Dating today feels exhausting. Not dramatic, not tragic — just deeply, quietly draining. We have more ways to meet people than any generation before us, yet many Gen Z daters describe the same emotional landscape: endless talking stages, situationships that never quite solidify, and a nagging sense that something meaningful is always just out of reach. Dunbar’s Number offers a more useful way to understand modern dating, not as a cultural failure, but as a cognitive one.
The usual explanations are moral ones. People are “commitment-phobic”. Dating apps have “ruined romance”. Gen Z is “too emotionally guarded”. But what if the problem isn’t attitude — it’s capacity?
The limit no one talks about
Dunbar is a British anthropologist known for Dunbar’s Number, suggesting humans can only maintain about 150 stable relationships due to brain capacity. At the very centre of our social world is a tiny inner circle — roughly five people — who receive our deepest emotional investment, time, and trust; who significantly boost happiness, health, and longevity.
A serious romantic partner almost always occupies one of those five slots.
This is the part dating culture rarely acknowledges. We talk about “finding the right person” as if intimacy is infinitely expandable. It isn’t. Emotional closeness is constrained by time, attention, and mental energy. Add someone new, and something else has to give.
More options, same bandwidth
Dating apps didn’t expand our emotional capacity — they multiplied our options. Profiles, DMs, voice notes, late-night chats, soft-launches on Instagram: modern dating creates constant low-level emotional engagement with multiple people at once.
You can talk to five, ten, even twenty people simultaneously. But Dunbar’s theory suggests you can only deeply invest in one or two, especially if you’re also maintaining close friendships, family relationships, work ties, and an online presence.
This mismatch explains a lot of modern dating frustration. People feel spread thin, emotionally flat, or oddly detached — not because they don’t care, but because they’re caring about too many people at once, just not deeply enough.
Why situationships make sense
Situationships are often framed as failures of courage or clarity. But from a Dunbar perspective, they’re a rational response to limited capacity.
A situationship requires less emotional labour than a full relationship and definitely doesn’t demand exclusivity (unless they’re the jealous type). It also doesn’t displace close friends and keeps inner-circle slots flexible.
It sits somewhere between Dunbar’s “close friends” and “good friends” layers — intimate enough to feel meaningful, but not demanding enough to force long-term reallocation of emotional resources.
For a generation navigating economic instability, identity exploration, and heightened mental health awareness, this kind of connection can feel safer and more sustainable — even if it’s ultimately unsatisfying.
The friendship fallout
One of the most common complaints in Gen Z social life isn’t about dating — it’s about friends disappearing once they get into relationships.
Dunbar’s theory offers a blunt explanation: someone always gets downgraded.
Choosing a relationship means choosing to invest heavily in one person — and, by extension, choosing to invest less elsewhere. Close friends often slide into the next layer — not because they matter less, but because they now receive less attention.
This also explains why friendships in your early twenties feel more fluid, and sometimes more fragile, than in childhood. Everyone is constantly renegotiating their inner circle, often without fully realising it.
This is why modern dating often stalls at the edge of seriousness. It’s not that people don’t want closeness. It’s that closeness demands sacrifice, and we’re rarely honest about what that sacrifice entails.
Why breakups feel so isolating
After a breakup, many people say the same thing: “I have friends, but I still feel alone.”
A breakup doesn’t just end a relationship — it removes a core emotional anchor. Friends can support you, but rebuilding that depth takes time. Casual socialising can’t replace an inner-circle bond overnight.
This is why rebounds are so tempting. They’re not just about distraction — they’re fast ways to refill an empty slot that feels intolerably quiet.
Social media: connection without closeness
Gen Z is the most socially connected generation in history, but connection isn’t the same as intimacy.
Social media is excellent at maintaining weak ties. It keeps acquaintances warm, relationships visible, and emotional decay slow. What it can’t do is substitute for the sustained attention and vulnerability required to build deep bonds.
You can have thousands of followers, dozens of group chats, and a packed social calendar — and still struggle to maintain one stable, intimate relationship. Dunbar’s limits don’t disappear just because communication is constant.
The real question
Instead of asking, “Why can’t people commit anymore?”, Dunbar’s theory pushes us to ask a better question:
What are people already emotionally committed to?
Friends. Family. Careers. Online communities. Personal growth. Mental health. Existing romantic entanglements. In a world that asks us to be everything, everywhere, all the time, intimacy becomes one more demand competing for limited resources.
The takeaway
Gen Z isn’t bad at relationships. We’re just dating in a culture that ignores the reality of emotional limits. Dunbar’s theory reminds us that:
- Depth requires time
- Intimacy requires prioritisation
- You can’t scale closeness the way you scale networks
You don’t run out of love. You run out of attention, energy, and emotional space.
And until dating culture accounts for that, the tension between freedom and closeness will remain unresolved — not because we’re broken, but because we’re human.
