With 2018 in the rearview mirror, dating experts are sharing their predictions for the year that lies ahead. What trends can singles look forward to? How will the online dating industry progress in 2019? Here’s what experts think the new year has in store.

Singles Will Embrace ‘Old-Fashioned’ Dating

Dating is headed back to basics says emotional wellness expert Dr. Natasha Sharma. “People are ready to start ditching the shallow, so-many-choices approach to dating, and move back to more ‘older-fashioned’ ways and alternative ways of meeting people,” she told Global News.

Data from Zoosk backs up Sharma’s prediction. A survey found that online daters were considered more old-fashioned in 2018, and that users who described themselves as old-fashioned in their profiles received 16 percent more messages than those who didn’t. The survey also found a majority of singles still consider holding a door open for someone and paying for the first date to be romantic gestures.

Love is one of life’s most inscrutable experiences, but that hasn’t stopped scientists from trying to solve its mysteries. With each study that’s conducted, we get closer to understanding love, sex, dating, relationships and breakups - and knowledge, as they say, is power. Here are some of the insightful and interesting findings scientists shared about these topics in 2018.

People Aspire To Date Partners Who Are Out Of Their League

One of the year’s most viral studies revealed that the majority of singles who use online dating services tend to message people exactly 25 percent more desirable than they are. The study also found that singles switch up their messaging strategies based on their target’s desirability and that, though the odds of winning over a match who is out of your league may seem slim, it’s not a hopeless cause if you’re willing to make an effort.

The New Match Dating App

In late 2018 Match did a major update for both their website and dating apps (iOS and Android). They dropped a number of features and made the navigation simpler to use. In a sense Match has gone back to the basics of online dating, offering only the key features needed to search, match and message.

The apps and website more closely mirror each other now with this new version in terms of design and features. One of the main things you will notice when you first launch the new app or log into the website is the updated color pallet. Gone are the washed out darker blues. In its place you have a much more vibrant blues. This makes things pop more on the screen. Profiles also stand out more in searching and matching as they appear on screen larger. Other changes include:

Republicans are having a tough time meeting people over popular apps like Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid. So in larger numbers, they are turning to specialty right-wing dating apps to find like-minded matches.

A recent report from Vox examined this trend, noting that a growing number of profiles include the phrase “Trump supporters swipe left” – so that conservatives don’t even get a chance to strike up a conversation. OkCupid and Bumble have allowed members to state up front if they won’t date someone who doesn’t agree with their politics, making it harder for people on opposite sides of the aisle to connect romantically.

Because of the brewing frustration among conservative daters, some new dating apps catering to the excluded crowd have grown in recent months. Righter, Conservatives Only, Trump Singles, Patrio, and Donald Daters all offer a politically-friendly alternative to daters who are feeling discouraged with their current options – including Trump staffers who, according to an article in the Washingtonian, said they were having trouble getting dates in D.C.

We know we shouldn’t compare ourselves to what we see on social media. Everything, from the poreless skin to the sunsets over pristine beaches, is edited and carefully curated. But despite our better judgement, we can’t help feeling envious when we see travelers on picturesque getaways and fashion influencers posing in their flawlessly organized closets.

This compulsion to measure our real lives against the heavily filtered lives we see on social media now extends to our relationships. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are littered with images of #couplegoals that make it easy to draw comparisons to our own relationships and give us unrealistic perceptions of love. According to a survey from Match.com, one third of couples feel their relationship is inadequate after scrolling through snaps of seemingly-perfect partners plastered across social media.

Tinder and Bumble have spent most of 2018 embroiled in a fierce legal battle over patent infringement, misuse of intellectual property and theft of trade secrets. At the center of the dispute is the swiping mechanism that has become a ubiquitous feature of modern dating. In March, Tinder’s parent company Match Group filed a lawsuit alleging that Bumble “copied Tinder’s world-changing, card-swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise.” Bumble responded with an aggressive countersuit asserting that the swiping interface is not an original notion worthy of patent protection.

After attempts to settle privately failed, the dispute headed to court and the first big ruling has been handed out.

Judge Alan Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas denied Bumble's claim that the Match Group patents in question are ineligible for patenting under Section 101 of the Patent Act.