Is it a Same Old Story, Time Again, or is it a Femininomenon?

What Young Women Are Telling Me About Dating Right Now

There is a song I keep hearing about in my therapy rooms. Not on the speakers. In the stories.

Chappell Roan’s Femininomenon opens with a scenario most of the young women I work with could have written themselves: the promising online connection, the exchanged playlists and late-night messages, the whole thing evaporating the moment somebody suggests meeting for an actual coffee. Roan has said the song is about the confusion she feels in her relationships with men, the persistent sense that something is not connecting. She told Cherwell that connection with a woman felt easy and wonderful by comparison, and that finding the same with a man would be a phenomenon.

I cannot reproduce her lyrics here (copyright), but I would encourage you to listen. What you will hear is a voice that shifts from weary familiarity to outright demand. By the time she is calling for a song with a beat, she is asking for something with substance. That shift, from resigned patience to a refusal to keep settling, is exactly what I am hearing from young women in Melbourne, week after week.

What Is Showing Up in the Room

The women arriving at my practice are not presenting with a neatly packaged problem. They are bringing something more diffuse. A flatness. A tiredness that has little to do with sleep. A sense that the dating world they were promised, the one where you put yourself out there and someone eventually meets you halfway, does not exist. Many have deleted their apps. Some felt immediate relief, which itself became a source of confusion: If I feel better without it, what does that say about what I was putting myself through?

The specifics differ but the emotional texture is consistent. Ghosting after genuine intimacy. Situationships that lingered for months without clarity. Men whose profiles promise emotional intelligence but who, over a beer in Fitzroy, cannot ask a single question about someone else’s life. One client laughed and told me the profiles all read the same: footy, beers, dogs, The Office, “not looking for anything serious but open to it.” She said it was like reading the same man’s resume 200 times.

What they describe is effort without reciprocity. Women investing emotional labour in a dating culture that rewards casualness and punishes sincerity. Several have said, in different words, some version of the same thing: I would rather be alone than keep doing this.

This Is Not Just a Feeling

A 2024 YouGov survey found that seven in ten Australian residents have never used a dating app. Among open-to-dating singles, the top reason for avoiding apps was preferring to meet people in person, followed by catfishing fears and privacy concerns. Women’s Agenda reported that over 90% of Gen Z express frustration with dating apps, and that the labour of staying safe on them, screening profiles, managing harassment, setting boundaries, falls disproportionately on women. The Albanese Government put dating app companies on notice in 2024, telling them to self-regulate or face formal regulation. An Australian cross-sectional study found that dating app use was associated with higher psychological distress and anxiety, with effects intensifying the more frequently someone used them. That finding helps explain why so many women describe deleting their accounts not as giving up, but as an act of self-care.

Internationally, the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey (US, n = 5,275 unmarried adults aged 22–35) found that three-quarters of young women had rarely or never dated in the previous year. The biggest barrier was financial: over half said they could not afford to date. But what the researchers stressed is that desire for commitment was high. Young adults wanted serious relationships. They just could not find a way in.

A 2024 Pew Research Center analysis of Monitoring the Future data found that in 1993, 83% of 12th-grade girls expected to marry. By 2023, that had dropped to 61%. Boys’ expectations barely shifted, staying around 75%. A peer-reviewed analysis of the same dataset by Pepin and Cohen (2024, Socius) confirmed that the decline over the past decade was twice as steep for young women as for young men. Ipsos UK research (2025) found that over half of young men aged 16 to 24 (53%) endorsed the belief that most women are attracted to only a small number of men, a core incel premise, while young women said they actually prioritise kindness and humour above looks and money.

In Australia, the total fertility rate hit 1.48 births per woman in 2024, a record low and well below the 2.1 replacement rate. Demographer Liz Allen described a “confluence of crises”: housing affordability, gender inequality, climate anxiety, and economic insecurity. Sydney’s median house price now exceeds $1.4 million. Weekly childcare costs have risen from $71 in 2002 to $192 in 2022. The e61 Institute identified three factors growing in importance specifically for young women: the cost of raising children, the impact on their careers, and the availability of quality childcare. When a client tells me she cannot imagine affording a child in this city, she is describing her material reality.

