Ask just about anyone what’s wrong with modern dating and they will likely tell you the same thing: The apps suck. They’re built on a pay-to-win model. Fewer people are finding quality partners. Some studies have even suggested that increased time on them leads to higher depression and anxiety while also contributing to loneliness among men. All told, the pursuit of finding love through a swipe has created a generation of burned out, sexless singles distrustful of dating apps.

But the dating apps aren’t the only problem—at least not the main one anymore. According to recent research, the cost of dating in 2026 has priced out the average single person, and the divide in who can afford to date is wider than ever.

An overwhelming majority of US singles (86 percent) say that money concerns have led them to delay dating or reentering the dating pool, according to a survey published in April by financial services firm JG Wentworth. A BMO Real Financial Progress Index report earlier this year found that “date-flation” is on the rise, with the average all-in cost of a date increasing by 12.5 percent in 2026, to $189, a rate that is outpacing the cost of living. And low-income earners are being hit the hardest—33 percent of people making under $50,000 per year say they’ve stopped dating completely, while 15 percent of people earning over $100,000 have fully taken a break from the dating process, according to recent research from Louis Jadot and Morning Consult.

“To me, that signals a real shift: Connection is no longer something people pursue spontaneously; it’s something they have to budget for, justify, and sometimes opt out of entirely,” says Farnoosh Torabi, a financial analyst and host of the So Money podcast. “That can make people more intentional, but it can also make dating more limited and more unequal.”

What these new economic pressures have created is an unavoidable friction: People, as Torabi noted, want to be more intentional about dating—in-person dating events were on the rise in 2025, according to data the ticketing platform Eventbrite shared with WIRED—but doing so has gotten financially harder.

In these unsteady economic times, dating is slowly turning into a luxury exclusively for the rich.

As Brandon Wade, co-CEO of the luxury dating site Seeking, sees it, you shouldn’t date if you can’t afford it. “Until we have achieved a level of financial security to provide, how do we love? You’re not loving and giving from a place of abundance. You’re giving from a place of lack.”

Men from Gen Z to Gen X especially seem to be opting out of dating. The narrative, primarily centered on straight relationships, has become exceedingly common across social media as more people feel the pinch.

TikTok user @eddieeye71, a single father and amateur musician, posted a recent video in which he talks about the high costs he has seen, noting that he stopped dating 18 months ago. “I feel like I’ve had more control of my finances,” he says. TikTok user @Imjustln posted a video where he says he also feels strained: “I cannot be dating in this economy. Not only am I spending $80 for a tank of gas, I’m driving 45 minutes to an hour to go see people for a date night, then dropping $80 to $100 per date—like what is going on? I just did that two nights in a row. Hell no!”

That pinch may also, in part, explain why sugar baby discourse—and the economic realities of dating—has recently captured the zeitgeist.

Over the past few months, sugar babies have sprung from a cultural footnote to a prestige TV subplot on HBO’s Euphoria and items in prime-time news reports. In April, Julia Varvaro, a deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism in the US Department of Homeland Security, was put on leave after a Daily Mail investigation claimed she had a profile on Seeking, which has a reputation as a dating site for sugar relationships. According to the company, there are 1 million monthly active users on the site.

The investigation alleged that Varvaro went by “Alessia,” someone who’s “flirty, fun, and fond of sultry spaces—mysterious lounges, velvet shadows, wine in hand,” according to her bio. Varvaro and her ex first met on Hinge, and after the relationship started to sour—after the ex stopped agreeing to buy everything Varvaro wanted, he alleges—he found out about her Seeking profile and filed a complaint to the DHS inspector general. The ex claimed that over the course of three months he spent $40,000 on lavish gifts, including buying her Cartier jewelry and a $3,500 Bottega handbag and giving her money for rent.

“He spent $40,000 by his own admission,” says Wade, the Seeking co-CEO. “That’s his agency. And again, the narrative is that she manipulated him to do so. So why is it that men spending money are seen as generous in today’s society, but women somehow receiving it are suddenly labeled as transactional or gold digging?”

Wade believes Varvaro got a bad rap; he refers to the framing of the scandal as “a story about double standards and misogyny.” He maintains she did nothing wrong and says all women should take Varvaro’s approach.

Varvaro did not respond to a request for comment.

If dating turns into a luxury that only the few can afford, that means even basic human connection—the kind of connection that we deeply crave—will be harder to access, feasibly when people need it most. But maybe that’s just the new price of companionship in 2026, an increasing tax that leaves people with one option: Men who can’t afford to date are forced to opt out entirely, and women will exclusively date up.

“It reflects how performative dating has become,” Torabi says. “We’ve created an expectation that romance has to look expensive to count.”