Dating apps have grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, but it's not without widespread criticism and prevalent user dissatisfaction, raising questions about the complex relationship between platforms and their users. This study examines how dating app users conceptualize online dating and navigate safety concerns by employing two complementary data sources: a survey of 175 Cornell students with experience with dating apps and 5,833 Reddit posts scraped from 10 dating-related subreddits. Using metaphor analysis, Likert-scale questions, keyword-based sentiment analysis, VADER, and GoEmotions, the study uncovered a consistent pattern across both datasets: users experience harm, rationalize it, sustain an illusion of control over algorithmic outcomes, and continue engaging with the platforms. Consistent with prior literature, market and game-related metaphors dominated how users described online dating. However, a significant percentage of users (23.88%) resorted to labor metaphors, revealing a psychological toll that intensifies with increased duration of platform use. Though 52% of survey participants reported experiencing at least one form of harm, 71% had never reported any incident to platforms. Sentiment analysis of Reddit posts highlighted that returning users consistently expressed higher negative sentiment across all three classification methods. Together, these findings support the Circle of Harm Tolerance, a framework describing how users cycle through harm, rationalization, and reengagement in platforms, and this cycle is sustained by an illusion of control, which may be reinforced by platform and third-party services. This study suggests that underreporting reflects a rationalization process in which the user redirects accountability inward rather than toward platforms. This has implications for platform design, safety intervention, and user well-being.