Why Emotional Security Is the New Chemistry in Modern Dating

Modern dating has basically entered its ‘main character healing arc’, and everyone’s out here choosing peace over chaos like it’s the new luxury good. Emotional security has become the real green flag—more powerful than jawlines, gym bodies, and “omg we have the same music taste.” People want someone who texts back without games, who makes them feel safe without earning it through drama, who brings grounding energy instead of adrenaline spikes. It’s less spark that burns fast and more steady flame that doesn’t ghost.

But how did this shift come into existence? To understand why today’s daters are trading butterflies for emotional bandwidth—and how that shift is reshaping what intimacy even means in 2025, we asked Life and Relationship coach Chetna Chakravarthy to break down what it really signals for the changing dating scenario.

Does Modern Dating Seek To Redefine Chemistry In Relationships?

She ponders over whether we see a generational change in how people define chemistry in the modern dating scenario, “I would say not yet. It's not happened yet because chemistry is what people look for on the first date." She adds that it is what they define as the spark, that feeling that they are all looking for, which they believe or would like to believe will last forever and is guaranteed, and that's the guarantee on which you build a relationship. “But they're completely wrong. However, chemistry is that initial feeling of excitement and spark and that feeling of ‘oh there's something here that you experience on that first date or on the first two or three dates.’” 

However, she says that as the dates continue and you get to know a person, the demands for emotional compatibility start to come in. “It's two different things, and it happens at two different stages. Some people who are dating from a sense of fear, and are seeking a guarantee, they're coming from anxiety, they are coming from being fed up with the dating game and might bring in the demand for emotional compatibility from day one and place it as a non-negotiable on the table, but it is still not the same as chemistry.”

How Has Rise in Anxiety and Burnout Shifted the Emotional Chemistry in Relationships?

Talking about how the rise of anxiety, burnout, and “emotional fatigue” in young adults has shifted what people look for in relationships today, she says that dating, finding love, getting married, doing a relationship, keeping it alive, living a relationship, all of this is also a very big cause for anxiety, burnout and emotional fatigue. 

“Yes, a very large part of anxiety and burnout comes from not having a good, healthy personal life and hence too much pressure, along with the pressure that already exists at work. Secondly, it's also coming from the fact that people don't have friends or the right kind of healthy relationships other than love. The full pressure is on love and that one relationship. So, when it doesn't happen, anxiety, burnout, and emotional fatigue take place.” 

According to her relationships, love and dating are a direct cause of such burnout. Secondly, when people are already feeling the pressure of work and living bigger lives and living more intensely and richer in every way- from richer in terms of money to richer in terms of experiences, the burnout is not allowing them to then explore their personal life in the right way. “They have no emotional energy. They have no fuel in their tank. The emotional fatigue, as you have pointed out, does not allow them to take a chance on love. It does not allow them to explore.” According to her, that's the one place where they want absolute peace. They want a guarantee of a seamless life in their personal life. “Otherwise, they don't want to get into it. Or if they get into it and trouble comes, they have no muscle or resilience to handle it because there's no fuel in the system.”

So, what role do dating apps, ghosting, and situationships play in making emotional safety feel more valuable? “Dating apps are not built for finding love. They are built to keep you in the dating game. The algorithms don't work in favour of you finding somebody who is matched and aligned to you.”

She explains that the way that these dating apps ask the questions initially, the way that your profile is built and how they throw options at you, it's not aligned to ensuring that you find love. “The only thing that a dating app can guarantee is that you have access to more people to explore. The exploring, the meeting, the deciding, the choosing, everything is on you, and the dating app holds no responsibility or accountability towards this.”

She also adds that it has created an environment where ghosting and situationships has become normal or the norm. “It's almost as if people have started to believe that a situationship can be a first step to a relationship or ‘I'd rather be in this than be alone and lonely. At least I have this’. But it's becoming like a consolation prize. And the ghosting part of it, people are raised and conditioned to be nice, to be kind and to please those around them. And so, they are not hitting unmatched when somebody goes. They're not holding each other accountable for really bad behavior. And that shows a character flaw.”

Dating Apps and Modern Dating

She further points out that because people are lonely and the whole dating game is so exhausting, they're willing to give somebody a second chance despite them having shown that the person is going to ghost you instead of being honest and having a hard conversation. “So, people have lost trust and now want emotional safety and they want the instant spark as well as emotional safety. It's not a situation of either-or. So, they're not willing to take a chance on somebody that they don't feel the initial spark with but who seems like a nice person and might give you emotional safety.”

She says that they're not willing to compromise; they want the spark and the romance. They want the grand love of their life. “But as it starts to evolve, they want emotional safety. That is a deal breaker and it starts to become a non-negotiable.”

So, is prioritising emotional security a protective response to past relational trauma? Chetna agrees as she explains that prioritising emotional security to a fault, making it a deal-breaker and saying that a blanket rule that has to be guaranteed is a protective response to past relational trauma because emotional security has to be built. “It comes from getting to know each other, it comes from expressing needs and communicating what you want and how you want to be loved.” She adds that this notion that your partner should be able to read your mind and know how to love you from the beginning is an illusion. “Nobody knows how to love you other than you. Maybe your parents, maybe the family that you have grown up with and some friends that you have grown up with, but that's because they know you and they have learned.”

She points out that most people don't know how to love themselves and don't treat themselves right and so the partner does not get the right signals on how they should be treating them or what their boundaries are or what their non-negotiables are. “We don't communicate that directly or indirectly and that's a mistake. So, you cannot prioritise emotional security in an absolute manner from day one. It has to be built, it has to be communicated, it has to be nurtured over a period of time.”

While concluding, Chetna discusses whether long-term relationship outcomes actually improve when people choose emotional safety over initial physical intensity. “Yes, research does show that emotionally safe relationships do far better than ones that are physically very intense in terms of intimacy, even if it's, and I mean good intimacy.” According to her, emotionally safe and emotionally grounded relationships are less likely to break up or go through divorce, and they are more likely to pull through the tough times of life. 

She further adds that in the current generation, there is a large set that's hiding, or rather not diving into the emotional safety zone in the beginning and rather using physical intimacy to kind of test chemistry. “So that is a piece that one must pay attention to, to not use physical intimacy right at the beginning as a marker for chemistry and for it to be a good match or not. And secondly, to understand that emotional safety is built over a period of time and it requires investment and communication and reciprocation. The bigger goal is to build emotional safety because that also then leads to better sexual compatibility,” she concludes.