I tried explaining dating apps to my boomer mother and she said “why don’t you just meet someone at church” — and that sentence lives in a world so far from mine that translating it would require more patience than either of us has left

“So you just… swipe through pictures of strangers?” my mother asked, peering at my phone with the same suspicious expression she reserves for self-checkout machines.

I’d been trying to explain Tinder to her for the past ten minutes, and we’d barely scratched the surface. “But honey,” she said, setting down her coffee cup with that decisive clink that meant wisdom was incoming, “why don’t you just meet someone at church?”

The silence that followed was loaded with decades of generational divide. In her world, you met your future spouse at Sunday service, the grocery store, or through friends at dinner parties.

In mine, algorithms determine compatibility based on music taste and whether you prefer hiking to Netflix. The gap between these realities felt insurmountable, and honestly, I was too tired to build that bridge.

When “just go to church” isn’t the answer

My mother met my father at a church potluck in 1975. She was serving potato salad; he complimented her deviled eggs. Six months later, they were married. Simple, straightforward, divinely ordained if you ask her.

But here’s the thing: I haven’t been to church in years, unless you count my Sunday morning trail runs as my version of spiritual practice. While she’s sitting in a pew, I’m climbing mountain paths, finding my peace in the rhythm of my breath and the crunch of gravel under my feet.

The likelihood of me meeting someone at church is about as high as her understanding why I’d trust an algorithm to find me love.

The suggestion itself reveals how differently we navigate the world. For her generation, church wasn’t just about faith; it was the social hub, the community center, the original networking event. You went to worship, sure, but you also went to belong, to be seen, to find your place in the social fabric of your town.

Today? Most of my friends are scattered across time zones. We text more than we talk. Our communities are digital, our connections curated through screens.

The idea of showing up somewhere regularly, at the same time each week, to see the same people feels almost quaint. Not wrong, just… foreign.

The exhaustion of translation

Have you ever tried to explain cryptocurrency to someone who still writes checks? Or attempted to describe what you do for work when your job title includes words like “synergy” or “user experience”?

That’s what this conversation felt like, except the stakes were higher because we were talking about love, loneliness, and the fundamental ways we seek connection.

I could see the worry in her eyes. To her, dating apps represent everything wrong with modern relationships: The disposability, the paradox of choice, the reduction of human complexity to a handful of photos and witty one-liners. And you know what? She’s not entirely wrong.

But explaining why we use them anyway? That would mean unpacking decades of social change, the dissolution of traditional meeting spaces, the way careers have become mobile and communities fragmented.

It would mean explaining that I work from home, that most of my interactions happen through a screen, that the odds of organically meeting someone in my daily routine are vanishingly small.

Different worlds, same hopes

What strikes me most about these conversations isn’t our differences, but what remains the same. My mother wanted to find someone who understood her, who shared her values, who made her laugh. I want the exact same things.

We’re using different tools, navigating different terrains, but the destination hasn’t changed.

She tells me stories about my father pursuing her, about handwritten letters and showing up at her door with flowers.

I tell her about someone sending me a thoughtful message referencing something specific in my profile, about video dates during lockdown, about the strange intimacy of getting to know someone through text before ever hearing their voice.

Are these experiences really so different? Or are we both just doing our best with the tools available to us?

The price of living authentically

A few years ago, I made the decision to leave my six-figure finance job to become a writer. The disappointment in my parents’ voices still echoes sometimes. My mother continues to introduce me as “my daughter who worked in finance,” as if my current career is just a phase, a gap year that’s lasted half a decade.

That experience taught me something crucial: I can’t live for their approval. I can’t date the way they did, work the way they did, or measure success by their metrics.

This isn’t rebellion; it’s recognition that the world they prepared me for no longer exists.

The church where my mother suggests I meet someone? It’s not just a physical place I don’t attend. It represents an entire social structure, a way of being in the world that assumes stability, geographic rootedness, shared cultural touchstones.

My reality includes remote work, friends in different countries, and yes, the possibility that my next relationship might begin with a swipe right.

Finding connection in the disconnect

Here’s what I’ve learned: These generational chasms are real, but they don’t have to be relationship-enders. My mother and I have found ways to connect despite our different worlds.

She sends me articles about the dangers of online dating; I send her photos from my trail runs. She worries about me being alone; I remind her that alone and lonely aren’t the same thing.

Sometimes I wonder what she’d think if she knew I actually did meet someone special, not through an app or at church, but at a trail running event. That this person appreciates both my analytical mind and my creative spirit, that we connected over shared values rather than shared pews.

Would that bridge our worlds a little? Or would it just highlight another difference, another way my life diverges from the path she imagined for me?

The bottom line

That conversation with my mother about dating apps? We never finished it. At some point, we both recognized the futility of complete understanding and settled for something more manageable: Acceptance with a side of loving concern.

She’ll keep suggesting church. I’ll keep swiping, or not swiping, or meeting people on mountain trails, or embracing solitude when that feels right. We’ll continue to inhabit our separate worlds, occasionally sending dispatches across the divide, translations that are imperfect but infused with love.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe the goal isn’t to make her understand my world or to fully grasp hers. Maybe it’s just to acknowledge that we’re both doing our best to find meaning and connection in our own ways, with our own tools, in our own time.

And maybe, just maybe, that recognition is its own form of grace, more powerful than any algorithm or church potluck could ever be.