MANY aspects of modern dating are weird and distressing, even ‘happy’ relationships. Here are some nightmare partnerships the digital age has served up.

Therapy-speak Gen Zs

Can you even call them a couple? They prefer to be referred to as a stable situationship or an anxiously-attached ambivalent pairing, but rest assured you’re going to hear about it in f**king detail. You start to wonder if they’re aliens – do they know you can have sex using your genitals, or do they just spend all their time together analysing things?

Fitness freaks

Often spotted out on morning, evening, and possibly even smug nocturnal runs, this couple lives to punish themselves. With their main topics of conversation limited to reps, sets and targets, they probably only have sex to get their heart rate up. ‘Was it good for you?’ probably requires them to check Strava.

Business buddies

They didn’t so much date as connect over work, which they love, and together have become the final boss of boring with their own brand of business blandness. They’ll need to ‘circle back’ on their plans for dinner, but after ‘touching base’ they can confirm that sex is ‘a deliverable’.

#CoupleGoals

The Insta-worthy duo never misses a chance to document the inane details of their lives together. Expect entire online sagas about matching outfits and buying each other dull gifts. Worse, they might feed their endless content mill with cute coupley ‘pranks’, although ‘humiliating your partner and filming it’ seems more accurate to you.

Edgy creatives

Ready to crap condescension into any conversation, this couple is convinced they live on a different plane to the rest of you normies. Your ignoble Netflix and chill nights could never match their penchant for Russian cinema or East London ‘algoraves’. Just knowing what those are should be punishable by being forced to listen to 5,000 hours of Val Doonican. 

Together to split rent

The days of couples hating their partner should have ended with ‘her indoors’ boomer humour, but property prices are causing more miserable matches than ever. Listening to their barely concealed loathing will make you determined to be financially independent, or at least prepared to live in a tent by a lay-by in blissful singleness.