We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you something terrifyingly empirical. A special edition. A Mitte Monthly exclusive. Fewer metaphors. More metrics. Just this once.
01. The Myth
“Second date with this woman, and she goes, ‘Just so you know, I’m only dating Berlin-style.’ I’m like... okay? I mean, I get it. I know the deal. Like, obviously.”
—Anonymous
In Berlin, everyone’s allergic to commitment. Everyone’s busy not texting back. Boundaries here are abundant, and burnout is endemic.
Dating in Berlin sucks. Too many options, too little connection. That’s how it goes. That’s the myth repeated in bars, recited in DMs, passed down to the newly arrived like an etiquette manual.
We’ve all heard it. Some of us have lived it. But how much of it is actually true? What’s really going on beneath the aesthetics of apathy?
To put the folklore to the test, we decided to run the numbers. Together with our friends at Tried Dating, we surveyed 1,500+ Berlin singles about their dating lives: what they want, how they search, where it breaks, and what it costs.
We spoke to people on the apps and off the apps, in the trenches and in therapists’ chairs. What surfaced wasn’t a story of cynicism and resignation; it was something far more fragile.
02. The Longing
81% of Berlin singles say they’re looking for a long-term partner.
According to our findings, four in five Berlin singles want a committed relationship with weight and endurance. The kind that doesn’t fall apart at the first sign of difficulty or vanish when summer ends.
Yet, the daily practice points in the opposite direction. “Attachment styles” get weaponized as excuses. Eye contact across a coffeeshop table feels more intimate than skin-to-skin. The contradiction is so baked in, it’s almost comical. So what gives?
“I just need someone to take me out. Romantically. Or permanently. I’m open...”
—Anonymous
Loneliness researcher
believes the tension comes from the city’s very nature. Berlin, she says, often draws those who are fleeing or chasing rather than those seeking to plant roots. Restlessness is part of the civic design, and it bleeds into how people relate.
“Berlin feels unfinished. Transient. In motion,” Monika tells us. “That’s part of the appeal. It also makes commitment harder to find. Especially if you don’t yet have a stable picture of what you’re looking for.”
62% of respondents say they’re single because they haven’t found the right person yet.
When asked why they’re single, the majority of respondents say they are waiting for “the one.” A quiet hope: someone perfect is out there. Monika describes this as romantic idealism—and suggests it’s one of the biggest obstacles to intimacy.
“Somewhere along the way, we started believing that to live a ‘successful life,’ you also need a ‘successful relationship’—with one person who somehow does it all,” she observes. “That’s a lot to put on someone.”
“We used to live in communities, in networks. And now it’s just you and your partner in a little two-person universe, and suddenly they have to be your lover, therapist, best friend, co-parent, career coach—everything. No wonder it’s breaking under the weight.”
—Monika Jiang, loneliness scholar
Survey data suggests Berliners are drawn to something more elusive than shared hobbies or even common life goals. What they want is a partner who gets both the joke and the subtext.
Intelligence, empathy, and sense of humour are the top three qualities Berlin singles are looking for. Least important? Financial support, with just 2% of respondents seeking it.
When the ideal relationship is defined by intellectual precision and intuitive compatibility, the margin for misunderstanding becomes razor-thin. Conditioned by near-misses, the heart learns to wait for something rare.
“I want romance. Like, true, virginal romance, you know?”
—Anonymous
03. The Apps
82% of Berliners use dating apps to find potential matches.
Of course, it starts on the apps. It always does. Online spaces continue to cement themselves as the default site of romantic possibility in Berlin, with more than 80% of respondents citing them as the go-to.
The idea of meeting through friends, work, or some cinematic coincidence still exists, although mostly in fantasy. It’s just statistically improbable. So prompts stand in for chemistry.
71% of Berlin singles rate themselves a seven or higher.
Despite the appetite for intelligence, empathy, and a sense of humor, looks still hold the gates. 71% of Berlin singles believe they’re a seven or higher. 64% say their partner should be at least a seven as well. In other words: I’m cute, so you better be, too.
This calibration hints at a kind of symmetry people expect at the outset—a shared starting point, a baseline of mutual desirability. Before feelings get involved, the numbers need to line up.
“People talk for hours about wanting depth but swipe left over a bad haircut.”
—Dima Samarin, founder of Mitte Daily
“What looks like vanity is often self-protection,” says
, the founder of Mitte Daily. “A way to manage the vulnerability of wanting someone in a city that tells you not to need anyone.”04. The Ghosts
Shallow chats are the Nº1 dating apps pain point among Berliners.
For Berliners on the apps, catfishing and unsolicited anatomy are minor irritations compared to the real drain: shallow conversations that sink almost as soon as they start.
The match is made. A few messages go back and forth. Perhaps, a vague plan to “grab a drink.” Eventually, a gentle fade on both sides.
“I matched with this guy at least five times over the past couple of years. Five times. And we never spoke. I think he’s the one.”
—Anonymous
People might be in the same pool—but they’re drowning differently. For women, the major frustrations include emotional exhaustion and a flood of low-quality profiles. For men, it’s the inverse: not enough matches, not enough attention. A parallel kind of void.
One in three single Berlin men say they feel invisible to others. Two in three single Berlin women say their dates tend to avoid commitment.
