Love, the old-fashioned way

As many plan to swerve dating apps, Olivia Petter shares tips on how to hit on someone in real life - without being a creep

- Olivia Petter

If you’re single, chances are you’ve been trying to get off “the apps” for a while. These days, dating app fatigue is a well-worn and much-discussed phenomenon; perhaps it’s only a matter of time until it becomes a recognised psychiatric disorder – again, if you’re single, you’ll understand.

But what happens after you triumphantly delete Hinge, Bumble and Tinder from your phone and you’re suddenly slung back into the real world? It’s not exactly easy to meet people out and about – or “in the wild”, as is common parlance today, which in itself perhaps indicates how feral modern dating has become. If it was easy, the apps wouldn’t be popular in the first place. But now we’ve grown so accustomed to them that trying to meet people the old-fashioned way can feel like totally foreign territory.

It’s something all of us should be trying, though, regardless of whether or not we still have the apps on our phones. Being more open to having meaningful interactions with strangers can widen more than our dating pool; even if you don’t end up in a relationship with the person, they might be able to introduce you to a whole new network of singletons. Plus, it’s worth remembering that only around 10 per cent of people in committed relationships or marriages met their partner on a dating site or app, according to data from the Pew Research Center in 2023.

As for how to go about it, well, that’s where things get a little more complicated. One wrong look or remark and your approach can easily be misconstrued, which could ruin your chances entirely and risk you being written off as creepy depending on how much the other person fancies you – and also how badly you messed it up. Get it right, however, and you could wind up finding the love of your life. In short: the stakes are high.