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- Meeting someone IRL doesn’t involve cheesy pick-up lines but rather casual, low-stakes points of connection about the shared environment around you.
- The best way to meet someone organically is through repetition, showing up consistently at a gym, run club, or local pub you already enjoy.
- Swipe-based apps rely on a subscription model built to keep you swiping, not to find you love, potentially leading to dating app burnout and anxiety.
- Dating apps force us to judge people like products, but real chemistry relies on things you won’t see or feel on a screen, like warmth and presence.
In the wise words of The Supremes, love don’t come easy. Never has this been truer than in the milieu of dating apps. Hinge, Bumble, Tinder, Grindr, Coffee Meets Bagel, eHarmony, Raya… and that’s just scratching the surface.
Dating apps have fundamentally made searching for love feel more like a soul-crushing job than a frictionless way to meet the person of your dreams.
Think about it. You swipe while standing in the Woolies‘ queue, make split-second judgements on strangers, and juggle five different half-conversations that inevitably go nowhere. It’s exhausting. And if you’re experiencing dating app burnout, you’re not alone.
In fact, research shows a massive 69% of Australians have experienced total burnout from failed app dates and online disappointments.
Worse still, studies link using dating apps to higher rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness. So why are these apps – which are supposed to help us find love – making us more disconnected and love-less than ever?
According to Megan Gourlay, founder and matchmaker at Love with Me, the frustration we feel isn’t an accident; the system is designed to be broken.
“The deeper problem is the business model,” Gourlay told Man of Many. “These are subscription products, and a subscription product only makes money while you stay. It does not profit when you leave happy and in love, it profits when you keep paying. Dating apps are built to keep you swiping.”
Once you realise the tech is actively working against you, deleting dating apps becomes a much easier choice. But then that leaves you with having to navigate love out in the wild, which can be terrifying for a lot of men.
Fear not. I spoke with Gourlay to get the lay of the IRL dating world. Turns out, trading your phone screen for the real world doesn’t mean needing to master some aggressive pickup playbook. Instead, it’s about ditching the digital checklist, building up your social muscles with simple everyday questions, and consistently showing up in places where you can make authentic, low-stakes connections.
The Trap of the ‘Digital Checklist’ on Dating Apps
When you look at how we date online, we’ve essentially been trained to judge human beings like products in a catalogue. We filter people by height in centimetres, an age range, and a job title. It feels efficient, but it’s actually a bit of a trap. Gourlay points out that these superficial metrics are just a bad habit we picked up from a bad tool, rather than a reflection of what we want in a partner.
“The criteria we reach for are almost always the easy-to-measure ones,” Gourlay explains. “Height is a number. Age is a number. Job title fits in a single line. So those are the things we screen on, not because they predict happiness, but because they are easy to dismiss at a glance.”
Why Online Spark Doesn’t Match Real-Life Chemistry When Dating
The problem with this approach is that it leaves absolutely no room for real nuance. A digital profile can’t show you someone’s warmth, their humour, how they make you feel when you’re standing right next to them.
When you step away from the screen, you remember real-life chemistry operates on an entirely different wavelength. It’s often why, when we take a conversation off an app and meet in real life, we’re bitterly disappointed that the same connection and spark isn’t there. As Gourlay puts it, “How you feel, smell, and touch someone in person are worth more than in a profile.”
Breaking the Fear of Dating Offline
One of the biggest reasons guys stay glued to their screens is the sheer anxiety of approaching someone offline. There’s a constant worry about breaking social boundaries or coming across the wrong way. But the reality is that most women are craving a return to normal, spontaneous interactions.
“The women I work with tell me, again and again, that they wish a man would just come up and say hello,” Gourlay says. “They miss the good old days of someone striking up a conversation in a pub, with no app and no agenda. So please know the bravery is wanted. You are not bothering anyone by being friendly.”
How to Approach Someone Without Being Creepy
Navigating that interaction gracefully just comes down to reading the room and keeping the stakes low. You don’t need a smooth line, and you definitely shouldn’t comment on her looks right off the bat. Instead, try making a passing comment about whatever is happening around you both (like the massive coffee queue, a dog walking past, or the terrible music playing in the background). If you keep it short and give her an easy out, it never feels forced. If she’s not matching your energy, you just smile and move on.
Many men also fear being “creepy” when approaching women in real life, but according to Gourlay, the line between charming and creepy is mostly about respect and reading the moment.
“Creepy is when you ignore the no. Charming is when you make a small, warm connection and let her decide where it goes,” she says.
