The disastrous decade of dating

Ali Mahmoudiyan, 27, has a fascinating story. He grew up in a devout Shia Muslim family in Tehran, in a culture where, as he puts it, "most people in my parents' generation married without ever having touched each other." There were no boyfriends or girlfriends, no dating, not even friendships between young men and women. As a teenager he clung to the idea of the West – "the hope that somewhere out there, a better world was possible." At almost 21, he arrived in Europe.

Germany was meant to be the promised land. Instead, he was shocked to discover that most young people seemed "to suffer more from dating than they benefit from it." "They hurt each other – sometimes deeply, even traumatically," he writes. "Many appear to be drowning in the very freedoms they're supposed to be enjoying." He was particularly struck by how badly young men were faring, in a society that sometimes seemed "to show more empathy for livestock than for its own men." Yet the women didn't seem much happier: "The average German woman enjoys comforts and freedoms that would have been the end-game dreams of my sister and my mother. Yet I still couldn't tell you which of them seems, in the end, to feel more miserable."

His own first relationships sent him searching for answers. "At some point I found myself asking: what the hell is going on here?" Now studying for a master's in sociology at the University of Leipzig, he has spent the past few years working on the manuscript for a future book, Modern Intimacy, on the hidden costs of the modern dating market, particularly for young men.

Ali pulls no punches. "For young men, the dating market is psychologically violent," he writes, "and those wounds often shape their entire adult lives." It's a market he describes as "ruthless, often emotionally violent," in which "the average young man feels – consciously or not – how deeply disadvantaged he is. That injustice is not abstract. It hurts."

Part of the problem is simple arithmetic. The dating apps are flooded with young men – on Tinder, they often outnumber young women two to one. So, women have what Ali calls "the perception of an oversupply of men", while the men scramble for the scraps. Even in the real world, he notes, "young heterosexual women receive enormous attention – from all directions, from all age groups. Whether it's on the street, at work, in the gym, or on dating apps, the demand is immense."

On the apps, the imbalance is staggering. "The average woman on a dating app receives maybe 10 to 50 likes per day," Ali writes. "What most women don't realise is what the average young man experiences. It's… crickets." The typical young man, he says, "would be lucky to get one match per week. Yes, you read that right. Per week."

But here's the twist: all that attention is a two-edged sword. When a young woman is flooded with dozens of eager men, Ali says, "paralysis sets in. You don't even know where to start." For women, he concludes, "selection becomes the primary burden rather than rejection."

And the constant flood takes its toll. Ali argues that endless validation leads to "desensitisation, higher selectivity, short-term excitement-seeking, and long-term dissatisfaction. Paradoxically, more options often result in less happiness." Healthier partners, he says, start to feel boring.

This puts enormous power in women's hands – what Ali calls #FemaleChoice. "For women… the challenge is deciding. They must sift through a wide pool of offers. For men… the challenge is waiting."

What makes this so painful for men is what Ali calls the "female emotional monopoly." Women have increasingly become the "gatekeepers" of emotional intimacy. "For many men, romantic-sexual relationships are the only place where vulnerability feels possible." Most men, he says, "have no safe places to talk about their feelings, to be emotionally vulnerable, or at least to receive a warm, loving touch on their skin, except within romantic or sexual partnerships." So, for men, finding a partner isn't just nice to have – it's emotional survival. And that hands women all the bargaining power. "Women, in this market, hold two distinct 'advantages': the emotional monopoly and the perception of an oversupply of men."

And boy, do some behave badly. I had a very entertaining week before my video chat with Ali Mahmoudiyan, watching some of the feisty women now calling out the behaviour of their own sex in the dating game. Women like Hannah Spier, the Switzerland-based anti-feminist psychiatrist I interviewed last year. On YouTube she recently took apart the dating coaches and influencers teaching young women how to become a "High Value Woman" – which, Hannah points out, is really a how-to guide to becoming a narcissist. Look at these women.

Hannah's verdict? It's a way to "lure men into their trap and then drain him like a vampire" – treating men "with the same consideration as gum stuck under their shoe." Grim stuff, eh?