There is a particular kind of date that barely feels like a date anymore.
You meet outside a pub. One of you asks what the other is drinking. You find a table, order another round, move somewhere else when it gets busy and, several hours later, the evening has either fizzled out or migrated to somebody’s bedroom.
It is easy, familiar and requires almost no planning. It is also increasingly difficult to distinguish from every other first date you have been on.
Going for drinks has become the default setting of modern dating. Partly because it works. A drink is low commitment. If the chemistry is terrible, you can finish your glass and leave. If it is good, one drink becomes five. Alcohol smooths over the awkwardness of spending an evening opposite someone you previously knew as six photographs and a few prompts about Sunday roasts.
But convenience has a habit of becoming routine.
The date itself often feels strangely interchangeable. Different person, same table, same questions, same slightly-too-loud bar. Where are you from? What do you do? How many siblings? What are you looking for? By the fourth or fifth first date, there is a risk of feeling less like you are getting to know somebody and more like you have become very proficient at conducting the same interview.
This is not necessarily evidence that romance is dead. A pint has been the setting for plenty of excellent love stories. There is nothing inherently unromantic about sitting in a pub with someone you fancy.
The problem is when it becomes the only available script.
Drinks also create a fairly predictable structure for how a date progresses. It takes place at night. Alcohol lowers inhibitions. Pubs eventually close. Someone suggests another drink somewhere else, then somebody’s house becomes the obvious final destination. None of that means sex is automatically expected, but the route from “fancy a drink?” to “do you want to come back to mine?” is so familiar that it can sometimes feel built into the invitation.
That can be exactly what both people want. But it also leaves relatively little room for the slower, slightly more ridiculous parts of dating.
There is something different about seeing how someone behaves when you are actually doing something together. Are they unbearably competitive at pool? Do they read every caption in a gallery? Will they spend twenty minutes choosing a book for you in a second-hand shop? Do they take bowling far too seriously? Can they cook? Will they get on a Dart to Howth with you without needing a detailed itinerary?
None of these things guarantees compatibility. They do, however, give you something to talk about other than yourselves.
There are signs that people are getting tired of the standard swipe, drink, repeat formula. Dating-app burnout is now common enough to have become a category of its own. A 2025 Forbes Health survey found that 78 per cent of dating-app users reported feeling burnt out by them.
At the same time, meeting people offline has acquired a novelty it probably did not deserve to lose in the first place.
In Dublin, singles events have expanded well beyond traditional speed dating. Your Friend, My Friend now runs singles nights, weekend trips and dedicated run clubs, with its running events spreading from Dublin to Cork and Galway after launching in 2024. Run clubs more generally have become such an established part of the dating landscape that researchers at DCU have examined their role as places for social connection and meeting potential partners.
Other organisers are building dating around activities, rather than simply putting single people into a room with drinks. Dublin events currently include bowling, tastings, immersive experiences and group challenges. While phone-free evenings such as, The Unplugged Club encourage people to arrive alone and actually speak to whoever is there.
None of this means everyone is about to delete Hinge and meet their future spouse during a 5K.
Apps solve a real problem. They introduce you to people you would otherwise never meet, particularly when university, work and existing friendship circles stop naturally producing a stream of new romantic possibilities. The issue might not be the apps themselves and rather what happens after the match.
An activity date requires slightly more effort, and that effort can feel exposing. Suggesting ‘drinks?’ is neutral. Suggesting mini golf, a market or a particular exhibition reveals something about what you actually enjoy. There is also more potential for failure. You can discover that your date hates the thing you planned, that pottery painting is excruciating when neither of you has anything to say, or that a romantic walk becomes considerably less romantic after forty minutes of sideways rain.
But at least it gives the evening a shape.
Romance has probably always depended more on attention than extravagance. An expensive dinner is not automatically more thoughtful than a pint. The distinction is whether the date feels like it could have been planned with absolutely anyone in mind.
Maybe the answer is not to retire drinks altogether. Have the drink after the film. Get one after the gallery. Go for a pint once you have both lost badly at pool. Let it be part of the date rather than the entire concept.
Because ‘want to go for drinks?’ is perfectly good shorthand for I want to see you.
It is just nice, occasionally, to have something else to remember about the night.
Written By: Holly Warren
Edited By: Hazel Hunter
