VUE

Summer is here and we all know what that means. e 2018 cuffing season has officially come to a close and relationships that once looked solid ("But Ashley, you just posted a picture of you guys apple picking two months ago.") have dissolved faster than so serve on the boardwalk. Now what? B y B R E N N A H O L L A N D MEET #IRL THIS SUMMER We can spend our time lamenting about the current state of the "Dating Apoca- lypse," a term coined by Nancy Jo Sales in her now-famed, 2015 Vanity Fair piece that at- tributed the demise of modern dating to Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and the like. The basic premise being that with the inception of the apps in the late 2000s came an oversaturation of the dating market. For the first time in human history we can connect with anyone, anywhere, any time and the sheer amount of options available to us make it hard to commit to just one per- son without experiencing major FOMO (fear of missing out). Still, many of us have not given up entirely on the promise of finding love and long-term companionship, and—as those of us who are indoctrinated into the church of "Grease" know—summer is the best time to find some loving. Last year, during a study on modern love, Reportlinker polled a group of 551 people who said they were either mar- ried or in long-term relation- ships. Respondents were asked how they met their significant others—and the results flew in the face of many of our ideas about dating today. As it turns out, the most common way people meet their spouses or partners, by a sig- nificant majority of 39 percent, is still through their friends or social circle. Coming in fifth place, trailing behind couples that met at work, at bars/in public spaces and through sports/religion/hobbies, were the mere 8 percent of respon- dents who managed to find their long-term partners on a dating app. In total, nearly 90 percent of people involved in the study met their partners IRL (in real life). Tinderellas and Tinderfel- las, the odds of love are simply not in your favor. So what exactly is the harm, or the use, of dating apps in a world where the majority of us will meet our partners IRL anyway? For answers I turn to Anna Morgenstern, California transplant-turned-New York City Dating Coach and Founder of Dating Rehab NYC, a three- month program that, in short, helps women fix their romantic lives. Hint: she's Will Smith in V U E N J . C O M 134 DATING

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