As I sat in a sweaty basement in Soho, I felt my faith in humanity slowly seeping out of my pores.
Curiosity had led me here, to a Thursday singles night. A quiet rage bubbled up inside me that my friends and I had paid £20 each to attend — a price we all agreed felt like a blatant rip off.
Now, I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for three years, but one of my best friends Florence is single and I thought I’d keep her company in her search for a decent guy.
However, what ensued wasn’t a lighthearted fun evening of being her wing woman — it was a glimpse into how truly awful the dating scene is for those who genuinely want to find a connection.
Face-to-face events have gained favour as singles have slowly lost faith in online-dating. Tinder lost 400,000 users from 2024 to 2025, while Bumble dropped from 1.4 million users in 2023 to 1.1million in 2025, according to Ofcom’s annual Online Nations report.
And while Tinder is still the most popular app, it’s female audience was largely responsible for this drop, down from 735,000 to 384,000 in a single year, with men outnumbering women three-to-one.
Women’s online dating fatigue is reflected in the broader statistics, too. While 11% of UK adults visited an online dating site, they were disproportionately male (3.6 million a month) compared to the dwindling 1.7 million women.
It’s perhaps why IRL dating company, Thursday, runs events in more than 180 cities, with it’s slogan ‘F*ck dating apps, I’m better in-person’.
Maybe, I just got unlucky with this event, but when we rocked up to the posh restaurant where it was being hosted, we were surprised to find people eating dinner. This wasn’t the ‘Perfect Pairings Wine Mixer’ we’d been promised.
Instead a waitress pointed us to the dark, wet alleyway down the side of the building. There someone drew a star in sharpie on our wrist, as if we were entering a trashy university club, and sent us inside.
The heat was stifling — there were no windows and no aircon — but we pushed our way to the bar.
‘That’ll be £8’ the bartender murmured, pushing a stingy glass of white towards me. My entire group had wrongly assumed that, for a cost of £20, we’d get a free glass of wine on arrival.
Instead, we were handed a flimsy red leaflet with some descriptions of wines that, if we wanted to try, we’d have to pay for full price by the glass.
Feeling cheated, we turned to look at the fellow singles. It was at least 80% women, and of the men that were there, a solid portion were more than double our age.
Instantly, a man with white hair who looked about 20 years older than my father, came and leant close to my face. He began flirting and I briefly wondered how he couldn’t see that propositioning a 26-year-old felt predatory. Or maybe, he didn’t care.
He asked what I thought of the wine, and I said it would’ve tasted better if it was free, given the cost of entry. With his face two inches from mine, he dubbed me ‘aggressive’, before continuing to flirt. So, I walked off.
I found myself increasingly perturbed by the fact this was what my single friend Florence was subjected to week-in-week-out. She’s a catch — stunning, with curves I could only dream of, in a high-flying career with a law degree, oh and she’s a home-owner — yet she’s being propositioned by men with no social skills who should be dating someone her mother’s age.
We took a seat after a while to rest our feet, until a lone man in a polo neck told us we should stand up if we wanted anyone to be interested in us.
And, while I found myself dismaying at being £28 poorer and ogled by grandfathers, my single friends were relatively unphased.
Whichever way they turned in the dating world, they were subjected to the same miserable lack of etiquette and mismatched suitors. Florence had been to five Thursdays events in total, with sporadic success, turning to them after dating apps proved to be a dark place.
‘I had one guy message me on an app and say “the way you show your neck in your photos let me know you like to be choked”,’ she tells me.
She also had another man drop her a message saying: ‘F**k, marry, kill – me, Trump, Hitler.’
It doesn’t scream potential boyfriend material. So, Florence figured she’d skip the online chitchat and head to an IRL dating event. But as you can tell, things aren’t always better face-to-face either.
At a previous Thursdays event one guy had tapped her on the shoulder asking her why she ‘looked so moody’. Little did he know another man had just told her women weren’t grateful enough for their role as child bearers.
More like this…
My ‘three month rule’ proved my date wasn’t the one for me
Apparently, this is the nonsexual act that men find insanely attractive
My ‘wonderful’ boyfriend left me out of the blue – but that’s not what hurts the most
And yes, both asked her for her number. It sounds dystopian, but these interactions aren’t isolated incidents, rather they make up the bleak fabric of the dating world.
I was so shocked, I asked Thursday if it’s always like this and, to their credit they were extremely apologetic.
A spokesperson told Metro they manage ticket sales to keep an even split of men and women, and regularly ‘adjust ticket availability on one side if they see the balance moving too far in one direction’.
Unbeknownst to me, there are actually a couple of events with an upper age limit of around 35 or 45, so I’ll definitely be opting for that next time, although most events have no upper age limit.
‘We want our events to be inclusive, but equally we completely understand that a significant age imbalance can change the experience of the night,’ the spokesperson added. ‘Ticket prices also vary depending on the event, city, venue and what is included.’
That being said, even the guys our age haven’t treated Florence much better.
So reach out to your single friends and maybe buy them a drink, because if they’re trying to date, trust me, they’re being put through the wringer.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]
Comment now
Comments
Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google
Add as preferred source