Hot dates can be hard to find – have you tried looking in a sauna?

When I asked him about where he grew up, and whether he had any siblings, my date started sweating. The cause for his perspiration, fortunately, wasn’t my aggressive line of questioning but, instead, the environment we found ourselves in: our first encounter was taking place in the balmy surroundings of a sauna as part of a speed dating event, to be precise.

As a single woman in my mid-thirties, I represent the ideal demographic for such a match-up of activities. Like most people in my same cohort, I have dived into, come to dread and more or less given up on the de-personalising trudge of online dating, chasing the chimera of in-person meetings instead. So-called “real-life” events are enjoying a well-documented rise; whether they’re fairly standard minglers or chances for your friends to pitch you to a willing audience (Powerpoint and all). Nowadays my weekends feature a lot more cold-plunging than the halcyon tequila-slinging of twenties. All across London, where I live – and in many cities beyond – people have embraced sauna culture as a sure-fire way to clear the mind and feel refreshed and energised. 

Combining these activities in one evening might seem like a gimmicky way to exploit trends (the dating equivalent of matcha-Labubu-Dubai chocolate) but it felt to me like quite an efficient way to hit two birds with one sauna stone: one of the great disappointments of unsuccessful first dates is that they can feel like a wasted evening if all you’ve done is had two to three drinks with a moderately boring stranger. This way, I thought, even in the worst-case scenario, I would get some time in the sauna – one of my favourite pastimes. Plus, surely the novelty would make for quite a good ice-breaker?

When I told my friends that I’d signed up for this event (aptly named “A Hot Date”) at my local sauna, they seemed less than convinced. Some giggled at the lecherous connotations, others just shuddered at the thought. “It sounds like an anxiety dream,” said one of them. “Surely, first dates are nerve-wracking enough without you having to get through them more or less naked, in 60-degree heat?” His comments were still ringing in my ears when I sat down with the first man that I had been paired with, a lanky lad from Brno whose Czech accent was hard to discern amid the deafening chatter: sound really does echo inside a wooden box with 20 other people. Leaning closer to him, beads of sweat rolling down my forehead while trying to understand what his profession was – had he said that he worked in a kitchen, or in construction? – I realised that I’d had quite enough bodily proximity for now. It turns out that squeezing into a small tub of Arctic-cold water, too, is quite an intimate thing to do with someone you’ve only known for eight minutes. 

By the end of the two-hour slot, though, my main gripe with the event was the “speed” side of it rather than the “sauna” bit: it’s hard to relax into things if you’ve only got time for one quick, freezing shower before being shoved onto your next potential partner. Were we trying too hard to add structure onto an experience that, fundamentally, was born as a fairly natural way to encourage socialising, anyway? Sauna is at its best when the heat progressively loosens both limbs and inhibitions: from Finland and Norway to Iceland, hot water and steam have always been allies of frank chats and spontaneous connection. There’s a reason why so many new saunas like to call themselves “communities” or “social spaces” in cities that can feel a little isolating or lonely at times: a tentative “So… do you come here often?” directed at your neighbour on the top bench can never go wrong as a warm-up.