The Withdrawal Is Gendered, and It Is Political

Some clients have mentioned the 4B movement from South Korea, which advocates for women to refuse heterosexual dating, marriage, sex, and childbearing as structural protest. Lee and Jeong (Journal of Gender Studies, 2021) described it as offering women a feminist future that does not require participation in the state’s reproductive agenda. Few of my Australian clients use the label, but the logic is familiar: when the costs and risks of dating consistently outweigh the returns, stepping back starts to feel less like defeat and more like self-respect.

Bumble’s 2025 survey found that 95% of singles said worries about the future (finances, housing, climate, job security) were shaping who and how they date. Two in three Australian women on the platform said they were getting clearer about what they need and refusing to settle. The gender gap is widening: the Financial Times reported that women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than men of the same age.

What This Means in Practice

A young woman who has opted out of dating is not avoidant or broken. She may be making a considered decision about how she spends her limited emotional resources. The therapeutic work tends to sit in the space between clarity and grief. Many are clear about their boundaries and have thought hard about what they will accept. What catches them off guard is the sadness: the recognition that they may have to give up something they once wanted in order to protect their wellbeing. That is a kind of loss, even when the decision feels right.

Some are ambivalent: they want partnership but not on the terms currently available. Some want children but cannot see how to make it work financially or emotionally without a partner who will genuinely share the load. Others are content with lives built around friendship, career, and independence, and are tired of being treated as though that contentment is a problem. Both positions deserve curiosity, not correction. The role of the therapist is not to steer someone back towards the apps. It is to help her understand what she actually wants, what she is protecting, and what, if anything, she is mourning beneath the resolve.

A Note for Those of Us Who Left the Dating Scene a Long Time Ago

I want to speak directly to the women my age and older, the mums, aunts, therapists, and friends who partnered up fifteen or twenty years ago. I include myself. I met my partner before Tinder existed. The dating world I remember bears almost no resemblance to what these young women describe, and I have had to reckon with that gap honestly.

It is easy, when you have been out of the scene for a long time, to default to advice that made sense in the world you knew. Put yourself out there. You have to kiss a few frogs. Lower your standards. These phrases feel supportive from the inside. From the other side, they land as dismissal. They tell a young woman the problem is her, when the research and her lived experience both say the problem is structural.

I have caught myself mid-thought more than once, about to say something that belonged to my era rather than my client’s. The impulse to reassure, to offer the comfort of it was always hard, can override genuine listening if we are not careful. The algorithmic sorting, the gamification of attraction, the safety calculus before every first date, the economic impossibility of the life stages dating was once supposed to lead towards: all of that is qualitatively different from what most of us experienced.

Here is what I have learned, as a mum, a psychologist, and someone who has had to check her own assumptions.

Listen before you advise. When a young woman tells you she has stopped dating, resist the urge to problem-solve. Ask her what that decision has been like. You may be surprised by how much she has already thought it through, and how rarely anyone has asked without an agenda.

Examine whose anxiety you are carrying. When we worry about a daughter or niece who seems to be pulling away from partnership, it is worth asking whether we are worried about her, or about a life trajectory that does not match ours. A woman can live a full, connected life without a romantic partner. If we cannot genuinely hold that possibility, we will communicate our discomfort whether we mean to or not.

Update your mental model. If you have not used a dating app, you may not understand the volume, the harassment, or the particular exhaustion of curating yourself for an audience of strangers who may never reply. Read about it. Ask about it. Do not assume it is a modern version of meeting someone at a pub.

Take the economics seriously. When a 28-year-old says she cannot imagine having children, she may be looking at a $1.4 million median house price, childcare costs that have nearly tripled in two decades, and a gender pay gap that widens the moment she becomes a mother. Telling her it will all work out is not reassurance. It is avoidance.

Do not treat singleness as a phase. Some have genuinely decided that partnership is not for them, at least not now. That is not a wall to be gently dismantled. It is a position to be explored with respect.

Hold the grief alongside the clarity. Many of these women are simultaneously certain about their boundaries and sad about what those boundaries have cost them. You do not need to resolve the tension. Just stay in the room with both parts.

What these young women need from the older women in their lives is not solutions. It is the willingness to believe them when they describe what it is actually like out there, even when that description challenges everything we assumed about how finding a partner works.

Back to the Song

Chappell Roan wrote Femininomenon about her own experience as a queer woman navigating disappointment. But its resonance has travelled well beyond that story. It has become a shared anthem for women exhausted by a dating culture that asks everything of them and returns very little.

