Can you find a connection in 90 seconds? Put speed dating to the test

For over half a year, I have been single and caught in the endless cycle of dating apps—scrolling, swiping, and second-guessing. While I’ve met some nice people along the way, the overall experience has been exhausting, plagued by superficial connections and lingering insecurities. With Valentine’s Day approaching fast, I decided to change things up by stepping away from the digital realm and into a room filled with potential connections at a speed dating event.

"Love Songs and Sonnets," organized by The Doll House, WREATH Literary Collective, and House of Friends of Greater Chicago, marked my first-ever foray into speed dating. I’d only ever seen it in movies and TV shows, and whenever I heard about real-life events, they always seemed geared toward people in their 30s and 40s. Turns out, it was a first for The Doll House as well.

Though labeled as a speed dating event, it welcomed people seeking friends, lovers, or even foes, a fun twist on the traditional format. The Doll House’s founder, Sassy Dougherty, who met her own partner through speed dating, albeit indirectly, had long wanted to host such an event, citing her frustration with dating apps. "I hate dating apps," she admitted. "There's just such a miss for human connection on dating apps."

The Doll House already has plans for future events, including mud wrestling this summer, where, in Dougherty’s words, “it might be fun to have a foe to wrestle.”

The setup was simple but chaotic: three rounds with 10 participants each. Five people remained seated while the others rotated every 90 seconds. Six icebreaker questions were provided like "Are you looking for a friend, love, or foe?" "What’s your most prized possession?" "What’s something you could teach a class on?" and more. But with less than two minutes per interaction, conversations felt like a race against the clock.

The "speed" in speed dating is no joke. Just as I felt a connection beginning to form, the timer would ring, signaling an abrupt goodbye. And yet, what I feared might be unbearably awkward instead turned out to be unexpectedly fun. There was an unspoken camaraderie among participants, a shared understanding that we were all stepping out of our comfort zones together.

That’s not to say it was perfect. The noise level made hearing difficult, forcing interactions into brief, shouted snippets. Any attempt at subtlety, banter, or flirtation was drowned out by the surrounding chatter.

By the end, I hadn’t fallen in love, but I was definitely intrigued by the experience and I continued to talk to other participants. Annabelle Weber, 21, who described herself as "deeply, maniacally, maniacally single," admitted she was skeptical before attending. "I thought it was, at the end of the day, fun and kind of stupid and dumb in a good way," she said.

Weber acknowledged the societal stigma around speed dating. "It can feel corny and desperate," she added. "But putting people in a flirtatious setting off the bat was interesting. You have to allude to flirting but also keep things friendly and not aggressive. That was something fun to do, where you put on a persona right away for such a short time. I'm pretty sure I made every guy laugh or shocked, and I wanted to just play a character of the fun little whimsical girl and I think I succeeded, except no one could hear me."

As for me, while I won’t be throwing my phone into the Chicago River just yet, this experience reminded me of something dating apps often fail to capture: the unpredictability of human interaction. Whether I met a future partner that night or not remains to be seen; but at the very least, I left with a renewed appreciation for stepping outside my comfort zone and, perhaps more importantly, the realization that real-life connection, however chaotic, is far more thrilling than a right swipe.