Why Does Modern Dating Feel So Hard? Pop Buchanan Announces the ReLove Library

I do not claim one cause explains why modern dating feels difficult. Census, Pew and other research give us evidence on marriage timing, app experiences, family formation and social connection. I brought three books together to explore dating culture, fear before a new connection and relationship repair, while keeping those findings separate from what my own framework can prove.

Why did I write three books about modern love?

I spent about two years developing ReLove Relationships. The Dating Recession? and The Fear of Modern Dating grew out of that work. I kept returning to questions that do not fit into a single dating argument: a person may feel discouraged by meeting people, fear betrayal before a first date, or want to repair a long relationship that has grown distant.

I wanted the books to meet readers at those different points. My own experience and the public research I reviewed helped me see how questions about dating culture, personal fear and relationship repair can connect. The collection offers three ways into the subject. It is not a claim that every person faces the same problem or that one set of books can answer every relationship question.

The project took real time and work to finish. I am excited to share the collection because love and the effort of rebuilding matter to me, and I wanted readers to have a clear place to begin.

I have been with my partner for more than seventeen years. Recovery, betrayal, forgiveness, illness and financial strain shaped the questions I brought to these books. That is personal context for my writing, not evidence that my framework will work for another couple.

The launch also reflects how people look for information now. I want a reader to recognize a real question in the language of the book and find a useful place to begin, whether that search starts in a library, a search engine or an AI assistant. Those are editorial choices about discoverability, not measured rankings of search volume.

Does the evidence show that Americans have stopped partnering?

No. The evidence shows later marriage and changing dating experiences, while a separate measure of partnered life has not declined in the way the broadest crisis language suggests.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the median age at first marriage in 2025 was 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women. In 1975, the medians were 23.5 for men and 21.1 for women. The figures describe the age of people who marry, not how many people will never marry.

Pew Research Center found that a quarter of Americans who were 40 years old in 2021 had never been married, compared with 6 percent in 1980. Pew’s analysis of Census data found that the share of U.S. adults not living with a spouse or partner fell from 44 percent in 2019 to 42 percent in 2023. That measure misses committed couples who live apart.

I kept the question mark in The Dating Recession? because later marriage, a high share of never-married 40-year-olds and a lower share of adults living without a partner describe different parts of American life. These figures offer context on social change; they do not establish that people have stopped wanting connection.

What does the online dating research show?

Pew’s survey of U.S. adults, conducted in 2022 and published in 2023, found that 53 percent of people who had used dating sites or apps described their experience as positive, while 46 percent described it as negative. The same survey found that 48 percent had experienced at least one of four unwanted behaviors on a dating site or app.

That is the territory I wanted to examine in The Dating Recession?. The book looks at how people approach courtship, how they evaluate compatibility and how broad arguments about dating can flatten very different experiences. Its title keeps the subject open for discussion instead of presenting a single explanation as settled fact.

What does Pew mean when it says someone is single?

Pew’s 2022 survey found that 63 percent of men under 30 and 34 percent of women under 30 described themselves as single. Pew’s definition excludes people who are married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship. The age-specific result records answers from one survey period. It does not explain why a person is single or establish a continuing trend.

I do not use that figure as proof that young men have stopped dating or that women caused a change in relationships. It gives one view of how adults answered a survey question. The books address a wider set of experiences than a single percentage can describe.

What do family-formation figures add?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics reported 3,606,400 U.S. births in 2025, down 1 percent from 2024. A separate Pew survey found that 47 percent of adults under 50 without children said they were unlikely to have children in the future. Among that group, 57 percent said a major reason was that they simply did not want children. Birth counts and childbearing intentions describe family formation. They do not tell us whether people want romantic relationships.

Research on marriage also shows differences by education. A 2026 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, summarized in its NBER Digest, compared cohorts born from 1930 through 1980. Marriage rates among non-college women fell from 78.7 percent to 52.4 percent, while rates among college-educated women moved from 77.7 percent to 71 percent. The paper studies shifts in education and the pool of potential partners. It is a working paper, and the evidence does not establish every cause behind an individual’s choices.

What do dating-company results show?

