Recently, single women told Mashable that dating in 2026 is, in a word, bleak. But that opinion seems to transcend gender. Take a look at any dating or dating-adjacent subreddit, and you'll find people saying that trying to find a partner sucks.
Posts range from users hating their dates to not having luck finding a date at all. A throughline between all these differences is an overwhelming dissatisfaction. Of course, these being people from Reddit, it's bound to skew negative, but it does at least say something about what dating is like for a segment of the population.
Mashable reached out to several men on Reddit, all of whom chose to be anonymous to speak freely about their experiences (and, thus, we also have to take their takes with a bit of skepticism). And I chatted with men's dating coach, Connell Barrett, about his thoughts on what dating is like for men right now, too.
The looksmaxxing dater
Wading through the muck of r/onlinedating, r/dating_advice, and other subreddits, I came across a post I believed was ragebait. I can't copy and paste it here now, as it has been deleted from Reddit, but to summarize: A young man asked for dating advice because the women in his orbit were overweight and "letting themselves go."
I reached out to this man, an 18-year-old attending the University of Florida, before his account was also banned from Reddit. I asked him if he believed what he said, or if he was ragebaiting (as some commenters believed). He told me he really believed this, and that it was a similar case when he went to high school.
But how did he look himself, physically? "Pretty muscular," he told me over Reddit DM. "I was fat until I started taking reta," he said, referring to a weight-loss drug called Retatrutide that's not FDA approved, yet is available online by sketchy retailers, "and a couple months ago I started a steroid cycle."
That's not all this teenager did to "looksmax," or improving one's appearance, oftentimes with extreme measures. He listed the ways he does this to Mashable, including the Retatrudide.
1. Perm hair
2. Skincare
3. Invisalign
4. Melanotan II for tanning (also an unregulated drug — the Skin Cancer Foundation just issued a warning about Melanotan)
5. Teeth whitening
6. Penis pumping "for size gains" (A penis pump can make it look larger temporarily.)
7. Retatrutide 1mg "for lean bulk" once per week
8. Four IUs of Human Growth Hormone "taken before bed for better gains" (HGH is highly regulated and has a long list of side effects)
9. 300mg Testosterone enanthate per week intravenous (which is typically used for testosterone replacement therapy)
10. 20mg Anavar (a steroid) split into two doses twice per day
11. 5mg Tadalafil for erectile dysfunction
12. 1.2mg oral Finasteride and 3mg oral Minoxidol per day to prevent hair loss prophylactically
13. GHK-Cu peptide "for skin" (it's touted as anti-aging)
14. Accutane for steroid acne
15. Exercise and diet
"Also shaving face," he wrote. "Also, I take a beta blocker for high blood pressure from [steroids]."
This man is looksmaxxing in order to get a "harem of girls," he told Mashable, and cited the anime High School DxD as his inspiration. He said he still has no romantic experience, but he hasn't been on campus while looksmaxxing.
"I'm certain it is going to work though," he said. "Many looksmaxxes take lots of time to work."
For now, however, he considers himself an incel, as "any man who would like a relationship but hasn't got one is an incel." He plans on meeting "Stacies" and "Stacelites" (attractive and sexually active women, according to Mashable's incel glossary) on the University of Florida campus this fall through Tinder and frat parties.
"The pros of looksmaxxing will always outweigh any side effects," he said. When Mashable asked if this was all some sort of joke, he insisted it wasn't.
"You don't have to be on an incel forum to be one," he said. "Not posting on forums doesn't mean you're not a genetic dead end."
Looksmaxxing and incel culture are tangential to the manosphere, a right-wing subsection of the internet that claims (among other things) that men are superior to women, but that men must look physically attractive and be high earners in order to obtain a desirable partner.
Dating coach Connell Barrett said the manosphere is a place where many young men are lonely and confused, and don't know why they're alone. Then, manosphere figures come in and say, "You're not crazy…women are the problem."
"That is toxic," Barrett said, "it's a total poison being poured into the ears of young men, but it gives that young, lonely man an answer where he doesn't have to look at himself and say, 'You know what, I need to work on myself, I need to grow'...Instead, he gets to say the problem is women."
Why men are afraid to date
Not every man is an incel, of course, but the manosphere does tap into real anxieties and insecurities men have.
"Men are more afraid than ever to talk to women in real life."
