Sex bots. Instant online break-ups . Cosplay dating . Teledildonics . A lot of aspects of sex, dating, and breaking up could look very different in the future than they have in the past.

We’ve heard from Terry Young, of the trend-spotting shop Sparks & Honey, before. A while ago, he talked about the future of jobs, and before that, the future of health care. Here he offers up some intriguing ideas about relationships in 2025, based on three “macro” trends: that technology is speeding up how we interact; that unconventional relationships are becoming more accepted; and that kink (e.g. porn) is going mainstream.

Projects like 23andMe and uBiome reveal our personal genetics and microbial make-ups. The logical upshot? A service that matches us with someone with complementary genes and gut. After all, who wants to be someone who isn’t microbiomically sympatico?

In the future, we’ll be quantifying not only ourselves but our relationships. “The use of wearable technologies bleeding over into the way we interact with each other,” says Young. “Sex and relationships are fertile new frontiers for measurement. Big data provides insights into why relationships work and fail.”





Location-based communication services like Vine, Snapchat, and Grindr will proliferate, letting people find a like-minded match more easily, and meet instantaneously. “Technology is allowing every aspect of flirting to be localized and be location-based,” Young says. “The rise of instant gratification social media platforms have turned courtship into a sped-up process.”

The movie Her depicts a man falling in love with an advanced operating system. It sounds sci-fi, but Young believes that sentient artificially intelligent entities could start to compete for our affections. There are also going to be more physical sex surrogates to take care of our needs. Men in Japan already have virtual girlfriends.





Technology allowing us to stimulate each other remotely will be normal. It’s already available. Full-on sex bot stand-ins can’t be much further away. “Virtual reality innovations will allow unparalleled sex experiences,” Young says.