Most couples used to meet this way. What happened?

Vox

6 days ago

Like many women these days, 30-year-old Jude Cohen is over dating apps. So she's decided to relinquish some of the responsibility in finding a partner: 'I'm asking my friends to set me up,' the New York City-based communications consultant says.
Late last year, a family friend heeded the call and, without warning, introduced Cohen to a potential date via text. The man lived in her hometown, hundreds of miles away, but she wasn't opposed to long distance.
Prior to their date a few weeks later — Cohen was back in town for a wedding — she knew scant about him. She made an attempt to find her date's Instagram but was unsuccessful.
The date was fine, she says, and the conversation was 'lovely.' But Cohen just wasn't attracted to her date. Ironically, if he lived in New York, she'd have plenty of friends to set him up with. Still, Cohen is holding out hope for a successful setup. 'I continue to ask my friends to set me up,' Cohen says. 'It was not a deterrent that the first time didn't work out. All in all, it wasn't a bad experience. It's just a part of the numbers game that you have to play to find your person.'
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The setup can feel like a relic of a bygone era of dating. Introducing two friends who might be romantically compatible seems quaint in a time when people can filter through singles based on the most granular qualities on apps. But for most of modern dating, heterosexual couples were most likely to meet their spouse through friends. That is, until the 2010s, when meeting online overtook friend-facilitated introductions, a trend that has only accelerated since then. According to one study, only 20 percent of straight couples met through friends in 2017, compared to 39 percent who met online. Compare that to 1995, when a third of couples met through friends and only 2 percent met online.
It's safe to say that the setup is, if not dead, on life support. But as more singles grow frustrated with dating apps and yearn for more organic connection, could a return to the setup be in order? Are singles willing to surrender control in pursuit of a partner?
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'Of all the things I've heard people say they're doing to try to meet people more organically,' says Liesel Sharabi, an associate professor in human communication at Arizona State University, 'getting set up isn't one that I've had people tell me that they're really longing to go back to. For some of them, they probably never experienced it.'
From introductions to algorithms
Coupling up only became an individual pursuit recently. Historically, choosing a partner was a group affair. Outsiders have had influence on romantic relationships in myriad ways: For centuries, parents the world over have had some degree of control over who their children married (and in some cultures, they still do); a long line of matchmakers worked to connect families in their communities; and friends, extended family, neighbors, coworkers, and other group members all had a stake in who their friends paired off with. A study from 1991 found that when a couple felt their family and friends approved of their relationship, they were more likely to stay together. (It should be noted that study participants were primarily middle-class college students.)
The setup comes with clear upsides. If a mutual friend thinks there might be something between two people in their orbit and goes out of their way to make an introduction, that speaks volumes. Knowing this person has been vetted and vouched for in some way is appealing.
A setup has built-in accountability, too. Your date may be less likely to be a jerk if they know their behavior might get back to their friends. But being this intertwined can also get awkward in the event of a fight or breakup, when personal moments are suddenly fodder for group gossip.
Over the last few decades, choosing a partner became a more private pursuit.
The facilitating friends also have a lot at stake. Research shows that playing matchmaker for friends is associated with higher wellbeing, happiness, and, overall, is a rewarding experience. The matchmaker might feel a sense of ownership over the fledgling couple, the reason for their love. A successful setup has implications beyond the couple themselves, too — the friend group deepens with new connections and can fracture if the relationship dissolves, with mutual friends choosing sides or dividing time between exes.
But over the last few decades, choosing a partner became a more private pursuit, says Reuben J. Thomas, an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Instead of leaning on social networks to facilitate a match, dating is now 'a very personal quest to find a relationship that helps you become the person you want to be, the best you, to 'self-actualize' through your relationship/marriage (and to leave the relationship if it hampers that),' Thomas says in an email. Instead of relying on the extended network of your community, you can sort through profiles of hundreds of strangers from the privacy and comfort of your bedroom.
One of dating apps' greatest strengths is their ability to connect users to people outside of their social network. Most Americans marry people of similar racial, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and dating apps have the power to at least diversify the dating pool, if not totally buck the trend. Your friends and family are limited in their social reach; they only interact with a finite number of people at work, at school, at clubs. There's an even greater cap on how many of those people are single. 'People's friendship circles tend to have fewer single people in them as they age beyond early adulthood, as more and more of their friends enter marriages and long-term relationships,' Thomas says.
