What to know
- Many in Toronto’s dating scene, both Gen X and younger generations, feel romance and chivalry are disappearing, making it hard to find a genuine connection.
- Dating apps and mixers offer opportunities, but finding genuine, intentional connections remains tough.
- An expert says baggage and changing social norms make dating later in life more challenging, but not impossible.
If you think dating is hard in Toronto as a Gen Z, you’re not alone — Gen X faces the same challenges too.
Situationships and one-night stands are now common experiences, no matter the generation, sometimes making it seem as if romance has faded.
For this edition of This Is Dating Now, Now Toronto asked a Gen X woman if she believes courtship is still alive, based on her dating experience.
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- Bumble bets on AI to find love, but Toronto daters aren’t convinced
- Cuffed or just vibing? Torontonians and a dating expert share their take on intentional dating
- Too many options, too few matches: Has Toronto’s dating scene made settling down impossible?
- What makes or breaks a relationship? Torontonians and a dating expert on setting healthy boundaries
Danielle Beitz is a 53-year-old real estate agent looking for love.
She was once married, but he wasn’t her forever partner. Now, she has two kids: a 21-year-old daughter and a 30-year-old son, and she’s looking for someone to settle down with.
Beitz has been single for four years now and has been taking more initiative to find a partner by going to mixers, bars, and parks, or simply saying hello to someone in an elevator.
Has modern dating lost its sense of romance?
From those experiences, she’s realized that modern-day dating has lost chivalry and courtship. She started out by using dating apps, but realized that they might make it easier to meet someone, but not always better.
“Right now, it’s about hanging out, and hanging out means having sex, right? And I mean, when I hear, ‘Hey, wanna hang out?’ I just immediately delete, like I’m exhausted from that, and I don’t think the generation now even really knows what romance is,” Beitz told Now Toronto.
She believes that many people on the apps find Tinder to be for finding sex, and it ruins the app’s purpose for those who want something genuine, like herself.
“You’ve got a group of 10 people, they’ve already probably all slept together, dated each other, or you know, Tinder and Bumble, it’s the same people, they’re just rotating,” she said.
She added that her generation is also unserious about love.
“They’re sleeping around too. It’s like a cold. They caught it,” Beitz said. “They have the grass is greener syndrome. It doesn’t matter what age you are, it’s like, why don’t you just focus on one person and see if that works?”
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Given her struggles with apps, she also tried going to the mixers, but it wasn’t any better.
“[The men] weren’t stepping forward… Walking in was like the public school first dance, the boys on one side and the girls on the other side,” she said. “The guys were very shy… didn’t seem like anyone had any confidence going in… It just wasn’t mixing.”
Given these frustrations, Beitz says just getting to a first date can feel hard enough.
“I expect the guy to pay. I have my own song, and I’m like, don’t make the girl pay… Chivalry is missing, romance is missing, just saying you look pretty. That’s what’s missing,” she said. “They don’t know how to talk; they want to hang out.”
Can communication help you meet a romantic partner?
With age, Beitz says she’s learned to take people at face value and focus on those whose intentions align with her own.
While she believes many people genuinely want a relationship, she no longer tries to change the minds of those who say they’re only looking for something casual. Instead, she makes her intentions clear on her dating profile, dates one person at a time and moves on if the connection isn’t right. That approach may be paying off — she’s currently preparing for a second date with someone she describes as equally intentional.
What red flags should you look out for at any age?
Beitz gave a list of red flags to watch out for.
- ‘I just got out of a relationship, but I’m ready.’
- Talking about sex in the first conversation.
- Not willing to video chat (safety risk because the other person might be a catfish.)
- Only following women, “it’s like porn,” she joked.
Is there still hope to find “the one”?
“I’m still single because I just haven’t found the other me,” she said. “If I’m here on Tinder and I’m doing all this stuff, there’s got to be that guy out there… I believe that someone for me is out there.”
A Toronto dating expert weighs in
Toronto Dating Hub Founder and Dating Coach Andrea Lo organizes many mixers to help Torontonians find love. As someone working in the industry, she has received a lot of interest from people over 45 in mixers (and is still accepting responses to her form).
So, why is it still so hard to find a partner? Lo explained that there’s a shortage of men at these events, while women are more “eager to find love.”
But with age comes “baggage,” making it harder to find a match.
“People in that age group, I’d say a lot of them are either widowed, divorced, separated people with kids, so they’re on their like second or maybe even third time finding like a long-term relationship… they’re gonna find it a lot tougher, but they’re put in the same pool as everyone else, to other people, they’re like, they’re the ones with baggage,” she told Now Toronto.
Modern dating also seems to have a hard time catching up with some older individuals, making it harder to understand dating rules.
“They come from a culture where you gotta be more formal about things, and that’s like, so lost nowadays, right?” she said. “I think it’s caused people to be like I don’t want to be the odd one to do those things, but I think hopefully, like people are still like holding the doors out, paying for things, but it’s just slowly starting to be like a lost, almost like an art form that very traditional people are doing.”
That leads women to feel they’re missing the romanticism and pursuit from men. But there are also older individuals who lose themselves with age
So, to find someone, Lo recommends still using dating apps, attending events, and choosing the areas you frequent wisely. If you’re looking for someone older, go to Yorkville versus someone younger in King West.
But her biggest advice: attend events that align with your hobbies or passions.
“Let’s say you’re into, like, for museums and art, so maybe look for an event at the AGO in what you really like, but find those activities, because there are a lot of events that you know,” Lo said.
