LTR

LTR means long-term relationship. It shows up in personal ads by 1996, and Tinder, Hinge and Bumble use their own menu wording instead of the letters. In a Pew survey of 6,034 US adults in July 2022, 44% of current or recent online daters said finding a long-term partner was a major reason they were there.

Updated October 6, 2026

Means

Long-term relationship, the personal-ads abbreviation

First seen

In US newspaper personals by June 28, 1996 (J., the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California); in the soc.singles Usenet FAQ by August 14, 2000; Urban Dictionary January 5, 2002 (Craigslist); Collins notes 'lonely hearts columns and personal advertisements' (via Dictionary.com, undated)

Related terms

DTR (define the relationship), Casual dating, Situationship, Talking stage, Friends with benefits (FWB)

LTR stands for long-term relationship. It appears in newspaper personals and early online listings, and the apps we looked at offer the same wish as a menu option that spells the words out: “Long-term partner” on Tinder, “long-term” in Hinge’s 2022 list. Skip to what each app calls it.

What does LTR mean in dating?

LTR means a long-term relationship. Someone who uses it is saying they want one. These are the earliest dated uses we found.

The Collins entry gives no first-use date, and we found no dated use earlier than the 1996 article.

What LTR means on Tinder, Hinge and Bumble

In the releases and coverage we read, none of the three apps uses the letters. Here is what each printed instead.

The mixed options are what one forum thread asked about. On Mumsnet, a British parenting forum, a thread titled “OLD: looking for long-term, open to short” was started on February 23, 2024 and has about 22 replies. One reply: “I think it’s just people trying to keep their options open, and I don’t want to be an option.” Another recalled the choice as “either ‘long term but open to short’ or ‘short term but open to long term’” and added, “I wouldn’t read too much into that” (Mumsnet, 2024).

Both figures here are company data from the apps’ own releases. Tinder’s December 14, 2022 release said testing “in select markets showed that more than 50% of members have added Relationship Goals on their profiles,” with no base and no split by option (Tinder, 2022). In Bumble’s April 30, 2024 release, 77% of women surveyed “said knowing someone’s dating intentions is one of the most important things when online dating”; according to the release’s footnote, they were 6,138 women on Bumble globally, aged 23 to 35, surveyed April 5 to 12, 2024 (Bumble, 2024). Each app has its own page: Tinder, Hinge, Bumble.

LTR vs STR, and other things LTR can mean

STR is the other end: a short-term relationship. Tinder and Hinge list both, plus mixed options in between. What short-term can cover is on casual dating.

One user-written Urban Dictionary entry from August 4, 2018 lists “later” as a texting sense of LTR; it is the only dated source we found for it, and the usual spelling is L8R (Urban Dictionary). In web code, dir="ltr" means left to right (W3C). In our search on October 6, 2026, sugar-dating sites also ranked for the term; their own vocabulary includes “arrangement” and “allowance,” and we found no page of theirs that uses LTR for an arrangement.

Our rule of thumb: read the option as a stated preference. It does not say how long “long” is. The DTR page covers the talk where two people compare what they want.

How many daters say they want a long-term relationship?

Pew Research Center found that “44% of current or recent users say a major reason they are there is to find a long-term partner.” Those users were the 9% of adults who had used a dating site or app in the past year, in a survey of 6,034 US adults run July 5 to 17, 2022 and published February 2, 2023 (Pew, 2023).

The next three figures are company data. In NBC News on July 13, 2023, a Tinder spokesperson said: “Globally, 40% of Tinder members say that they are looking for a long term relationship, versus 13% looking for a short term connection,” with no base given (NBC News, 2023). Tinder’s own press page gives the same split for members who picked a goal, as our Tinder page notes. Hinge research reported by Cosmopolitan on January 18, 2021 found that “53% say they are now ready for a long-term, serious relationship,” with no sample stated (Cosmopolitan, 2021). Match’s Singles in America study with the Kinsey Institute, about 5,000 US singles aged 18 to 98, reported on November 9, 2021 that “65% of singles want a relationship within the next year,” not long-term specifically (Match, 2021).

We found no study that checks whether the option predicts what people do. Which apps say they are built for something serious is on best dating apps for serious relationships.