With increased exposure to a diverse array of strangers, singles on apps have more control over their love lives. In a period of history when Americans are spending less time with friends — and more time alone — you might not want to wait around for a pal to set you up with their coworker, nor should you have to. 'That's quite a bit different than how we've always met our partners,' Sharabi says. 'Usually, we run in the same network, we have the same habits, routines. When you talk about introducing somebody who's entirely independent from that, it does change the dynamic a little bit.'
Removing friends and family from the romantic equation has some downsides, Sharabi says. In a study, Sharabi found that couples who met online reported slightly less satisfying and stable marriages than those who met offline. This can be attributed to lingering stigma around app-faciliated connections and family members who may judge a partner from outside their circles more harshly. 'Now you've got friends and family that are really disconnected from the process as well. They're not always supportive of the relationship,' Sharabi says. 'You're out there meeting strangers who they may or may not approve of because they just don't know them.'
The new dating experience
The setup may also not mesh with modern dating's array of expectations. The amount of information app users have access to prior to a date — an assortment of photos, interests, career, even weeks' worth of conversation — far exceeds the brief bit of background a friend may offer before setting you up.
Another expectation of digital courtship — that the 'perfect' person is just a swipe away — can further dilute the allure of a setup. If the date you met online fails to meet your standards, hope springs eternal that the next profile will check all your boxes. With seemingly endless options, singles might discount someone simply because they don't have the right look or the right job. The nature of the setup is virtually the opposite: Here's one person you might jive with. If you aren't satisfied, it might be awkward with your mutual friend — and you'll be sent straight back to the dating apps.
'I feel like my friends have been single for so long,' says Maxine Simone Williams, the founder of the speed dating event series We Met IRL, 'they have a laundry list of what they want, which makes it even harder to set them up, because it's like, well, you don't want this.' On rare occasions, Williams has seen some event attendees walk in, survey the room, and leave. 'They're like, nobody here was my type,' she says.
As much as modern daters lament the constant rejection and expendability of modern dating culture, it's also possible that they enjoy being in the driver's seat and having control. 'You do often hear people yearning for a simpler time of romance, but I think in reality they would hate it if society went back to the old ways,' of family-controlled marriages and having fewer options, Thomas says. 'Losing the ability to just shop for potential partners oneself, to have choice and agency, to be able to take the initiative and fairly quickly find a date in a big online space full of options, losing that would greatly frustrate most people today.'
When it comes to dating in college, Chicago-based marketing intern Aliza Akhter has relied on apps to meet other singles. The last time the 20-year-old met a significant other through friends was in high school. To Akhter, setups are something her parents' generation did. Her friends don't ask each other if they have other single friends. She'd be open to meeting someone at a friend's party or even a setup date, but she's in the minority, she says. 'If you're single, it's pretty much a given that you either have a dating app or you have at some point,' Akhter says. 'So maybe it's just the fact that people know that there's another easier option than the introduction.'
Algorithms have replaced the role of family and friends in facilitating relationships.
Still, the fate of the setup isn't all grim. In recent research, Arielle Kuperberg, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has found among thousands of college students nationwide, more are now meeting romantic partners through friends and family than they were in 2019. Fewer are meeting partners online compared to 2020, when nearly a quarter of respondents met their significant other online. 'We have a five-year period we look at in this paper, from 2019 through 2024,' Kuperberg says, 'and the last year was the highest rate at which people were met through friends and family. So I think there could be a comeback.'
Sharabi, however, is not as optimistic. 'I think it's dead,' she says, 'and I think that dating apps killed it.' In her view, algorithms have replaced the role of family and friends in facilitating relationships and despite apps' negative publicity as of late, she doesn't see them disappearing altogether.
But if Jude Cohen, the freelance communications consultant in New York, has anything to say about it, the setup will live on. Cohen and her friends have sought to make the experience more joyful by organizing what they call the 'Blind Date Club' where each friend is tasked with bringing a date to dinner for another person in the group. Some brought friends of friends, others made dating app profiles on behalf of their pal. ('It was very clear on the profile I'm swiping for my friend Amy,' Cohen says.) Cohen found a date for her friend John by posting a video on TikTok.
Five out of the six couples extended their date beyond the initial dinner. Cohen was one of them — she had a few more dates with her setup, too. Although none of the matches grew into anything more serious, Blind Date Club was a whimsical way of bringing community back into dating.