Do you feel like modern dating is exhausting?
You aren’t alone.
Today we can order dinner, a car, or a movie instantly and without error.
When we face a misunderstanding or an awkward silence in our relationships, it feels like a “glitch” in the system.
We panic. We think, “If this was the right person, it wouldn’t be this hard.”
“Perfect” relationships fail because no real relationship is frictionless. According to renowned psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel, expecting a “frictionless” life is destroying our ability to connect.
We are trying to apply the logic of seamless apps to the messy reality of human emotions.
Esther Perel explains that the goal isn’t to find a partner who offers zero conflict.
Her answer: build the skills to navigate the messiness together.
Here is why the “perfect” relationship doesn’t exist, and why that is actually good news.
The “Everything” Partner: A Heavy Burden
In the past, marriage was a straightforward contract.
It was about duty, economic stability, and loyalty.
You had a partner for the household, but you had a whole village for everything else.
Today, Perel notes that the script has flipped. We have entered an era of “unprecedented expectations.”
We don’t just want a spouse.
We demand that one single person be our:
- Best friend
- Passionate lover
- Intellectual equal
- Co-parent
- Career coach
Why One Partner Cannot Be Everything
Perel describes this as an “overburdened system.”
We are asking one person to give us the stability of a grandparent and the mystery of a stranger.
When our partner inevitably fails to be everything at once, the relationship crumbles under the weight of these impossible demands.
Relationship science points the same way. Finkel and colleagues (2015) describe how the job Americans give marriage has grown. Marriage once meant meeting economic and political needs. Then it meant intimacy and passion. Now it also means autonomy and personal growth.
This is the suffocation model, first proposed by Finkel et al. (2014). It predicts two outcomes. More marriages fall short, so dissatisfaction rises.
Yet marriages that do meet these needs are more fulfilling than the best marriages of earlier eras. Perel describes the burden. Finkel adds that meeting it can pay off for couples who invest the time and skill.
The Trap of “Algorithmic Perfection”
Why do we expect so much? Perel points to the technology we use every day.
We live in a world of predictive algorithms.
Your phone tells you where to drive to avoid traffic.
Netflix tells you exactly what you’ll enjoy watching. We are conditioned to expect “no friction.”
Perel sees the same pattern in artificial intelligence. In a conversation with filmmaker Spike Jonze on her podcast Where Should We Begin?, Perel discussed AI companions. She argued that getting used to a patient, always-available AI changes what we expect from people.
It risks making us want human partners to become “predictable, flawless, polished, wrinkle-free, frictionless.” This is a clinician’s view, not a tested finding.
We have started “de-risking” our love lives the same way we automate our errands.
We want:
- Zero inconvenience: We swipe left on anything that looks difficult.
- Instant results: We want the “soulmate” connection immediately, without the work.
- Polished answers: We expect people to say the perfect thing, just like a scripted TV show.
As Perel explains, this desire to “smooth out the rough edges” turns intimacy into a flat, commercial process.
We are trying to optimize love for efficiency, but efficiency is the enemy of intimacy.
Does Endless Choice Make Us Pickier?
Research on dating apps supports Perel’s point.
Pronk and Denissen (2020) ran three studies. They tested hypothetical profiles and real dating-app options. The longer people browsed, the less likely they were to accept the next person.
Across the sequence, the chance of acceptance fell by 27% on average, from the first option to the last. People also grew less satisfied with each profile picture and felt less successful at dating. For women, the likelihood of matching fell too.
The wider evidence is more cautious. A 2026 meta-analysis found that dating-app users reported somewhat worse psychological health and wellbeing than non-users, though the difference was small (Sharabi et al., 2026).
The studies were almost all cross-sectional. They cannot show whether the apps cause the difference, or whether people who are struggling use them more.
Perel’s clinical view fits these findings. But neither study proves that algorithms create a zero-inconvenience mindset.
Relationship coach Matthew Hussey makes a related point. On his YouTube channel, he said “we have been outsourcing the earliest stages of our dating life to the dating apps.”
Apps, he says, “have made us lose our flirting muscle.” Many people end up “more socially awkward and anxious than ever” when an app is not shaping the interaction.
Where Perel focuses on desire and negotiation inside a relationship, Hussey locates a similar cost earlier. It is the skill of starting a connection.
Why “Easy” Actually Kills the Spark
There is a major downside to a life without friction: boredom.
Perel’s clinical work with couples highlights a crucial paradox in modern love.
We want safety and predictability, but desire thrives on the unknown.
- Love seeks closeness and certainty.
- Desire needs space, mystery, and a little bit of an obstacle.
When you remove all the friction and obstacles, you “flatten” the relationship.
You lose the eroticism.
According to Perel, “attraction plus obstacle equals excitement.”
Perel has put the same idea in other words. In a CBC News interview about her book Mating in Captivity, she said “fire needs air and desire needs separateness to thrive.” In a talk on erotic intelligence, she was blunter. “Eroticism and predictability do not go well together.”
If your relationship feels perfectly safe, predictable, and frictionless, it might also feel dead in the bedroom.
We need a little bit of the “unknown” to keep the spark alive.
Relationship science offers a mechanism. Baumeister and Bratslavsky (1999) proposed that passion depends on how fast intimacy is changing, not on how much intimacy there is.
Passion runs highest early on, while partners are rapidly getting to know each other. It fades as intimacy levels off. The authors note the evidence is suggestive, not conclusive.
So predictability can dull desire even as it deepens comfort. Safety still matters, though. John Bowlby (1988) described a reliable caregiver as a “secure base”, the safety that makes exploring possible.
The same logic can apply to adult love. A partner’s job is not to remove every unknown, but to offer enough security to tolerate it.
