‘I lied because I felt insecure about it’: How our vulnerability crisis is killing our dating lives
Against a backdrop of constant surveillance, embarrassment has become our biggest fear — but what do we lose in our attempt to avoid it?
Alice, 31, has been dating Frank* for two months. They met on Hinge and quickly got along, bonding over their shared sense of humour and similar creative pursuits (he’s a guitarist with a love of classical music; she’s a theatre and film director). And yet, despite their immediate spark, Alice says there’s something holding her back; a familiar hesitation she’s felt in other fledgling romances. “I’ve been struggling to let my guard down and open up to him,” she says. “I think it comes from having been dating for so long. When you’re always dating new people, you don’t get to build that consistent state of trust you’d get from something long-term.”
Things were (and still are!) going well — but Alice’s struggles with vulnerability came to a head on the pair’s fifth date. “We were in bed, chatting about everything and nothing when past relationships cropped up,” she explains, “and I made up some fluff about how I’d had a long-term relationship in my mid-20s, which I hadn’t. I lied because I felt insecure about it. But then he was just straight-up and honest and said, ‘I haven’t had anything long-term’, which was really unguarded and so hot! I was like, ‘Why am I pretending when this person is being vulnerable? That’s amazing’.”
Feeling afraid to be vulnerable with someone — especially someone you fancy — isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Since basically the dawn of time, humans have been scared of feeling embarrassed, rejected, and ostracised in love. The topic is at the heart of many of our greatest artistic works (like, say, Love Island), a constant in our group chats, therapy sessions, and even on our TikTok FYPs. It’s a key hurdle in almost all of our dating lives.
And, while we can’t know for sure if it’s worse now, or if we just have more platforms to talk about it, it does feel like we’re in a particular crisis when it comes to being vulnerable (and sincere) today — not only in our dating lives, but in our broader relationships, too. We’re deadly resistant to being ‘cringe’, increasingly approach dating with hostility, and are terrified of bad feelings. So much so that real intimacy has, for many, become something to be avoided at all costs, whether through ‘boy sobriety’ and celibacy, strict rules, ‘icks’, and ‘non-negotiables’, or even, for some, shirking real relationships completely, instead delving into digital realms and AI companions.
In fact, according to a new Hinge report, 35% of daters across all genders and sexualities say they’re holding back from having deeper conversations because they don’t know how to start, while 52% of daters say they’ve felt ashamed after being emotionally vulnerable with someone (dubbed a ‘vulnerability hangover’).
The irony, of course, is that this fear and shame — and the things we do to avoid it — tends to make our dating lives worse, leading to confusion and miscommunication, a sense of disconnection, and regret over wasted opportunities. This is starkly evident in Hinge’s report, which found that 43% of straight Gen Z women wait for the other person to initiate deep conversations, partly because they assume men don’t want to have them, while 48% of Gen Z men hold back from emotional intimacy because they don’t want to seem ‘too much’. And yet, 84% of daters say they do want to build deeper connections.
“Social media has fuelled a ‘play it cool’ culture,” Moe Ari Brown, Hinge’s love and connection expert tells Cosmopolitan UK. “When everything can be captured, exposed, and instantly judged for ‘the ick’, daters feel pressured to edit their real-time personalities.” As per Hinge’s report, among Gen Z, 50% of men, 45% of women, and 39% of non-binary people say social media has made them more hesitant to be emotionally open.
This certainly rings true for 22-year-old Mia, who describes herself as “a bit avoidant”, but admits that she’s “not sure if [she is] avoidant or if it’s just a term [she’s] being TikTok-diagnosed with”. “As soon as we recognise a few ‘attachment’ behaviours on TikTok, we begin to project those entire concepts onto ourselves [and others].”
This also encourages black-and-white thinking about complex situations, actions, and emotions, which in turn discourages sagacity, compassion, and, yes, vulnerability. “Social media’s emphasis on perfection and a ‘don’t settle’ ethos has made people scared to be real, authentic, and vulnerable in their own lives,” agrees 30-year-old Daisie-Belle. “These days, if someone does one thing wrong, people [are often so quick to] end things. But relationships take work and that takes vulnerability from both sides. A romantic relationship requires two people to share their needs and express their emotions safely.”