Everyone’s in it; no one’s meeting in the middle. But they should, says James Song, a multidisciplinary artist who uses dating apps as material for his creative work. “Because, for better or for worse, the love of your life is likely on the other side of the screen.”
In his practice, James creates portraits of people he finds on dating apps—at times, ones he’ll never match with or meet. The act of drawing becomes its own form of intimacy. A fleeting face becomes a subject worth staying with.
“I make art to feel closer to people,” James says. “Where there are people, there are relationships. Even when those relationships are brief or remote, they still carry weight. They still count.”
“In the ’80s, you met in real life and stayed in real life. By the 2000s, you’d meet at a party and follow up with an email. Now, you match on one app, message on another, and maybe break up over a third. But when the connection lands, it feels the same. A spark’s a spark.”
—James Song, visual artist
05. The Encounters
64% of Berlin singles prefer coffee as a first date, while only 8% opt for partying.
An espresso on a Neukölln bench. A polite beer at an overpriced Mitte bar. Maybe a walk if the weather behaves. First dates in Berlin often function like screenings for compatibility. The exercise is procedural: Who are you, and how much of myself will I have to re-articulate to find out?
57% name “being rude to others” as their Nº1 first-date red flag. It ranks higher than lacking personal hygiene, constantly checking your phone, or talking about your ex.
According to Tsellot Melesse, host of the 1PLUS1 speed-dating series, app-born first dates tend to follow a pattern. People match, flirt, and disappear. When it happens again and again, she notes, it chips away at your sense of mattering.
“Berlin is supposed to be full of options—but it isn’t. Not really. If you don’t fit a certain look or vibe, you’re not even in the game. And even when you are, it’s all so temporary.”
—Tsellot Melesse, speed-dating event organizer
Having been single for the past five years, Tsellot herself is still on the apps. “Oh, on all of them,” she laughs. “But I’m tired of waiting for the algorithm to treat me like a human being.”
The search for alternatives is what pushed her toward building something offline. “We grew up watching speed-dating in sitcoms. So one day, we thought: why not here?” she explains. “Real people. Real rooms. I think most of us still want that.”
“It wasn’t a bad date. I just realized I don’t have the energy to explain myself to another new person again.”
—Anonymous
06. The Dilemma
53% of Berlin singles rate their personal dating experience as “bad” or “very bad.”
We often talk about dating like it’s a battlefield—chaotic, exhausting, brutal. The reality is more layered. Over the past years, the nature of the struggle has shifted.
Conversations have become low-stakes. Rejection has gone soft around the edges. Risk feels optional now, and optional risk produces optional intimacy.
“I deleted the apps again. Which means I’ll redownload them in, like, three weeks.”
—Anonymous
Cyberpsychologist and author of Reset: Rethinking Technology for a Happier Life Dr.
names the mechanism: experiential avoidance. Dating apps, she says, rewired logistics and, in doing so, recalibrated how much we’re willing to feel.They made distance easy, control constant, deniability routine. You can express interest without exposure and disappear without consequence.
“People don’t experience face-to-face rejection anymore. No walking across the bar, no asking someone out, no risking humiliation in front of others. The apps let you avoid all that. But if you’re never uncomfortable, you’re never vulnerable—and if you’re never vulnerable, how exactly are you supposed to connect?”
—Dr. Elaine Kasket, cyberpsychologist
“The apps offer low risk and low reward. Swiping, matching, texting, ghosting... it’s administrative,” Elaine tells us. According to her, the hard thing is still the hard thing: saying what you want and standing there while someone hears it. Not something Berliners are known for.
People born in Berlin are the most likely to say dating here is hardest. 30% rate it a 5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
When people grade the difficulty of dating from 1 to 5, tenure in the city shifts the slope without easing the pressure. Those born here are the most likely to call it a 5/5. The long-timers, the ones who know the rhythm by heart. Their fluency becomes armor, and armor always limits touch.
52% of respondents say the people they meet in Berlin tend to be emotionally unavailable.
More than half the city recognizes the pattern in the faces they meet. More than half the respondents say that Berliners come across as emotionally unavailable.
What looks like detachment is often fear in a better outfit. What reads as avoidance is care with nowhere to go.
“She kissed me goodbye and said, ‘Let’s not overthink it.’ I’ve been overthinking it ever since.”
—Anonymous
It’s easy to mistake Berlin’s emotional reserve for indifference. It’s tempting to reduce its current dating culture to apathy and withdrawal.
However, it’s not that Berliners—whether newcomers, long-timers, or those in between—don’t care for connection. Put plainly: It’s precisely that they do.
They just want to be absolutely sure it’s safe before they show up for it. And in a place that moves fast and explains nothing, the safest place to be is just out of reach.
Behind the façade and despite the cliché, dating “Berlin-style” isn’t careless or half-hearted. It’s measured. Guarded. Held under glass. Dense with longing.
Strip everything back, and even here, everyone wants love. But no one wants to be the one to want it first.
That’s how you end up alone on the U8. Phone in hand. Rehearsing a message you’ll never send.
Want the receipts? The full stats, credits, and survey methodology are lurking below. Go on.
Your thumbs tired yet? Rest them. Saturday, August 30. Berlin-Mitte. Pétanque, wine, and more side-eye flirtation than your phone contract allows.