The demand at its heart, for something with energy, something real, is the same demand I hear in session after session. When Roan calls for a song with a beat, she is saying what my clients say more quietly, sitting in a chair in Caulfield South or St Kilda, sometimes with tears, sometimes with a dark laugh, sometimes with a steadiness that comes from having already decided:

I am done performing enthusiasm for something that gives me nothing back.

That is not a clinical symptom. It is a rational response to an irrational situation. And it deserves to be taken seriously.

Dr Sarah Fischer is the Principal Psychologist and CEO of Behavioural Edge Psychology, with consulting rooms in Caulfield South and St Kilda, Victoria. She works with adults across individual therapy, complex trauma, neurodevelopmental assessment, and workplace psychology. If you would like to explore any of the themes in this article in a therapeutic setting, you can book via the website or contact the practice directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are young women leaving dating apps?

Research shows that dating app use is associated with higher psychological distress and anxiety, with effects intensifying the more frequently someone uses them. Over 90% of Gen Z women express frustration with dating apps, and the labour of staying safe on them, including screening profiles, managing harassment, and setting boundaries, falls disproportionately on women. Many young women describe deleting their accounts not as giving up but as an act of self-care.

What is the 4B movement and is it happening in Australia?

The 4B movement originated in South Korea and advocates for women to refuse heterosexual dating, marriage, sex, and childbearing as a form of structural protest. While few Australian women use the label, the underlying logic is increasingly familiar in therapy rooms: when the costs and risks of dating consistently outweigh the returns, stepping back starts to feel less like defeat and more like self-respect.

How does a psychologist approach dating burnout in young women?

The therapeutic work tends to sit in the space between clarity and grief. Many young women are clear about their boundaries and have thought hard about what they will accept. What catches them off guard is the sadness: the recognition that they may have to give up something they once wanted to protect their wellbeing. The role of the therapist is not to steer someone back towards the apps. It is to help her understand what she actually wants, what she is protecting, and what she may be mourning beneath the resolve.

Are declining marriage expectations backed by research?

Yes. A Pew Research Center analysis of Monitoring the Future data found that in 1993, 83% of 12th-grade girls expected to marry. By 2023, that had dropped to 61%. A peer-reviewed analysis by Pepin and Cohen (2024) confirmed that the decline over the past decade was twice as steep for young women as for young men. In Australia, the total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.48 births per woman in 2024.

How can older women better support young women navigating dating culture?

Listen before you advise. When a young woman tells you she has stopped dating, resist the urge to problem-solve and ask what that decision has been like. Update your mental model of what dating involves today. Take the economics seriously, including housing costs, childcare, and the gender pay gap. Do not treat singleness as a phase to be corrected. Hold the grief alongside the clarity, because many of these women are simultaneously certain about their boundaries and sad about what those boundaries have cost them.

References and Further Reading

• Allen, L. (2025). Commentary in SBS News, “The confluence of crises driving Australia’s record-low fertility rate.” October 2025.

• Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Births, Australia, 2024. Canberra: ABS.

• Australian Institute of Family Studies. (2024). Births in Australia: Facts and Figures. Melbourne: AIFS.

• Bumble. (2025). 2025 Dating Trends Report. n = 41,294 members aged 18–35 worldwide.

• Centre for Population, Australian Government. (2024). Fertility Decline in Australia: Is It Here to Stay?

• Cox, D. A. (2025). Much ado about marriage. Survey Center on American Life.

• e61 Institute. (2025). Research commentary reported in SBS News, October 2025.

• Institute for Family Studies & Wheatley Institute. (2025). 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey. n = 5,275.

• Ipsos UK & JOE Media. (2025). Modern Masculinity Survey. n = 2,475.

• Lee, J. & Jeong, E. (2021). The 4B movement. Journal of Gender Studies, 30(5).

• Pepin, J. R. & Cohen, P. N. (2024). Growing uncertainty in marriage expectations among U.S. youth. Socius, 10.

• Pew Research Center. (2024). Analysis of Monitoring the Future data on marriage expectations among U.S. high school seniors, 1993–2023. November 2024.

• Roan, C. (2023). Femininomenon [Song]. On The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Amusement Records / Island Records.

• Women’s Agenda. (2024). “Young women are leaving dating apps and choosing to go #boysober.”

• YouGov Surveys. (2024). “Pining for Love, Passing on Apps.” n = 1,029 Australian residents.

This article is intended for general informational purposes and does not constitute psychological advice. If you are experiencing distress related to relationships, dating, or any of the themes discussed here, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional.

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