28-year-old Kelly* suggests that dating apps shoulder some blame here, too. “It’s great that we have so much access to connection, but I think it can dehumanise us all, especially in the search for love,” she says. “It’s like, ‘You don’t like me? Fine, I can find someone else just by swiping my finger’. Everyone has a fear of rejection, and we’re all just mirrors of each other.”
The role of dating apps in all this is, unsurprisingly, not mentioned in Hinge’s report, but when I put the question to Brown, he says: “It can be hard to read emotional nuance through a screen, so daters sometimes protect themselves by staying surface-level. Text alone can flatten our emotions or make it easy to overthink how we’ll come across. That can make openness feel risky.”
As we know, dating apps, like social media, encourage us to see ourselves as brands — and our brands must be curated perfectly in order to be appealing to our potential ‘buyers’. But what happens when you can’t hide behind a curated screen? “A lot of younger queer people like myself are having a crisis in being vulnerable [while dating] because now more than ever, nobody wants to be seen for themselves,” says 19-year-old Alfie. “They’d much rather be seen as this idealised version of what they can be.” Top that off with the “infinite choice of people” available on dating apps, and Alfie believes people are reluctant to make meaningful connections “before they know what else they could have”.
Still, although loads of people are afraid of their own vulnerability, they seem to be much more open to it from others. As per Hinge’s report, just 19% of Gen Z daters said vulnerability makes them uncomfortable. This view is echoed among the people I spoke to for this story. Alfie says when someone is vulnerable with him, it helps him feel like he can let his guard down, too. 32-year-old Stella* says she feels honoured when someone opens up to her, “like they trust [her] as someone safe and important enough to them to share”.
It seems we’re not resistant to vulnerability, then, but more afraid of its impact on us — whether through offline hurt or online embarrassment. In an essay on her Substack, Many Such Cases, writer Magdalene Taylor reflects on the consequences of our very modern determination to circumvent embarrassment at all costs. She writes: “The only real desire that remains is that of avoidance. The ‘want’ is to avoid embarrassment… We’re not just afraid of the embarrassment of love, but the embarrassment of how other people might see us if we even begin to approach that risk.”
When telling me about his own experience of being vulnerable (something he says is harder after his recent break-ups), 31-year-old Matt* references the recent viral British Vogue article, which asked, ‘Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?’. The article is really asking whether it’s embarrassing to post about your boyfriend now — a question that Matt thinks epitomises the problem. “Our increasing collective atomisation into our own silos and brands is making people more and more ruthlessly self-interested, thus making it perhaps more difficult to be vulnerable as there’s so many stages to it now,” he tells Cosmopolitan UK.
By attempting to avoid all hurt and bad feelings, but still wanting to date — or to be seen to be dating — we risk taking the messiness and humanity (and fun) out of dating. So, where do we go from here?
“Vulnerability is not a risk to avoid — it’s the spark that makes connection real,” says Brown. “We need to actively cultivate it by making choices rooted in intentionality and self-respect, not fear. Acknowledge your ‘vulnerability hangover’, and then shift your focus away from it and onto the [courage it took to open up]. Challenge narratives like, ‘I’m too intense’ or ‘They won’t like the real me’, and ask yourself what it would look like to show up as your real self. Then find the joy in authenticity; your personality isn’t copy-paste. The slight awkwardness, the unique enthusiasm — these are the qualities someone will fall for. If your vulnerability puts someone off, it’s not a failure; it’s a filter that just saved you time.”
As for Alice? “We’re all afraid of bad feelings because dating is hard, but nobody wants to go on a date with a robot,” she concludes. “We all, including myself, have to be willing to put ourselves out there and be curious about the new people we meet, as opposed to trying to future-proof all our emotions.”
*Names have been changed
Credit: Cosmopolitan