Post-breakup, following a decade-long relationship, I awoke to find myself thrust violently back into the dating pool. It was a new, unfamiliar landscape where nothing was left to the imagination. Sex was assumed to be on the cards, and a new performative intimacy inevitable. Having relied in the past on chance encounters, an air of wondering, a feeling that fate (as opposed to an algorithm) had maybe put you and whomever else in one another’s paths, this new world where no one “chats you up” or flirts with you felt alienating.

I was forced towards dating apps: a vast pool of geographically convenient false advertisers who mostly don’t want relationships, let alone any connection. It’s been roughly three years since my breakup and I am already fatigued. I am 43, a single mother of two, with a very demanding career and limited time without the kids. In fact, my sacred free time is so limited that the thought of dating strangers who may ruin it fills me with resentment and rage. Imagine devoting your one night off to someone dull, vacuous and – worse – flippant about that luxury?

There is a general, unspoken understanding that most people who are on dating apps are there for an ego boost, free, noncommittal sex, and potentially to offload their madness on to others, while giving the impression to prospective partners with genuine intent that they are emotionally available. I wonder if the constant carousel of suitors in an age in which people don’t draw out courtship is going to gradually chip away at me if I partake in it. Will I become more........

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