a modern tale as old as time
As a 33 year old single woman, I have dabbled on dating apps for the better part of 10 years now. Unfortunately, I’ve never found anyone that clicked, and have never met up with anyone I’ve spoken to on any apps. After a long sabbatical from trying to talk to men on Tinder, I came out of retirement and have been putting in effort to reply, and start conversations with people.
Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who said, “You know what they say is that woman have evolved so much in recent decades while men have not, so there’s a massive gap of evolution between the two. Deep down its just that they are scared of that evolution and have no idea what to do with it.”
She hit the nail on the head. There has been a lot of transformation and development in the last 50 years, and as a result, the relationship dynamics between men and women have drastically changed as a result.
This has not necessarily been the root cause of my lifelong singleness, but perhaps just a factor. Australian men in particular are very reserved, uncommunicative and vague when it comes to love and dating. They don’t tend to approach women, they don’t want to “date” at all. I’m unsure if it’s more an attitude issue, or simply a lack of skill.
My friends have a different method of swiping on Tinder than me. Basically anyone that is a 4/10 and doesn’t have the energy of a serial killer in their profile photos gets a right swipe from me. I barely ever read the written profiles before swiping, thinking I’ll do that if we match or if they message me. Just like most men’s intentions on this app, my swiping method is nonchalant and non-committal. Am I part of the modern dating problem? Or am I being smart and playing a numbers game of – let’s kiss all the frogs so we can get to the prince.
Last night I received a message from a cute guy – lets call him Logan. He was good looking, but had a pretty empty bio so I was dubious about him being a real person. We ended up messaging back and forth – I asked him all the questions missing from his profile like how tall are you (6 foot 2), what do you do for work (accountant), what music do you like (country), etc. We had a lovely conversation back and forth for an hour or two non-stop, clearly finding chemistry and commonalities between us. He suggested going on a date to learn two-step as we both like country music which I would be down for. However, a mere 24 hours later, he disappeared from my list of messages and unmatched me.
Even though we had interacted for such a short time, it’s hard not to ruminate and wonder if I did or said something wrong. He simply could have thought I wasn’t attractive anymore (which is contradictory to his previous messages). Interestingly, I had told a few friends about him as he was the best match I’d had in a very long time but added “lets see if he ghosts.” And I was right.
Was it my intuition warning me that it would happen and not get attached? Did I manifest the end to this nice interaction I’d had with him. Should I keep my mouth shut and not share things with people?
Either way, it doesn’t really matter. I wasn’t in deep, it was a nice conversation that happened for a few hours that gave me a bit of hope that people are out there that would be a decent match for me. I needed that as it’s been pretty grim on the apps otherwise since I started sifting through the frogs. I am finding guys to be either too sexual, sweet but not attractive, or no chemistry or commonalities whatsoever.
Upon reflection, I realised that I have done this to other people too. I’ve spoken to people for a few hours or a few days, and then unmatched when I just wasn’t feeling it anymore, or I got too scared and vulnerable.
Logan gave me hope. I’m not going to give up on finding someone, and I know that the right guy for me doesn’t have an avoidant personality like myself. One of us is gonna have to have a secure attachment style to make a relationship work, create a safe place, and steady me when I am ready to avoid intimacy, confrontation, or sharing how I really feel. It’ll take a special person but I know he exists, and I will find him.
I’m an old school woman in a modern world, so perhaps I’m not going to meet the love of my life on Tinder. But until I bump into him in person, I’m going to keep trying the apps and see if I can be lucky enough to finally meet my match.
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