All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy — and Dubai residents emotionally unavailable. With many reporting 12-hours working days, the schedules are often too tight to make a time-slot for genuine connection. Evgeniya Krasnoyartseva, 7march Marketing agency CEO, notices that those who come to the city, do it for work, not for pleasure. 

Surprisingly, this is not what bothers all the residents: one of our Instagram followers even suggests bringing back the coffee dates: "I’m busy, I’m running businesses, have a full social calendar with friends and family, and I think good first dates should value my time first of all". Thirty to forty five minutes seems enough to get to know a man and then if it seems like a match, it is reasonable to invest more time in a longer date. As one expat bluntly puts it: "I come here for money, not honey." For many residents, Dubai is a professional sprint, and emotional investment simply doesn’t rank as a priority.

Lack of time is not the real enemy of dating in Dubai. Lack of permanence is. As Elvina Abibullaeva, The PIKE’s founder, says: "Many people don’t see Dubai as a long-term place to stay. Why invest in emotional intimacy if you’re going to leave in a couple of years?" When a city is treated as a temporary project, relationships mirror that logic, and the culture of situationships thrives. As Elvina puts it, "Everyone is happy to take you out for dinner, drive you around, show you a good time — but very few are willing to invest in something real. Let’s go to restaurants regularly, spend time together, have sex — but without a relationship."

"They're ‘single' in Dubai but have a wife back home," one Reddit user writes. Another woman recalls discovering that the man she was dating — supposedly single and, for some reason, a virgin — was actually married with a child (we get the twisted logic behind hiding the family part, but having sexual experience? Just… why?). It turns out this problem is much more common than an outsider might think. Some are more truthful than others, though: "Last time I was on a dating app someone put up a photo of his wife and kids together, lmfao," one Reddit commenter noted. But really — do we hand out points for admitting cheating in advance?

The motto is real in Dubai. "So many people lie about their lives, jobs, income, social status. Most men are married and broke and they don’t want to commit to serious relationships, but want to make a different impression", our reader almost cries for help in DMs. As Evgenia tells us, "Everything here is beautiful. The sunsets, the skyscrapers — even Tinder conversations sometimes sound like a Netflix scene." The fantasy tends to collapse. After weeks of poetic messaging, a local admirer sent her six roses in crinkled plastic wrap — receipt carefully included. "He wrote: I chose them with all my heart. These flowers are as beautiful as you." Sixty dirhams. Was that supposed to be an insult?

In a city built on image, dating becomes branding, and, apparently, sometimes to get better results one should outsource. "Someone once used ChatGPT to write a poem for me," another woman recalls. "Great gesture — but it still had spelling mistakes." Buddy, if everything about you is performative, at least proofread the script.

With everyone marketing themselves, dating profiles lowkey seem more appropriate for LinkedIn. One follower put it bluntly: “Now on dating apps I get this two questions: Which area of Dubai you live in? What you do for living? Instead of any romance.” Geography and job title replace curiosity. 

While researching this piece, we stumbled upon a Reddit thread where a man complained he couldn’t find a woman despite owning a successful marketing agency. The comments quickly filled with people asking if he was hiring. Both sides are quite exponential.  

On the one hand, the women to men ratio is definitely not in favour of the latter. On the other hand, the concentration of Instagram-model-looking (and also successful) ladies per square meter can almost leave P. Diddy’s parties standing. So guys argue that finding a date is almost impossible due to mathematical reasoning, and girls complain they are being treated as disposable. "Men try, they pick, and rarely settle", says Evgeniya Krasnoyartseva.

Even though escorting is strictly prohibited in the UAE, the stereotype refuses to die — and quietly reshapes dating behavior. Elvina Abibullaeva notes: “There really are escorts here, in many restaurants, and this turns into a problem because men start thinking that all women are escorts. Even in dating app profiles, you often see ‘no escort, no escort, no escort.’” She adds that when a woman looks particularly polished, “the first thing you think about is what price she’s going to put on herself.” On Reddit, the advice sounds equally cautious: “Try meeting ladies at your gym or by the pool of your building. Also maybe at a beach club. Don’t do bars, I know that it’s a popular location for ‘working ladies’”. The paranoia is collective: men fear being financially exploited, women fear being pre-judged. 

For the city with such financial literacy and high-stake responsibilities, everybody’s acting surprisingly childish when it comes to basic etiquette.“Ghosting is number 1 thing here,” one reader says. Another recalls waiting 40 minutes at Marina Mall while her date accused her of sending “strange location pins” and left her to take a taxi home. Promises dissolve as easily as WhatsApp chats. “His dog chewed up my new sneakers… he said he would buy me new ones. In the end, he disappeared.”

Then there are the emotional extremes. “Being told ‘I love you’ on the first date… 6 TIMES,” one woman writes. Another heard the same confession after just a month. Between premature declarations and total disappearance lies the same issue: people “not knowing what they want” and “choosing to not understand anything beyond their lives and cultures.” So the real question is — are we simply treating each other like crap?

Dubai is designed for ambition, speed, and constant reinvention. Relationships, by contrast, need patience and consistency. The problem isn’t that love can’t exist here — it’s that intimacy follows a different logic than the city itself: performance-driven culture produces performative romance, and endless options reduce the incentive to commit. And yet, connections do happen — proof that even if the system's harsh, you can try to challenge it.