Brynley Stent recommends that people looking for love enlarge their social network in person instead of scrolling dating apps. Photo: The Spinoff
Like many single Kiwis, Brynley Stent once assumed dating apps were the go-to place to meet a person you are romantically compatible with.
While making the new video series Bryn & Ku's Singles Club, she discovered that not only is chemistry hard to detect on a dating app, in person it can override your online swiping standards.
It's in social settings that we most often encounter people who we feel sexually compatible with, Stent says. The best way to increase the frequency of these potentially fateful meetings is by adding new people to your (in-person) social network.
"I think getting out and meeting people in the flesh is the most important thing you can do [when seeking a relationship]," she told Saturday Morning's Paddy Gower.
As someone who's "not very brave when it comes to dating" Stent initially felt very shy about putting herself out there romantically in Singles Club. Yet alongside her friend Kura Forrester, Stent does just that in this series - hitting up singles events and gatherings to explore NZ's dating landscape.
While Aucklanders on dating apps have a vast number of profiles to swipe through, it's a different story for singles living in remote communities like Rakiura Stewart Island - population 440.
In Singles Club, Stent and Forrester visit Rakiura and when Stent loads up her dating apps, the profile of one solitary person in her specified age range pops up.
"I swiped them and then it said 'no more people available in your area'. So I had to look further afield to Invercargill, which is across the ocean."
Singles Club isn't just about the many ways New Zealanders are looking for love in 2025, Stent say. The series is also about friendship and the upsides of being unattached.
One of the many happily single Kiwis featured in the series is her father Rob, who shares that he'd "rather be lonely by himself than lonely in a relationship".
Stent herself has been single for three years after the end of a seven-year relationship with someone she once felt "so happy and smart" standing next to at events.
Now experience has taught her that being in a relationship and being single both have pros and cons. Most of the time now she thinks that being single rocks.
"I mean, it does get crushingly lonely about 3 percent of the time, but the rest of the time it's like, 'This is the best thing I've ever done.'"
Watch episode one of Bryn & Ku's Singles Club on The Spinoff from 11 February. New episodes weekly. Bryn & Ku's Singles Club is made with the support of NZ On Air.
