The Death of Romance: Why Gen Z is Giving Up on Dating

I have learned from my Gen Z contact that it's proposal season. But what if the guy holding the flowers and the ring can't find his girl? What if romance is dead? Here's the reality. Only 56% of Gen Z adults had a romantic relationship as teens, compared with 78% of boomers. And sex? Nope. Young adults are less sexually active than their parents were. In California, the share of 18 to 30-year-olds with no sexual partner in the past year jumped from 22% in 2011 to 38% in 2021.

And I don't think it's because they suddenly discovered the virtue of chastity. The numbers don't lie. Romance and sex are on life support. Now, it's easy to blame the young, you know, kids these days. But let's be clear. The Zoomers didn't kill romance. At least, not on purpose.

Behind the bleak statistics, the story is way more interesting. Would you be surprised to learn that it's actually the young men who want to bring romance back? That's right. A recent NBC poll blew up the internet. It asked young men and women ages 18 to 28 what defines success in life for them. In other words, what matters most to you?

The answers? They reveal a cultural earthquake that, to be fair, cultural conservatives have been sounding the alarm on for about 40 years. But the results point to a cataclysm so devastating that we don't have time to say I told you so. Among young men who voted for Trump in 2024, 34% said having children was their number one definition of success, 29% said Put marriage right near the top. But young women who voted for Harris, their number one was having a fulfilling job or career.

Marriage and children? Dead last. Just 6% each. Okay, you say. So, pro-choice girl bosses don't want kids. Well, we still have young conservative women, right? Not much different. With young women who voted for Trump, having children and getting married came in at just 26% and 20% respectively. Top priority for conservative voting women? Financial independence.

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If you're ready to align your investments with your values, start the conversation today. Your children and grandchildren will thank you for it. Visit Taylor Fragon in the link below. For a no-obligation consultation, and now, back to romance. Let's zoom out. Gen Z is entering adulthood more single, more sexless, and more cautious than any generation in modern history. In the 50s and 60s, dating was the default. Almost 8 in 10 boomers had a steady high school relationship. Today, just over half of Gen Z can say the same.

Almost half of men say they've had none at all. So, what happened? You might assume it's hookup culture. Nope, because remember, they're not hooking up either. Journalist Caroline Downey, herself a Gen Z-er, says dating today feels like, quote, dancing in a minefield. Sounds fun. Look at the vocabulary. Ghosting, benching, zombying, cookie-jarring, the dreaded situation-ship, all shorthand for mistrust, ambiguity, and avoidance of real commitment. The polls confirm it. A majority of single young men and women feel pessimistic about ever finding a life partner.

The anecdotes are everywhere. All the good ones are taken. Every date is a train wreck. Even married millennials look at Gen Z and say, wow, I'm glad I dated in an earlier era. I mean, I feel like I caught the last chopper out of Nam. The mood is bleak. But is romance truly dead, or just mostly dead? And if it's dead, what killed it? I think the answer starts with fear, a deep and pervasive fear of intimacy and an amped-up culture of risk aversion.

So, where does the fear and the risk aversion come from? Well, Gen Z grew up in a culture marinated in failed love stories. Divorce, betrayals, scandals, all served daily on demand through the smartphone. Dating apps trained you to treat people as disposable. Swipe, swipe. Swipe. And when breakups come, the algorithm isn't designed to help you dust yourself off and get back out there. No, it is designed to pull you into a vortex of despair. One bad date becomes a TikTok rabbit hole of all men are trash, or relationships always fail.

Spend long enough in there, and you will believe it. The truth? Millions of couples do make it work. But their stories don't trend. The algorithm amplifies bitterness, not hope. Add to that the overuse of therapy speak. Everything is toxic. Everything a guy does is a red flag. And you get a generation hyper-aware of pitfalls, but under-experienced in actual relationships.

