On swiping right

“Am I the problem or are apps the problem?” A memoir:

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I’ve been single since early this year — before that relationship, I’d been single for a couple of years. And before that one, a couple years more.

Despite several actual, legitimate relationships (some of them good, I swear!), I’d say my default setting is single. And that’s fine.

I’ve always been a big dater though. One of the biggest I know. I am good for funny stories and first date venue recommendations and Hinge prompts.

And I always enjoyed it. I liked the pageantry of it all. I liked swiping through apps and getting dressed up and layering perfume and watching the door for their arrival and flirting and debriefing about it in three different chats the next day.

But recently something odd is happening. I can’t bring myself to do the dance. I hate all my matches and I’m pretty sure they hate me too. I am completely, 100% apathetic to it.

For a while I thought it was because I wasn’t really in the Right Place, but now I mostly just think it’s because I can’t be bothered.

Is that bad?

Let me talk you through my thinking. Finding someone who is smart, funny, and kind isn’t that rare. But finding someone who is smart, funny, and kind, that you connect with and are attracted to is the stuff of myths and legend for me. I’ve lost count of the amount of perfectly great people I’ve met that just don’t excite me in the way exes have. Or maybe I don’t excite them — either way.

And I’m not just talking about finding someone to jump into a relationship with — I don’t even know if that’s what I want. I’m talking about finding someone at all. For fun or casual or something serious. For anything.

And the more I scroll and tell people how many siblings I have (0) and what my favourite food is (homemade lasagne), the more apathetic I become. Even the good, interesting conversations don’t seem that good or interesting to me at the moment.

And yet, most of my friends don’t seem to have this problem. I’ve seen people walk out of one big thing and into another within months — and it works? So, why is it just me that relationships, or even situationships (sorry) elude? Am I doing something wrong? Are my standards too high? Am I just not over previous relationships? What’s going on?

And I know you’re thinking, “calm it all the way down, psycho. You obviously don’t feel like dating at the minute. That’s a non-issue. Just take a break from it all”. But the thing is, I’ve had my break. I want to date again! I am ready! I swear it.

A couple of weeks ago, just after the clocks went back, I found myself alone on my sofa with a hot water bottle crammed down my jumper, eating a sharer bag of Haribo and watching the room get dark around me at literally 3pm, and I thought, “it is time.”

Whether it leads to anything or not, I need to get Back Out There. Out of the house. Into a silky skirt and a dimly lit bar. On a proper date, regardless of where it leads.

So I downloaded Hinge and had a long, hard, think about why I’ve started to hate the process so much.

And here’s my problem.

I am both bored and overwhelmed by dating apps. I can be made to feel more self-conscious and more arrogant than ever before in the space of just a few swipes. It’s an unnatural way of meeting people, which is a good thing (for me, a remote working, introverted, millennial with a lot of couple friends who don’t want to go out to meet people) and a terrible thing (for me, a human with a limited attention span).

When you can swipe through people in Paris, Prague, Auckland, or Atlanta, how do you confidently commit to someone from the next town over? When you have everyone to choose from, there’s always going to be someone better, or funnier, or taller, or with a less weird relationship with their mother, isn’t there?

I swipe and I judge, and I wonder how the people I’m swiping and judging are swiping and judging me. Because that’s what we’re encouraged to do. Look at this picture and decide whether you’re sending them left or right. Form an opinion based on four snapshots, three prompts, and a voice note.

I will not be edgy enough for Chris. I’ll be too tall for Dev (and Johnny and Simon). I’ll not be traditionally girly enough for Lewis, and I’ll not be outdoorsy enough for Mark, though I’ll be slightly too outdoorsy for Mo. And I know this because I looked at each one of these men and thought “you’re too something for me.”

Right before I started drafting this, I was asked to complete a Hinge survey. They asked, to what extent I agree with the following statement: I feel emotionally drained by online dating. I agree so much. I agree infinity percent. I agree more than you’ll ever know.

And it’s turning me into one of the people making it even harder to date online.

I don’t make all that much effort in conversations. I leave matches unanswered for days at a time. I lose interest in the game quickly. I am the enemy of single people everywhere. The low-tolerance, high judging, conversation killer who’ll swipe right, only to ghost you after you say one thing that doesn’t align with how they think the dialogue should go.

The other day a guy said my taste in wine was basic and I unmatched him for negging me before I realised he was probably just joking.

So obviously, the concern now is that endless swiping and increasingly low opinions of men has completely obliterated my sense of humour and my ability to have a normal conversation.

That’s a me problem.

In an attempt to cure myself and be an all round better dater (and nicer person, hopefully), I started an experiment.

I decided I’d make maximum effort, but I wouldn’t say anything I didn’t mean. I wouldn’t spend any time or energy if it wasn’t reciprocated, but I would make the effort to actually respond to messages in a way that was natural to me — no wasting my time crafting responses I thought they’d like, or responses that made me sound cool, or relatable, or anything else. Just me.

Here's a snippet of how it went.

A guy I had been chatting to for a few days asked me if I wanted to go for a drink. He suggested Friday, and he also suggested a bar I hate. Now, I subscribe to the church of Chappell Roan. I wasn’t spending a Friday night on a first date, especially not in this particular (loud and dancey) bar.

He did get points for coming up with a suggestion in the first place though. And he seemed fine. So, I was very nice. I said I’d prefer to go somewhere a little bit more low-key/quiet? Somewhere we’d be able to chat? Maybe even on a different night, if he was free?  

He immediately turned. He used the eye roll emoji. He sent ‘???’. He asked if I’d like him to find us a nice little library to get to know each other in instead. And jokes on him because a) you can’t chat in a library and b) I actually would like that.

I kept at it. I pretended the conversation was still light and breezy. I told him I felt like we could probably do better. He said, “fine, don’t think there’s anywhere else though, so let’s just do cuddles at yours.”

And then I was sick in my mouth.

Everyone is different, but for me, there’s just no going back from the word “cuddles”. Especially when it’s a stranger. Especially when the whole conversation had an air of throwing your toys out the pram because I didn’t love the bar you suggested.

At this point I’d also gathered he just wanted to meet as a prelude to sex, which is fine, but not really where I’m at right now, y’know? And even if I was, the word ‘cuddles’ had ruined it.

I spent a few minutes worrying that he was going to think I was a psychopath if I called the whole thing off over this one exchange, and then I remembered my challenge.

I told him never mind, I wasn’t feeling it anymore. He un-matched me. And that was that.  

Nothing bad happened.

Granted, it wasn’t a particularly successful outcome, but most aren’t anyway.

And on the bright side, I can definitely, definitely say I felt a little bit less exhausted by the whole process for simply… saying what I was thinking. I didn’t begrudgingly drag myself out for an evening I knew I’d get nothing out of. I didn’t pretend to be nicer or more palatable than I was. I saved us both some time.

And maybe, just maybe, that means there is light at the end of the tunnel. And that light isn’t a relationship, or even the promise of one, let’s be real. The light at the end of the tunnel is a less trashing, draining experience — one I might enjoy again one day.

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