As of last year, some singles – especially women frustrated by dating apps – are adopting spreadsheets and productivity tools to log and analyze their romantic encounters. Described as the “spreadsheet era” by an article in Cosmopolitan, this habit involves singles recording dating details to identify, manage, and refine their potential choices and the ways that they’ve connected to past matches.
Examples include users creating Google Sheets to track who they met, how, activities, red/green flags, star signs, appearance, kiss ratings, and relationship outcomes. One woman discovered recurring issues like lack of humor leading to failed connections, prompting her to prioritize funny interactions. Another developed color-coded graphs and slide decks to compare dates, ultimately selecting a partner who scored highest across her metrics.
Luke Brunning, co-director of the University of Leeds’ Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships, notes the desire for agency in a quantified world: “People are looking for control and they’re looking to exercise agency. At some point, you have to start actually relating to people as human beings, and… all the complexity, messiness, and ways in which they likely fall short of your ideals.” Brunning adds that dating apps have blurred professional and personal lines, likening bios to CVs and creating “lots of work” in decision-making.
This approach likely stems from widespread app burnout – 78% of users report emotional, mental, or physical exhaustion per a 2025 Forbes Health survey.This is the same exhaustion that has pushed many users towards matchmaking platforms, skirting around the emotional and mental load that might be involved in a conventional swiping approach.
Women frequently cite safety concerns, emotional labor, and mismatched effort as major frustrations. Spreadsheets provide structure, reduce rejection’s emotional weight by focusing on data, and help spot incompatible patterns. Commercial tools have emerged to support the trend: Etsy sellers offer dating trackers with tabs for flag weighting and preference logging. In January 2025, developer Sampson Ezieme launched Spread, an app that logs dates, categorizes them by red/beige/green flags, and auto-ranks them for comparison to “take the guesswork out of dating” – the exact kind of spreadsheet system that many users are choosing to create.
