Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Zoe Williams

Millennial dating involves a lot of sexy moves – so why does it so rarely lead to sex?

Two tattooed people having a drink in a bar
‘Can I pass you my underwear, or would you prefer a voice message?’ Photograph: Jordan Rossi/Getty Images

It’s well known that dating apps are a nightmare, that hell is empty and all the demons are on Hinge, to the extent people aren’t really allowed to complain about it any more. It would sound like whining about getting run over after you couldn’t be bothered to use an underpass, so you just ran across a motorway and hoped for the best.

And yet, as it was my great privilege listening to some millennials to discover, young people are still going on dates, and a lot still goes wrong, without the involvement of any tech whatsoever. It’s all in that bit of the Venn diagram where “I couldn’t work out what he/she was thinking” meets “I didn’t know whether I was that into it”, which is to say, the grey lacuna marked “nothing happened”. It could be a super-efficient, young-professional walk-through-a-park date, and then nothing happened, or a five-hour pub crawl, and then nothing happened. One young friend went to Spain to see a guy, and still nothing happened. One new acquaintance was on a date with a woman who passed him her knickers under the table halfway through dinner – and yet nothing happened.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.