Why old school dating will make you happier than trolling Tinder

It wasn’t a quick swipe right on Tinder, but rather two months in a small acting workshop in Hell’s Kitchen that brought together Conrad Catton and Nadia Manzoor.

“We had a long scene [we were working on together], and we just kept spending time together getting to know each other,” Manzoor, a 32-year-old British improv actress, recalls. “I was not trying to fall in love. I was kind of done with men.”

After months of rehearsals, Manzoor and Catton performed for classmates, who commented that they had great chemistry.

“We finished the scene, and it was like, ‘Hey, we should hang out!’” Manzoor, says. They started dating promptly after, and have been going strong for two years.

While Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge and other fast and furious apps dominate the dating scene, some New Yorkers are realizing that slower, more old-fashioned methods can be more successful.

“A lot of people [say], ‘I want to be on these apps, but they’re so much about hooking up,’ and they’re getting kind of sick of that,” says dating expert Andrea Syrtash, the author of “He’s Just Not Your Type (And That’s a Good Thing).” “When you take the time to get to know someone offline, you’re learning about someone and their character and their values.”

It worked for Queens couple Stephanie Chan, 26, and Jien Cheng, 30. The pair met through a mutual friend five years ago and spent time at sporting events and bars platonically for an entire year, never thinking of romance until Cheng joked about it.

“I said, ‘I call dibs if you’re ever on the market again,’ ” says Cheng. “Friends kept teasing me, because we were always together, and then we talked about it and realized we may possibly like each other.”

Though both were anxious on their first official date, the transition from friends to lovers was fairly easy.

“He already fit in so well with my circle and my family,” Chan says. “And when you’re friends, you tend to be a little bit more honest than when you’re dating somebody. He knew a lot of my pros and cons.”

“You get to know the person a lot better than meeting someone at a bar or on Tinder,” adds Cheng, who’s long been leery of the quick-paced dating app world. “When you’re friends, you know a lot about each other already and in the end you’re not like, ‘swipe, swipe, swipe.’”
Syrtash says that, especially for women, when romance isn’t in the forefront of their minds, it can almost be easier to develop a solid connection.
“I’ve interviewed so many women who accidentally fell in love with great guys that were friends,” she says. “They didn’t imagine a future at first so they just naturally, organically had a relationship that formed, and through time with these people they grew to really appreciate them.”
That was certainly the case for Manzoor and Catton. They got engaged this fall, and the two thespians are set to wed in October in Catton’s hometown of Montreal.
For them, the slow burn really paid off.
“If you actually want to find something you want to commit to, you have to be willing to give it time,” Conrad says.