Necterine exists because the mega dating apps we all know (and hate) are not fixing dating. If anything, they’re making it worse.

What was once sold as a shortcut to love has become a pipeline to disillusionment, burnout, and in some corners of the internet, straight-up misogyny. The apps promise efficiency but deliver exhaustion. They dangle abundance, then funnel everyone into the same tired tropes and lowest-common-denominator conversations. And while they might connect people in theory, the lived reality is one of isolation and performative detachment.

We’re in a dating crisis. A relationship crisis. A full-blown “Why does this feel so bleak?” kind of cultural reckoning. And while it’s easy to mock the guy with seven shirtless selfies and a Jordan Peterson quote, the truth is that loneliness, disconnection, and confusion about how to actually be with someone are cutting across gender, sexuality, and age. We’re all affected. Some of us just have better lighting.

So how did we get here?

In short: too much tech, not enough tenderness.

Forget the death of monogamy or the rise of swipe fatigue, the real crisis might be that we’ve made dating feel like a job application with worse odds. Modern romance has become a performance, a curation, a numbers game. And when connection feels impossible, it’s not surprising (but still horrifying) that there’s evidence that some men retreat into resentment, turning this disappointment into incel ideology. Dating apps have made relationships feel like transactions or content strategies. Swipe, match, chat, ghost. Repeat. But love, actual love, starts in the same place as friendship: mutual curiosity, shared presence, emotional risk.

We’ve forgotten how to do any of that. Or, just as likely, we were never taught.

The result? A generation of people who feel weirdly both overexposed and under-known. Men who think intimacy is inherently emasculating. Women exhausted by the burden of being emotionally literate for two. People of all genders feeling like if they can’t optimize their way into a relationship, maybe they just shouldn’t want one.

There’s no one fix. No five-point plan. No app feature that will fix the world’s dating crisis.

But there is one baseline truth: for change to happen, we all have to opt in.

Not to dating harder. To connecting differently. To building friendships that aren’t just warm-up acts for romance. To seeing each other as humans, not profiles. To doing the deeply unsexy work of learning how to communicate, how to apologize, how to be curious without expecting a return on investment.

At Necterine, we’re self-aware enough to know we can’t fix everything. But we’re going to try. To build the dating education we never got. To treat emotional skills as actual skills. To make love feel like something you can grow into, not just stumble across.

The crisis is real. But so is the possibility.

We just have to opt in.

We’ve got a question for you… 👇👇👇

Necterine believes that better connection starts with better self-awareness, and we’re here to help you build both.

Holly (our founder) is posting up at Silverlake Meadow this weekend for in-person dating advice. Think office hours, but for your love life. No sign-up, no sales pitch. Just real talk about love, dating, and whatever mess you’re sorting through.

Official time and date will be announced on socials, so make sure you’re following our IG and TikTok.

Most of this newsletter has been a call to fix dating at the systems level, but the truth is, systems are made up of people. And if we’re serious about changing dating, we have to start with how we show up for each other. Not just romantically, but relationally. Most of us were never taught how to make someone feel seen. We know how to match, how to banter, how to perform interest, but not how to actually be present.

Validation isn’t flattery or fixing. It’s presence. It’s knowing how to sit with someone’s story and say, “Yeah, that makes sense,” without rushing to move on or mine it for a takeaway.

There’s a whole framework for this, what psychologists call the validation ladder, but the first rung is simple: get curious. Pay attention. Ask yourself if you really understand the people you care about, or if you’ve just gotten good at nodding along.

This week, we’re asking you to opt in to asking better questions. How do you relate to people? How do you want to? And what would it feel like to be known, not just matched?

We’re rooting for you.

xoxo,

Team Necterine