"The biggest thing that I see from men is that men are more afraid than ever to talk to women in real life," he said. They don't want to come off as creepy or get mocked on TikTok. There are a few reasons for this: social media surveillance and the fear of being cringe; a lack of social skills due to growing up online; and fears fueled by the MeToo era.
When discussing MeToo and how to square men's fears of rejection with women's fear of physical assault (81 percent of women reported experiencing some sort of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center), Barrett said he makes sure his clients understand the latter.
"I tell them, 'Look, I know you got your dating frustrations, but let's be honest…we don't have to worry about the same things women have to worry about,'" he said.
As a coach, Barrett also sees how insecurities can manifest as fear of dating and approaching women in person. He works on their beliefs, like teaching them that they are worthy of love, and then works with them to build confidence to speak to strangers in the real world.
"Let's be honest…we don't have to worry about the same things women have to worry about."
The daters who've given up
While the 18-year-old Redditor is looksmaxxing to get ahead, another man, a 35-year-old, said he "tried all the possible dating advice out there," like going to the gym, wearing better clothes and cologne, and improving education and social skills. He told Mashable over Reddit DMs that the only thing he hasn't tried is the "extreme" measures like surgery.
While he's on a number of dating apps (Tinder, Bumble, Facebook Dating, Badoo, and Hinge), he said he's been rejected for 15 years and doesn't have high hopes. He's also not willing to put in as much effort as he once did.
A 30-year-old man Mashable spoke to over the phone, who commented on the r/OnlineDating subreddit that he gets around a match a year, and has gotten one date out of those matches a couple of years ago. (He texted that date for a bit after, but he said she kind of ghosted him).
This Reddit user tried meeting women through his social circles, but the options have been limited. Meanwhile, he does want a wife and a family.
When asked what's contributing to the trouble, he said, at the risk of sounding like "certain groups of people on the internet" (like incels), "if you don't have something that makes you remarkably attractive to women, there's not going to be a whole lot of signals of interest." He meant physical appearance or height; if you're on dating apps, he said, these are the metrics that matter.
Beyond looks, he believed there was a societal element to dating where people don't feel safe around each other anymore. "I fully understand why women don't feel safe around a lot of men," he said. "It makes sense why women are handling those interactions that way, but at the same time, that's filtering out the good men just as much as it is the bad."
This echoed what Barrett had been saying about how men are afraid to talk to women. "Society has changed the behavior of so many people, especially men, to look for love first and foremost on their phones, that most men are just not in the habit and hobby of going out into the real world," he said. And the universal thing he's hearing from men and women is that "pretty much everyone hates apps." Barrett has no problem with the apps — but said people don't fall in love on their phones.
Meanwhile, the 30-year-old Redditor said dating apps give the illusion of having lots of opportunities, and that combined with social media has risen expectations. "I think people do kind of have an inflated idea of what a reasonable expectation is for they can kind of expect out of a partner," he explained, "and so there's probably a lot less people that are perceived as potential partners, and we all kind of suffer from being on the outside of that."
"When you're looking for the perfect match, you probably miss a lot of people that would be pretty good ones."
"When you're looking for the perfect match, you probably miss a lot of people that would be pretty good ones," he continued.
When discussing what dating is like for men overall, he said that, "There's a desire for better from a lot of people involved, but maybe a limited amount of willingness to change personal approaches to make it happen."
It's a cycle: Women are highly selective, and then have bad experiences with men — which is men's fault — and they get more cynical towards dating, and thus more selective, he said.
"Women's solution is men need to be better so we actually want them, men's solution is women need to lower their standards, and neither of those is actually really a step towards either being more appealing to the other," he said.
He's also frustrated by what he calls "toxic positivity" content, and the idea that he's not behind. He wanted to have kids by 30, but he just turned 30 and is single.
"It's not just like a loneliness or a wanting attention thing. There's actual bigger things we want in life that are impacted by this, too, and it's not as simple as this can happen when it happens," he said.
At the same time, however, he mentioned some things he could do, like get in better shape and be more aggressive about asking people out.
Barrett encourages men to go to any place where it's socially acceptable and reasonably normal to meet women, be it a bar on a Friday night, a gym, or a party. "People fall in love — or begin to connect — and eventually fall in love by meeting in person," he said.
And yes, men will have to deal with the fear of rejection, but as Barrett said, "Welcome to life."
