Algorithms of Desire – How Dating Apps Shape Love, Lust, and the Way We Choose Partners
- Brainz Magazine
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Viviana Meloni is the Director of Inside Out multilingual Psychological Therapy, a private principal psychologist, HCPC registered, chartered member of the British Psychological Society, EMDR UK member, with recognition for her clinical leadership, and author of specialist trainings in trauma, emotional dysregulation, and personality disorders. She also holds a Senior Leader Psychologist role in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom at SLaM, a globally recognized leader in mental health research. Moreover, she is reviewing institutional partnerships in the United Arab Emirates.
You are desired. And yet, in the next moment, that desire evaporates. A message goes unanswered. A match disappears. Someone newer, brighter, instantly available replaces them. In the endless scroll of profiles, the human psyche is trapped in a relentless loop, longing, frustration, fleeting pleasure, and subtle rage. Love becomes a gamble with no rules, lust becomes compulsive, a rhythm without meaning. What was once the slow architecture of desire, attachment, patience, disappointment, and risk has been compressed into a machine that rewards immediacy and punishes vulnerability. In the age of swipes, the psyche is both starved and overstimulated, and intimacy has become a high-stakes psychological battleground.
A case study in swipe culture: Lust, anxiety, and the mechanism of rejection
Emily, 38, and James, 42, both seek therapy after months of digital dating frustration.
Emily is anxiously attached. She obsessively rereads messages and agonizes over every delayed response. Each perceived rejection triggers panic, self-blame, and sudden bursts of anger. “I want them to like me, but I also want to punish them before they can hurt me,” she confesses. Her profile claims “I’m not looking for anything serious,” masking a deep desire for intimacy.
James is avoidantly attached. Closeness triggers fear. When Emily expresses her need for reassurance, he withdraws, feeling suffocated. He portrays himself as carefree and sexually adventurous, concealing vulnerability. Ghosting, intermittent attention, and emotional distancing have become his primary defences.
Together, they enact a familiar pattern: Emily’s pursuit intensifies James’s withdrawal; James’s withdrawal intensifies Emily’s anxiety. Lust, flirtation, and casual encounters are interwoven with frustration, fear, and subtle power dynamics. Emily occasionally fantasizes about punishing James emotionally. James experiences small victories in maintaining distance. Both oscillate between desire, resentment, and compulsive control.
This caseload illustrates how dating apps amplify pre-existing attachment dynamics, encourage false selves, and create a feedback loop of unprocessed rejection, frustration, and subtle aggression. Lust becomes a tool for emotional regulation; love becomes psychologically expensive.
Attachment under chronic digital pressure
Anxious attachment: Rejection is experienced as abandonment in real time, triggering hypervigilance, rumination, and emotional volatility.
Avoidant attachment: Absence confirms pre-existing fears of dependence. Withdrawal, devaluation, and ghosting protect the self from vulnerability.
Disorganized attachment: Desire and fear coexist. Individuals oscillate between pursuit and cruelty, digitally reenacting early relational trauma.
Even securely attached individuals risk emotional fatigue over time. Repeated exposure to disposability erodes openness, fostering cynicism and detachment.
Why people lie on dating apps
Lying is rarely about manipulation alone. Psychologically, it is a protective adaptation:
Defense against vulnerability: People exaggerate independence, claim they want casual connections, or conceal true emotional needs to avoid being hurt.
False self-construction: Misrepresenting personality, lifestyle, or intentions shields the psyche from repeated rejection.
Frustration management: When desire is repeatedly thwarted, false narratives provide control and restore a sense of dignity.
These lies are deeply entwined with attachment patterns, fear of loss, and the need to regulate affect. Deception becomes a survival strategy in the algorithmic landscape of endless availability and instant replacement.
Frustration, rage, and revenge fantasies
Unprocessed hurt often morphs into subtle aggression:
Strategic withdrawal
Breadcrumbing
Emotional manipulation
These behaviours are defensive reenactments: the wounded attachment system asserts control over the very pain that once dominated it. Lust intertwines with mastery and revenge, producing a complex interplay of desire, fear, and aggression.
Lust without meaning, love without depth
Sex often functions as emotional self-regulation, not relational transformation. Pleasure occurs, but the psyche remains untouched. Desire circulates endlessly, leaving users restless, detached, and emotionally exhausted. Love (requiring patience, ambiguity, and risk)is sidelined.
Cognitive and emotional consequences of infinite choice
Dating apps amplify cognitive distortions and emotional strain:
Choice overload – paralysis, dissatisfaction
Availability heuristics – exaggerated replaceability
Dehumanization – others reduced to traits
Emotional dysregulation – repeated cycles of hope and despair
The nervous system is repeatedly activated without resolution. Desire is endless; satisfaction never integrates psychologically.
Conclusion: Love as a labyrinth of desire and self-deception
In the age of swipes, love is no longer a linear path, it is a labyrinth of desire, frustration, and self-deception. Each interaction tests attachment patterns, each unreturned message challenges self-concept, and each curated profile prompts the creation of a defensive false self.
To fall in love now is to navigate layers of projection, longing, and unconscious defense. Lies, omissions, and strategic self-presentation are not moral failings, they are adaptations, attempts to survive the relentless instability of algorithmic desire. Lust becomes both a substitute for intimacy and a rehearsal for control, while true connection demands negotiating a terrain that is simultaneously seductive, punishing, and psychologically unsafe.
Modern love requires bearing the tension of vulnerability and disappointment, embracing the risk that one’s authentic self may be unseen, rejected, or misread. It is not simply a choice or an emotion, it is a continuous psychological negotiation, a daring engagement with the self and the other that exposes both our deepest longings and our most guarded defenses. To love today is to confront the psyche’s most intimate fractures, and to move through them without the guarantee of reward.
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Read more from Viviana Meloni
Viviana Meloni, Private Chartered Principal Psychologist
Viviana Meloni is the founder and the clinical Director of Inside Out Multilingual Psychological Therapy, a London-based private psychology consultancy across popular locations including Kensington, Wimbledon, Chiswick, West Hampstead, and Canary Wharf. Viviana Meloni provides psychological consultations, assessments, formulations, and treatment in English, Italian, Spanish, and her company’s extensive network enables multilingual collaborations and liaison with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Punjabi, and Russian languages. She firmly believes that in every challenge lies an opportunity to grow, heal, and inspire.
References:
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2023). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change. Guilford Press.
D’Angelo, J. D., & Toma, C. L. (2024). Rejection, Ghosting, and Emotional Regulation in Dating Apps. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
McWilliams, N. (2024). Psychoanalytic Reflections on Contemporary Relational Defenses. Guilford Press.
Timmermans, E., & Courtois, C. (2023). Dating App Use and Psychological Vulnerability. Computers in Human Behavior.
Han, B.-C. (2022/2024). The Agony of Eros. MIT Press.
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