Why Consistency Trumps Luck for IRL Dating
Another reason men stay locked on the apps is that they don’t know where to go to meet someone. When we think of real-world romance, we tend to picture Hollywood movie moments, like locking eyes across a crowded train station or bumping into someone at a bookstore. But in reality, organic connection relies on simple consistency.
Instead of wandering around random streets hoping for a miracle, the trick is to lean into environments where you’d happily go even if you never met a soul. If you’re just there doing something you enjoy, it means that if you do see someone who catches your eye, you probably already have some automatic common ground.
Plus, there’s something to be said for repetition when it comes to forging a natural connection. “The connection starts when there is repetition; the places where you become a regular and a familiar face,” Gourlay says.
The Best Places to Meet People Organically
This is why things like local run clubs, a specific gym class, a regular pub, or a social sports team work so well. When you show up consistently, you naturally become a part of the furniture, which takes the pressure right off. You aren’t there to hunt for dates; you’re just there doing something you enjoy, which means you already have commonality with everyone else in the room.
Gourlay’s advice is to simply leave no stone unturned, saying yes to local events, parties, and casual gigs, even on nights when you’d rather stay on the couch.
How to Build Your Social Muscles
If you’ve spent the last few years dating behind a screen, your real-world social skills are probably going to feel a little rusty. That’s completely normal, but it means you shouldn’t expect to walk up to a total stranger and hold a perfect conversation straight off the bat. Just like going to the gym, you have to warm up the muscles first.
A great way to build that confidence without any romantic pressure is to start asking simple questions throughout your day, even when you already know the answer.
“Ask someone for the time, then follow it with a light, ‘Where are you off to?’” Gourlay suggests. “Ask for directions. Ask where the good coffee is. The person thinks you are just asking a question, but it gently opens up the energy between you.”
These low-stakes interactions get you used to breaking the ice with strangers. It’s entirely natural to feel a few nerves when you start putting yourself out there again, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying. As Gourlay puts it, “A little nervous just means you care. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Ditching the “Infinite Supply” Mentality
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to overcome when you delete the apps is the “plenty of fish in the sea” mentality. Digital dating tricks our brains into thinking there’s an infinite supply of single people, and that an ideal partner is just one more swipe away. This can make us incredibly impatient and hyper-critical of the people we meet.
Real connection requires you to slow down and treat dating with a bit more empathy. “Everyone has things they feel insecure about, and everyone is carrying something that has happened to them in their life,” Gourlay notes. “So I encourage people to approach dating with kindness and empathy.”
Gourlay, who was single for seven years throughout her thirties before meeting her own partner, knows firsthand that everything changes when you stop treating people as a quick ‘yes’ or ‘no’ based on a grid of photos.
She sees this pattern constantly with the clients she matches. Take Rachel and Tom, a couple in their late 40s who had spent years matching, chatting, and fizzling out online. Eventually, they both threw in the towel, deleted the apps, and started focusing on real-life plans instead. They ended up meeting at a casual dinner party hosted by a mutual friend.
“There was no profile and no checklist, just a conversation,” Gourlay says. “They later told me the irony was that everything they had been filtering for on the apps would have ruled the other one out on paper. In person, none of it mattered. Love can only be achieved in real life.”
How to Take Your Dating Life Offline This Weekend
If you want to do just one thing differently this weekend to break the digital cycle, make it simple: put your phone in your pocket and start a conversation.
Aim for just a few casual chats over the next few days. Whether you’re in the coffee queue, at the gym, or sitting at your local bar, just practice engaging with the environment around you.
Don’t go in with the goal of trying to get someone’s phone number or force a romantic spark. You’re simply reminding yourself that talking to people in the real world is, in fact, pretty low-stakes, easy, and infinitely better than staring at a screen.
Dating FAQs
Look for basic body language cues. If they have headphones glued in, are staring intently at a laptop, or are rushing past you, leave them to it. But if they’re just waiting in a line, looking around, or making casual eye contact, they are usually more than open to a quick, friendly comment about whatever is happening around you both.
You will get rejected – probably more than once. But that’s completely fine. The trick is to stop viewing a polite “no” as a personal failure. If the energy isn’t there, or they mention a partner, you simply smile, say “No worries, have a good one,” and walk away. Handling a boundary with total grace is a massive confidence booster because you realise the worst-case scenario is just a two-second awkward moment that no one else in the room is paying attention to.
Don’t overcomplicate it. If you’ve been chatting for a few minutes and the vibe is good, wrap it up while the conversation is still high energy, rather than letting it drag out until you run out of things to say. Just say something simple: “Hey, I’ve got to run and catch my mates, but I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. Can I get your number and take you out for a drink sometime?” It’s direct and confident, and gives them a clear idea of your intentions.
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