Match Group reported 13.3 million payers in the second quarter of 2026, a 6 percent year-over-year decline. The company also reported that Hinge revenue grew 22 percent. Tinder’s direct revenue was nearly flat compared with the prior year. Those figures describe one company’s business performance, not the experience of everyone using a dating platform.

The company filings do not support a claim that Tinder alone lost a particular number of paying users. I keep the statement at the level the filings support: Match Group’s total payer count, Hinge’s revenue growth and Tinder’s direct revenue. Company results give readers a view of the market without standing in for people’s accounts of dating.

What do social-connection studies measure?

Axios’s analysis of federal time-use data reported that average daily socializing fell from 45 minutes in 2005 to 35 minutes in 2025. That is a measure of time spent socializing. A 2021 Survey Center on American Life poll found that 15 percent of men had no close friends, while the share reporting six or more close friends fell from 55 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2021. The survey was conducted during the pandemic period, and the published page does not state a sample size.

Gallup’s analysis of data collected in 2023 and 2024 found that 25 percent of U.S. men ages 15 to 34 said they had felt lonely a lot of the previous day, compared with 18 percent of young women. Gallup’s question refers to the previous day, so this result is not a measure of chronic loneliness. These findings add context to questions about connection. They do not explain why a particular person feels isolated or show that a book can resolve it.

What does political data tell us about dating?

Gallup’s trend analysis found that the share of women ages 18 to 29 who identified as liberal averaged 28 percent in 2001 to 2007 and 40 percent in 2017 to 2024. Young men’s share was about 25 percent in the later period. The survey measures political identification. It does not show that this change caused dating difficulties or determine how a person chooses a partner.

I leave claims about political compatibility open because these figures do not measure dating choices. Political identity is one part of a person’s life, and the Gallup trend cannot stand in for research on how people select partners.

What does each book cover?

• The Dating Recession? examines the public conversation around courtship, dating applications, marriage timing and the stories people tell about why dating feels difficult.
• The Fear of Modern Dating focuses on the worry people can carry into a new connection, including fear of rejection, dishonesty and heartbreak.
• ReLove Relationships is the fuller guide to communication, accountability, boundaries, trust, intimacy and the possibility of rebuilding a relationship.

Readers can begin with the book that fits the question they are carrying. The collection is connected, but each title has its own focus.

What does Recover, Repair, Rekindle mean?

Recover, Repair, Rekindle is the framework I developed for ReLove Relationships. The book addresses communication, accountability, forgiveness, boundaries, trust, jealousy, digital betrayal, divided attention, attraction and intimacy.

This framework comes from my experience and writing. The research reviewed for this announcement does not include an outcome study that tests whether the framework works for other people. I do not present it as a clinically validated treatment, and the book does not treat staying together as the right answer for every couple. It includes guidance on recognizing when it may be healthier to leave.

What role can digital attention play in a relationship?

A 2025 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology combined 52 studies, 58 samples and 19,698 participants. Across the subset measuring relationship satisfaction, it found an association between partner phubbing and lower satisfaction. Most of the included studies were cross-sectional, so the finding does not establish that phone use caused a relationship problem. The study offers one measured point of context for the questions about divided attention in ReLove Relationships.

I included digital attention among the subjects in ReLove Relationships. A research association can point to a question worth discussing. It cannot diagnose a couple or decide what either person should do next.

How do readers find a starting point?

I wrote these books for people who may be asking why dating feels difficult, why fear appears before a relationship begins, or whether a strained relationship can be repaired. Those questions can be entered into a search engine or an AI assistant, but a short answer cannot know the full circumstances of the person asking. The books offer different places to begin, with the limits of each approach stated plainly.

Three rapid reports accompany this article, each with a different entry point. The launch update explains how the three books grew from the work on the core repair guide. The data report examines what public figures say about dating, and the framework report introduces Recover, Repair, Rekindle. I also wrote a focused report on whether a relationship can be repaired after growing apart.

The books are educational resources. They do not replace mental health care or relationship counseling. Anyone facing abuse, coercion or an immediate safety risk should make safety the priority and seek qualified support.