At some stage in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the panic of the lockdown had settled into a steady rhythm and social life began to resume, I got talking to a young man in a bar. I was lonely, bored, and tepidly thrilled by the idea of a conversation that would be initiated in a space that was not my own. The man, I quickly learned, was a regular on dating apps. Having always professed a strong reserve for this form of meeting people, and a suspicion of the supposed chosen ones found on it, I listened in with faint sociological curiosity. On his dating profile there were six, perfectly crafted, seemingly natural photos, in which his cheekbones were luminously pronounced.

Although he conceded that he was mainly looking for something casual, having recently given up his underpaid job as a political pollster and moved back in with his parents, his profile included a strong interest in history and visiting museums. One of the photos showed him flanked by a castle. The app on which I had met him was one of the more wholesome hookup platforms. On it, he told me, a cultured look was likely to improve his dating credit (a credit system, which my friend, who works in data, tells me is a fantasy). He explained that he and his friends had created an array of fake male and female profiles on various apps that enabled them as a group to gain a maximum understanding of what women want; he had a 90 percent success rate.

Bemused, I wondered why I found my date — a man roughly my age — and his approach to desire and seduction so profoundly unseductive. Had a marketized view of desire infiltrated his mind? Or were some fundamental differences between the approaches of men and women to romance and sex at the heart of our mismatch?