them to view each other’s profile, ended up being used an average of 200,000 times a day. The idea was that we should “untype”, but having dated entirely different men for my entire love life for curiosity reasons, I wondered whether I should start wheedling them down a bit.

RED FLAG CONSCIOUSNESS

Then came the Tinder Swindler with requests to take out payday loans, making us even more petrified of dating than usual. We had to improve our red flag consciousness. Maybe if I wasn’t scared of being lonely, I would not get myself talked into so many scrapes, I thought. Like the time in my twenties I agreed to go to Edinburgh for a first date with a man who turned out to have a shark lifting dumbbells tattooed on his bicep, which made intimacy impossible.

SPRING

STAR SIGN DATING

Looking to constellations for guidance in love was big news this year, partly thanks to TikTok, where Gen Z flocked to astrological accounts with millions of followers. Dating app Bumble found one million people in the UK added a star sign badge to their profile, and those that did got 53 per cent more matches. Meanwhile Tinder said most people matched with their own sign. I tried it by going out on a date with a fellow Scorpio. I ordered the wine and then watched him congratulate himself on his taste when trying it.

WANDERLOVE

Given how cooped up we were for half of 2021 and almost the entire year before it, wanderlove was something we were well up for this year: dating outside of your own city. Ticking off both wanderlove and another of the biggest dating trends this year I flew to Lisbon to see a younger man, but ended up falling over in a Portuguese castle on Halloween dressed as a vampire and severely injuring one leg. Being pushed around art galleries in a wheelchair by him made me feel even older.

SUMMER

ENM

Feeld, the newest dating app, exploded in the summer and, if you sifted through the extreme interests, there were actually some very decent profiles. Like the Pianist I’d met on it, even if he did live in his car. But after learning a whole new language (at first you have to do a lot of acronym Googling) I just couldn’t get my head around ENM (ethical non-monogamy). As far as I could tell ENM was just sleeping around and telling your partner about it. Maybe I’m old-fashioned but my experience wasn’t enhanced by my date getting a call from his “life partner” informing him he had to go home because his kids had Covid.

THE SITUATIONSHIP

According to Tinder the situationship had become a valid relationship status. It defined them as more than a hook-up, but not quite a traditional relationship; casual, yet clearly defined. The pull is that a situationship allows a relationship to develop without pressure, but how many situationships might one person be allowing to develop at one time? It was then that I began to wonder whether the apps were making us morally bankrupt.

LIBERDATING

The pandemic begins to look like it’s knocked the final nail into the coffin of the dinner date, with outside dates now feeling both more normal, and more fun. Badoo called it liberdating. Having been invited on a sky-diving first date by a young regular at my local pub, I found myself falling through the air next to a “tradie” I was about to spend most days of the summer with. I knew he would never morph into a proper boyfriend, and felt fine about it. The problem was, he didn’t.

FERAL DATING

Given my tradie summer included much wild swimming and playing darts in a social club, I was especially glad to learn about 2022’s kickback against the loathed “hot girl summer” — feral dating. It was having fun and most importantly, not caring about what you look like or what anyone thinks of you.

AUTUMN

MANIFEST-DATING

With the idea that we could “manifest” our desires into reality by taking proactive steps towards the goal, the dating world tried to attract the person they were really looking for. Good timing for me, given the tradie had got in a mood about our situationship and spent a weekend ignoring my calls and sleeping with someone else. I blocked him and went back on Feeld were I met an extremely attractive Spanish nurse. On a children’s ward of all things. A revenge match as well as a manifest match. Even my dad was impressed.

SINGLES NIGHTS

I went down to a Thursday app’s event expecting to find an Abigail’s Party type affair with cheese and pineapple on sticks, but found masses of men in a bar. These things, usually, are notoriously more popular with women. It made me think they could be a goer. You couldn’t argue that no-one looked like their profile. Inner Circle also run them, but I’m yet to find anyone who doesn’t work in IT and calls me “baby”.

WINTER

POLYAMORY

I was once chatted up in a pub by a polyamorous couple and after stressing about whose number to take (what on earth is the etiquette here — do you have to take both?) I was too scared to call, making me unlike a lot of daters this year. It’s been a good year for polyamory, which hit the mainstream, maybe thanks again to Feeld, which allows couples to link their profiles and look together for a match.

SINGLE-SHAMING

I leave you with a warning that “single-shaming” may be alive and well again, as it’s the first post-pandemic Christmas. Bumble reports that one in four Gen Z-ers and millennials said that relationship questions over the festive period made them feel unvalued or unworthy. I’m going to be thinking of this as my mum discusses my younger brother’s 2023 wedding and tells me that she’s perfectly happy without grandchildren. It’s a nice gesture but we both know it’s a lie. I’m going to have my eyes firmly fixed on 2023, which is going to be all about MCE (main character energy), a favouring of emotional maturity over looks and the death of male stereotype, according to the apps.

Long live the date.