I Downloaded Hinge So You Don’t Have To
There comes a point in every modern woman’s life when she stares into the void and thinks:
“Maybe I should try a dating app.”
This thought rarely arrives at a reasonable hour. It usually appears on a random Wednesday while drinking coffee, reorganizing your life, or avoiding something more productive.
This particular Wednesday began innocently enough. I was sitting in bed with coffee, walking my dog later at sunset, minding my own business when I decided that perhaps I had been unfair to dating apps. Maybe I was judging them too harshly. Maybe all those people who kept saying “You never know!” had a point.
What if I just gave it an honest try, I would meet someone thoughtful. Someone authentic. Someone who felt like home. Someone who would understand my tendency to overthink absolutely everything.
So I downloaded Hinge.
To my surprise, creating the profile was actually fun. I wrote prompts. Real prompts. Not the kind designed to attract the largest number of men. The kind designed to attract the right man.
I wrote about authenticity. About walking my dog at sunset. About how some people immediately feel familiar while others never do. For a brief moment, I thought I was onto something. Then the likes began.
At first I was flattered. Then I was confused. Then I was concerned. The app was delivering men faster than I could process them. I had entered what can only be described as a human Costco.
Men everywhere. A wholesale warehouse of men. Bulk quantities. Family-sized packages. Buy one, get three free.
The problem wasn’t that nobody liked me. That was never my fear. My fear was that everybody except my type would like me. This turned out to be an excellent prediction.
The more profiles I saw, the more I realized something important. I was not looking for a man. I was looking for a very specific man. A quiet man. A brave man. A protective man. A man who doesn’t perform authenticity because authenticity is simply how he exists.
First came Derek. Derek was intriguing. Not because he was necessarily my type. But because I became convinced he might somehow be connected to a restaurant manager I worked with as a teenager. This is apparently how attraction works for me.
Not:
“He’s six foot three.”
Not:
“He’s successful.”
Not:
“He seems emotionally intelligent.”
No.
My brain immediately went:
“What if this is part of an elaborate ten-year-long coincidence?”
Meanwhile, the rest of Hinge continued unfolding around me like a documentary narrated by David Attenborough.
Observe.
The male approaches.
He has read none of her prompts.
He has learned nothing about her.
Watch closely as he asks a question he could have asked literally anyone.
Nature is truly magnificent.
Then came Mitch, who appeared to be a middle aged man. Mitch liked my photo. I thought perhaps this was promising. Perhaps maturity. Perhaps depth. Perhaps a thoughtful conversation. Mitch’s second message to me was:
“How good are your cuddling skills?”
Reader, we had not yet discussed the weather.
By this point, I was missing my dog and the sun started setting, so I headed out to enjoy my evening walk.
Hours later I found myself sitting in bed staring at hundreds of likes. And that’s when I had a realization. I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t curious. I wasn’t wondering who these men were. I was wondering when I could leave.
People often assume dating apps fail because nobody wants them. My experience was the opposite. Too many people wanted me. None of them felt right. It’s a strange loneliness. Being surrounded by options while feeling absolutely no desire to choose any of them.
And so, on a random Wednesday evening, after approximately one lifetime of swiping compressed into a few hours, I deleted the account. Not dramatically or bitterly. Not because I lost faith in love. Quite the opposite. I deleted it because I realized I still believe in love enough to wait for it to feel different than this.
Maybe my person exists on a dating app. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s a missed connection from years ago. Maybe life is stranger than algorithms. I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that if my future husband exists, I hope our first conversation is slightly more memorable than:
“How good are your cuddling skills?”
And if not, my dog remains an excellent walking companion.