Can a little friction be added back on purpose? Muise and colleagues (2019) tested this in three studies, using daily diaries and an experiment.
On days when partners felt the relationship had broadened their sense of self, both reported more sexual desire and satisfaction. That held after accounting for mood, time together and closeness. These studies tested novelty, not conflict itself.
A follow-up explains why. Goss and colleagues (2022) found that two things helped account for the boost in desire: closeness, and “otherness”, which means seeing a partner in a new light. The idea builds on Perel’s own claim that desire needs separateness.
The practical takeaway is simple: try something new together. A shared, moderately challenging activity keeps your partner a little unfamiliar.
We Are Losing Our Emotional Skills
Perhaps the biggest danger of the “no friction” mindset is that it erodes the emotional skills relationships depend on.
When we treat people like apps, expecting them to work perfectly on demand, we lose our ability to handle conflict.
- We stop negotiating: Instead of working through a disagreement, we see it as a sign to leave.
- We lose nuance: We label people as “good” or “bad” based on one mistake.
- We panic: Because we aren’t used to struggle, small bumps in the road cause major anxiety.
Perel warns that this leads to a “contactless world.”
As Perel explained at a live recording at South by Southwest, we are living in a world that is “removing every friction possible and giving us algorithmic perfections.” People end up stumped when reality departs from expectation.
It also makes us less able to cope with confrontation, frustration, conflict or disagreement, in relationships, at work and in public life.
We avoid the messiness of real connection, leaving us unprepared to handle the inevitable unpredictabilities of life.
We are forgetting how to repair things when they break.
Equity theory helps explain why. Walster, Berscheid and Walster (1973) proposed that people feel a relationship is fair when each partner’s contributions and rewards look roughly balanced.
In practice, couples reach that balance by talking it through. If we read every disagreement as a reason to leave, we skip that step.
Anxious and avoidant attachment add a second piece. People respond to a threat to the relationship in different ways. Anxiously attached people tend to escalate their bids for reassurance.
Avoidantly attached people tend to withdraw and suppress their needs (Mikulincer et al., 2003). Both make calm negotiation harder. So the pull toward a “contactless world” may not be equal for everyone.
Key Takeaways
- Overburdened Partner: No one person can be best friend, lover, co-parent and career coach at once. Perel calls this an “overburdened system.”
- Algorithmic Expectations: Predictive apps train us to expect zero inconvenience, instant results and polished answers from people.
- Love and Desire: Love seeks certainty, but desire needs space and mystery. Too much predictability can flatten passion.
- Repair Skills: Avoiding friction erodes negotiation and nuance. Relationships are defined by how well they recover.
- Evidence: Research supports parts of Perel’s clinical view. Dating-app studies are largely correlational, so causes remain open.
- Next Steps: Pick two essential roles for your partner, treat conflict as repair, and allow some space.
Conclusion: Embrace the Mess
The pursuit of a “flawless” partner is a trap.
It keeps you looking for something that doesn’t exist and stops you from appreciating the human being in front of you.
Real love isn’t about an algorithm that predicts your every need.
It is about two people negotiating, clashing, and growing. As Esther Perel suggests, we shouldn’t aim for a life without friction.
We should aim for the resilience to handle it.
Next Steps: Moving from “Perfect” to “Real”
If you find yourself judging your partner (or your dates) for not being “seamless,” try these steps inspired by Perel’s work:
- Check Your List: Are you looking for a partner, or a servant? Write down your expectations. If your list requires your partner to be your therapist, best friend, and financial planner, pick two roles they must fill, and outsource the rest to friends or professionals.
- Reframe Conflict: The next time you hit “friction,” don’t view it as a failure. View it as a chance to build the “repair muscle.” A relationship is defined by how you repair, not by how little you fight.
- Allow the Gap: Don’t try to fix every silence or awkward moment instantly. Let there be a little mystery. Allow your partner to be a separate person from you. That distance is where desire grows.
References
Baumeister, R. F., & Bratslavsky, E. (1999). Passion, intimacy, and time: Passionate love as a function of change in intimacy. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(1), 49–67. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0301_3
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. Tavistock/Routledge.
Finkel, E. J., Cheung, E. O., Emery, L. F., Carswell, K. L., & Larson, G. M. (2015). The suffocation model: Why marriage in America is becoming an all-or-nothing institution. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 238–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415569274
Finkel, E. J., Hui, C. M., Carswell, K. L., & Larson, G. M. (2014). The suffocation of marriage: Climbing Mount Maslow without enough oxygen. Psychological Inquiry, 25(1), 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2014.863723
Goss, S. C., Raposo, S., Balzarini, R., Rosen, N. O., Benyamin, V., & Muise, A. (2022). Feeling close and seeing a partner in a new light: How self-expansion is associated with sexual desire. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(8), 2478–2506. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221081137
Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., & Pereg, D. (2003). Attachment theory and affect regulation: The dynamics, development, and cognitive consequences of attachment-related strategies. Motivation and Emotion, 27(2), 77–102. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024515519160
Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Day, L. C., Bacev-Giles, C., Gere, J., & Impett, E. A. (2019). Broadening your horizons: Self-expanding activities promote desire and satisfaction in established romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(2), 237–258. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000148
Pronk, T. M., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). A rejection mind-set: Choice overload in online dating. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(3), 388–396. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619866189
Sharabi, L. L., Ou, L., Von Feldt, P. A., & Parsons, T. D. (2026). Dating app use, psychological health, and psychological well-being: A systematic review and quantitative meta-analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 177, Article 108879. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108879
Walster, E., Berscheid, E., & Walster, G. W. (1973). New directions in equity research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 25(2), 151–176. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0033967
