Tinder Mercy
SWIPE LEFT. SWIPE RIGHT. IT’S A MATCH! IT ALL SOUNDS FUN, AND IT IS AN EGO BOOST, BUT FINDING THE ONE? IT ISN’T HAPPENING.
by CHRISTINA GEYER
It started over a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine at Parigi. I had just broken up with a boyfriend who I knew in my gut wasn’t The One. As good girlfriends do, one of my best ones suggested dinner — and lots of wine — at my favorite restaurant, to take the edge off and to rid myself of all post-breakup emotions. Cut to the end of dinner: Not one drop of wine was left in the bottle. “Give me your phone,” demanded my friend. “I’m putting you on Tinder. You need to go on some dates.” I handed over my iPhone, and six minutes later I was swiping left (red X, or nope) for guys whose photos didn’t strike my fancy and right (green check-mark, for like) for those who did. If the person I “liked” had “liked” my photo in return — Tinder pulls images, information and shows your mutual friends from Facebook — then Tinder would exuberantly declare: “It’s a match!” Usually, I “liked” people based on a certain range of superficial criteria: Are our mutual friends in a social circle of my approval? Is the guy dressed well? Does he have good hair? Is he over the age of 28? Does he look respectfully employed or like he reads The Wall Street Journal? There were a lot of matches — and it certainly felt good. That newly ex-boyfriend might not have been The One, but there were clearly plenty of fish in the sea, and here they were: easily accessible right on my phone screen.
Then came the messages. “Hi Christina.” “What are you doing tonight?” “Your pictures are pretty.” “So, what are you doing on Tinder, anyway?” One particular match who messaged me stood out from the rest. He might not have appeared the best-looking guy in the Tinder bunch, but he was wearing a tuxedo. That tuxedo meant he potentially attended events where tuxedos were required. I attend those kinds of events. This could work, I thought. Mr. Tuxedo and I began chatting until the wee hours of the morning through Tinder’s messaging system, talking about everything from favorite restaurants to upcoming travel plans. No specific information was given. (I took the film You’ve Got Mail as my cue for this: Meg Ryan’s character, Kathleen Kelly, wisely taught that when messaging with strangers met in online chat rooms or the like, you shouldn’t exchange personal information such as addresses, exact job titles, etc.) Eventually, though, he asked, and I gave Mr. Tuxedo my cellphone number: That way, we could converse without the trouble of having to open up the Tinder app. Meanwhile, I was still simultaneously matching myself with other Tinder gents and chatting with those who seemed even remotely interesting.
A month later, after constant text-messaging, Mr. Tuxedo and I decided to meet in person. A great first date ensued, and many wonderful ones after that. But, as with all relationships, the deeper you dive in, the more complicated things get. Before I could even bring myself to think about whether or not Mr. Tuxedo was officially my boyfriend, or whether or not we were seeing each other exclusively, I had to ask myself one irritating, insecurity-inducing question: Is Mr. Tuxedo still talking to other girls on Tinder? My friends started hounding me with similar queries. “Have you had The Talk?” To which I would reply: “Which talk?” In the early stages of a relationship, there are many talks that could be had. Tinder added more questions — and the longer I waited to ask them, the more I suspected Mr. Tuxedo was taking other Tinder girls on dates, or at the very least texting them. Before he and I even discussed where we were, emotionally, in the relationship, I was already struggling with my own trust and confidence in him, for no very good reason other than simply the nature of how we met. That was another toughie, of course: How do I explain to my parents, my grandma, anyone not familiar with Tinder the story of how Mr. Tuxedo and I met? (Tinder has a somewhat questionable reputation: Some use it for perverse means; others use it, drunkenly, to find one-night stands; some use it for dating; and others have actually used it to find their Mr. or Mrs. Right.) I found myself lying at times: “We met via mutual friends.” I would catch myself fibbing in a pinch, to people I didn’t know well or was too embarrassed to admit the truth to.
The downward spiral started a few months into dating. I couldn’t handle it. I’d get on Tinder, almost obsessively, to see whether Mr. Tuxedo was still on, and when he was last “active.” (Tinder posts the minutes since a user’s last log-on on his or her profile.) Call me passive-aggressive. Call me relationship-challenged. I found myself resorting to less-than-ideal ways of communicating my insecurities: subtle hints; picking fights; driving myself insane counting the seconds until a text message would be answered. On one hand, when I was newly single, Tinder boosted my ego. (So many guys found me attractive! Not only that, they wanted to talk!) On the other hand, when venturing into a relationship with someone I met on an app, Tinder destroyed my self-confidence. It complicated what in my mind is already a complicated process: meeting, communicating, committing. Oh, and enjoying time spent together along the way.
Five months after “It’s a match!” things were officially over with Mr. Tuxedo. We still occasionally text, as many exes in this modern era do. But is he The One? No. Had we met another way, say, the so-called normal way — Person A sees Person B in a social setting; Person A makes an introduction; numbers are exchanged; dating begins — sans the added pressure of an iPhone app interfering, I think we might’ve lasted. But now, hear this: I have deleted Tinder from my phone, and I have no interest in re-downloading it. It created added layers of dating-and-relationship difficulties and dramas. In the end, I’d prefer to meet someone the old-fashioned way — ideally, while browsing for fiction at a bookstore. If old-fashioned even still exists.
This essay and much more — stunning gowns, nuptial trends, unbelievable weddings —are in the new spring/summer FD Love, on newsstands in mid December.
CHRISTINA GEYER is the issue editor of FD Love and the managing editor of FD. Reach her at cgeyer@dallasnews.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @ChristinaMGeyer