Romance can't grow in soil poisoned by suspicion. And it's not just fear, though. It's also ideology. Remember that NBC poll that I mentioned earlier? The vastly different priorities of liberal women and conservative men point to fundamentally divergent worldviews, and that is a big problem.

When asked, more than 70% of college Democrats said they wouldn't even date across party lines. It would be one thing if a minority of women were politically liberal, and a minority of men were conservative, and everyone else met in the middle. But no. Among Gen Z, 47% of women identify as liberal, compared to just 38% of men. So, when men say, I want marriage and family to be successful, and women, both conservative and liberal, say career comes first, the divorce between the sexes is inevitable.

That's the cultural stalemate, the war of the sexes, that makes real romance harder to find. Look, I'm not going to minimize what Gen Z is facing, or pretend that today's cultural mess can be fixed if just a few more women don a milkmaid dress and learn to make sourdough, or if we just philosophize harder about it. The truth is, things really are broken.

And we're experiencing the outcome of cultural changes dating back decades, if not longer. Dr. Leon Kass once wrote, Inherited cultural forms, which grow up organically over centuries without anybody noticing, can be undermined by public policy and social decisions. But once fractured, they are hard to repair by rational and self-conscious design.

The causes of our present state of affairs are multiple, powerful, and very likely irreversible. If courtship... Romance is to make a comeback. It must do so under vastly changed social conditions, and it will have many obstacles to overcome, or at least to recognize and deal with. That's sobering, but he's right. There isn't a quick fix on this one, guys. We can't just copy-paste the old scripts of courtship. Courtship and romance, if they're going to live again, will be under new conditions.

That means men and women can't simply wait for the culture to fix itself. You have to build your own microcultures, friend groups, church communities, common interest groups that encourage and sustain romance in the middle of a fractured world.

So, guys, gird your loins. If romance is going to make a comeback, it's not going to be because TikTok decided to healthy dating advice. Don't hold your breath. It will be because ordinary men and women choose courage over cynicism, clarity over confusion, and pursuit over passivity. So, what does that look like? First, find your courage. Yes, you might get rejected, but rejection is not the end. It's the price of admission.

Courage means taking that risk. Step away from the doom scroll and get into the real world. Second, beware the situation ship, which is a new word to me, but it actually fits the bill. Clarity in relationships is always kinder than ambiguity. If you're talking for weeks without movement, define the relationship or move on. Don't drag it out for six weeks bleeding out emotionally. Worst case, you get turned down. You cry, you reconnect with your bros, and try again.

Best case, you've created the conditions for something real. Third, Become a hopeless romantic. Not naive, just willing to risk looking foolish for the sake of love. Read Austen, read Erasmus, Ben Franklin. Literature reminds us that there are a thousand ways to pursue, but they all require honesty and risk. Fourth. Set boundaries and expectations when it comes to a physical relationship. It might sound unromantic and hard to do, but boundaries actually free romance to flourish. You both deserve to know where you stand, and even if it ends quickly, you have treated each other with dignity.

And finally, rediscover the joy of simple pursuit. The world must be peopled. A coffee after church, a walk in the park, a concert, a real date. Not just hanging out, not just talking, but actual pursuit with clarity and intention. The truth is that both men and women must find their way back to the altar, to the deeper truths of sex, marriage, male and female, and the highest goods of human life. Being a hopeless romantic with a dose of courage is key to bucking the social trends and taking action.

So, Gen Z, you are facing headwinds. You are facing fear, polarization, algorithms, a broken cultural script. I won't sugarcoat it. It's harder to date today than it was for your parents or grandparents. But romance isn't dead. It's dormant. It's waiting. Waiting for men and women with courage to prove the cynics wrong. You may be in the minority in your generation, but you're not alone, and you're not helpless. There is a real world of real men and women out there. So, buy the flowers, send the text, plan the date.

Prove the cynics wrong. Romance is waiting to be rediscovered, and Gen Z holds the key to its revival. So, let's get it back, and someday, you can tell your grandkids how you and grandma lit the flame against all the odds.

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