Millennial men have been blamed for the ‘dating crisis’ — and it’s all to do with effort

Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.

It’s a phrase most people in the dating pool have encountered at one point or another.

Three decades on from when John Gray’s seminal work was first published, this sentiment still seems to resonate with fatigued dating app users who just can’t seem to get on with their matches.

Forbes reports that 78% of people who use ‘the apps’ to find love feel emotionally, mentally or physically exhausted by the process, while 41% have been ghosted, and 40% say they struggle to connect.

Women are also more likely to be fed up with it than men (80%, compared to 74%), which certified sex therapist, Dr Rufus Tony Spann, puts down to the constant cycle of raised hopes before a promising prospect ends up falling flat.

Now, though, there looks to be an explanation for this crisis of connection and commitment – and it’s nothing to do with the technology itself.

According to a previous report from Feeld, the problem is actually straight, millennial men.

The 2025 study of the dating app’s 2,500 members revealed nearly seven in 10 heterosexual men aged 29 to 44 have either never updated or rarely update their dating app profile since they first filled it out.

So, even if they’ve been swiping for a few years now, their profile picture might still be the same as when they first logged in.

And these snaps can be questionable to start with, as evidenced by the ‘man holding fish’ trope’s refusal to die out, despite women’s pleas.

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On the contrary, women are much more likely to change their bio over time (27.8% have done so since downloading the app).

In fact, millennial women are making tweaks to their profiles the most, and they’re more likely to do so if they identify as queer, pansexual, polysexual, omnisexual, or bisexual (89%, that is).

For women, updates are important in helping to pre-empt common questions asked by their matches, and to lay down the law on their deal-breakers, something that men are 2.6 times less likely to do.

Men also seem reluctant to put the miles in for love, consistently choosing shorter maximum match distances (which they’re more likely to tweak over time), while women maintain higher distance preferences regardless of how often they tweak their search settings.

Essentially, the numbers suggest that they’re not putting in the graft.

‘When you’re trying to figure out who is most likely to sit in each of these categories, it’s not so much sexual orientation or age or geography – the clearest pattern comes down to gender,’ dating expert and journalist Mona Chalabi said of the research.

‘People who identify as men change their search settings more, and women spend more time changing their profiles.

‘When I first looked at those findings, I sighed.

I wondered if men are more inclined to believe that there’s something wrong with their environment, whereas women are more inclined to think there’s something wrong with themselves.’
But as Mona noted, there’s a multitude of reasons for this gender split.

First of all, she pondered whether perhaps women are simply ‘really clear about what they want, and don’t want to change their search preferences.’
There’s also the possibility that their lives are more dynamic, and are subsequently changing more frequently, in ‘more exciting ways than they want to describe in their bios,’ she said.

‘Whatever the reasons are, most of us don’t simply sign up and search,’ she concludes.

‘Almost 90% of us change our bios at some point after we join the site, and 92% change our search settings.

‘Because good connections require luck and a bit of effort—most of us know that means a little tinkering now and then.’
This article was first published on December 5, 2025.
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