Dépaysement in the Digital Ballroom

On the disorientation of love in the age of swipes

“Online dating is its own kind of dépaysement: familiar and foreign at once, as though love itself had become a country of strangers.”

Dear Wanderer,
Last week I stepped back into the strange ballroom of dating. Except here, the chandeliers are glowing screens, and the music is nothing but the rhythm of swipes. There’s a word I keep circling around as I scroll through faces and fragments: dépaysement.

This app feels like a foreign land — so many strangers, each carrying their own landscapes of desires and distractions. And here I am, searching for a familiar face, for the person who once was my home. Deep down I know I am far from home, yet I try once again to call someone my dear home.

And so, I feel this sense of dépaysement. It is a strange sensation: sometimes a gentle melancholy, sometimes the urge to set out in exploration and meet new people. A few years ago, one met someone naturally — there was no Facebook, no TikTok, no Tinder. Every encounter carried the perfume of romance.

I know I am a carefree soul, and I would be delighted if I could meet someone in a café, while strolling through a park, or even at the gym. But I feel lost when I must use an app to look for the one who might become my home.

Dépaysement is not felt only when one finds oneself in a foreign land, among unknown faces and different cultures. The same principle applies to dating apps. The waiting, the hope of matching with someone we like, and then the emptiness of not being chosen: all of this leaves us disoriented, lonely, confused. It is like visiting an unfamiliar land, far from home.

And so I ask myself: will I ever find that person who becomes a new home in this foreign country?

From wanderer to wanderer,
D. Orlando