Why this is hard right now, and it isn't your fault or hers

Meet Josh. He's twenty-four, he has a decent job, and on a Friday night he's on his couch, swiping. Forty swipes, no matches. He closes the app and opens a video where a guy leaning on a rented sports car says women only want the top ten percent of men. Josh thinks, maybe he's right. Maybe it's me. I'm Tanya, and this course is for Josh.

First, the honest numbers. In a large American survey in twenty twenty-two, the Pew Research Center found that a majority of men under thirty describe themselves as single, far more than women the same age. Other researchers think the gap is smaller than that survey suggests. But nobody disputes the direction. A lot of young men are on their own.

Canada shows the same shift. In nineteen eighty-one, about two in three Canadians in their late twenties lived as a couple. By the twenty twenty-one census, it was about four in ten. Some of those people have partners they don't live with, so it isn't all loneliness. But the way people pair up has changed, and fast.

So why? Part of the answer is the apps. Pew asked American online daters how it felt. Sixty-four percent of men said they'd felt insecure because they got so few messages. Fifty-four percent of women said they'd felt overwhelmed because they got so many. Same apps, opposite problems.

Here's the question that raises. Is the app proof that women are cruel, or that you're not good enough? No. It's how the app is built. When anyone can message anyone, attention piles up on a small number of profiles. That's a feature of the machine, not a verdict on you.

Now, her side. Picture the woman Josh swiped on. She opened the app to forty new messages. Half of them just say hey. A few are rude. One is a photo she didn't ask for. She isn't ignoring Josh because he's not good enough. She's tired, she's wary, and his message looked like the other thirty-nine.

One more honest fact. You'll hear that young men are the loneliest people alive. In the United States, young men do report a lot of loneliness. But in Canada, Statistics Canada found young women reporting more loneliness than young men. Loneliness is hitting young people, full stop. The difference is that men are less likely to lean on a friend about it.

Let's change one fact. Put Josh in a pottery class, or a pickup soccer league, every Tuesday for three months. Nobody is judging his photo. People see how he shows up, week after week. Research we'll cover later says that the longer people know you, the less your looks decide. Josh's odds just changed, and he didn't have to become a different man.

The mistake guys make is taking a hard market personally, then going looking for someone to blame. Some online voices are happy to hand you a villain. Women, or yourself. Both roads end in the same place, alone and angry.

Here's the rule, in one breath. It's harder than it used to be, it isn't your fault or hers, and it's a skill you can learn.

This week, try one thing. Say a real sentence to one person you'd normally just nod at. A barista, a neighbour, a coworker. That's it. Next time, what the online gurus get wrong.