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savefarris124-blog · 5 years

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Love Me Tinder

Words To Live By: “I just wish I could start a relationship 12 years in. When you really don’t have to try anymore and you can just sit around and goof on TV shows and then go to bed without anybody trying any funny business”--Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), 30 Rock.

Reader, I have an embarrassing confession to make: I am over the age of 30 and still single. You might think this isn’t terribly shocking as far as secrets go. Once upon a time I may have agreed with you. That was before older people started constantly asking me, “When are you getting married?”

I grew up watching a healthy dose of NBC’s Must-See TV, featuring such gems as Suddenly Susan and Just Shoot Me. These two shows featured 30-something women trying to balance a crazy career while possibly looking for love. The premise may seem clichéd now but in 1998 it was…also clichéd. Still these shows were great for background noise, and they infused me with the subversive notion that somehow a 30-year-old woman could walk into a room and nobody would be offended by her lack of husband.

I will confess that questions about my marital status bother me. Naturally I should be bothered on feminist principle and all that jazz, and I am. I am also bothered because I honestly do wish to fall hopelessly, sickeningly in love and share a life of adventures with somebody who sees me as I am. We would know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, push each other to become the best versions of ourselves, and laugh at jokes only we can understand.

Most people go about finding love by dating, but my dating history is spotty at best. I could go into details both depressing and/or absurd but here is the rundown of my greatest hits:

I needed to break out of this cycle. I had tried online dating a little in the past, but this time I decided to dive deep. After all, if the internet could bring a custom-made Scarlet Witch headpiece right to my door why not a boyfriend? I set out on an epic quest to become a Tinderella. And guess what? I’m engaged!

Just kidding; I burnt out after six weeks of extreme dating. During this period I went out with four guys, which for me is the equivalent of trying to run the Boston marathon when your warm-up routine has been a coma. Still I learned some valuable lessons. Learn from my mistakes, readers, and godspeed.

DO: Choose a Good Profile Picture

One of the reasons I dragged my feet on joining Tinder is that I hate every photo of me ever taken. I therefore avoid cameras at all cost. “What am I doing?” I ask myself as I dodge behind the nearest potted plant. “How will I remember that I have a fun, enviable life?” I then leap out in front of the camera, contort my body into an unnatural posture never used in real life, and smile. My reward is yet another awkward photo of myself that I will destroy immediately. Wash, rinse, repeat for the next ten years.

Because the only way to get better at something is practice, I spent my summer learning the art of complete narcissism. Going to a play? Let me take a selfie. Someone’s having a party? Selfie time. Spending a relaxing day inside to avoid the heat? Selfie marathon! I took enough selfies to burn through my phone’s memory. One of my best friends got married in October and I used the opportunity of professional hair and make-up to snap roughly 800 pictures of myself and maybe two of the bride for good measure. This strategy worked though, because I now have a whole six of photos of myself I can show with pride neutrality.

This photo obsession may seem like overkill, but online dating profiles have no context. The bio section is short, and half the time people don’t fill it out. Therefore if a guy doesn’t smile in his photos I assume he doesn’t have a sense of humor. If he takes a shirtless pic in a place where he shouldn’t be shirtless I assume he is a douchebag. If he refuses to post any photos with his face I assume he will murder me, and nobody has time to deal with that.

DO: Fill Out the Bio

Just take 5 minutes. Give me something. This is a system set up for convenience; I don’t want to dig. Also saying, “Just ask” doesn’t count. You are not mysterious, or rebellious, or beyond labels. You are lazy. I, too, am lazy, so I understand the impulse, but one of us has to put in the effort so it may as well be you.

DO: Play It Safe

Tell your friends whenever you are going out with someone new. Not only is it useful in case they need to file a police report, but also fun. The highlight of meeting so many new people was brainstorming safety code phrases with my gal pals. One friend insisted on the word “Pikachu.” I can’t remember if that meant I was safe or in trouble; it doesn’t matter. From “banana hammock” to “crazytown” to “vanilla gorilla” anything works for this purpose. Granted if a guy sees you get or send a text during the date, odds are he knows the score but a code word gives you at least some sort of deniability. That way in case he grabs the phone out of your hand like a psycho you can claim it’s just an inside joke, and oh my God, what the Hell has dating come to in the 21st century?

DON’T: Set Your Expectations High

“The love of my life may be just a swipe away,” I told myself when I signed up for Tinder. This is technically true, but you know who else is just a swipe away? Every other guy in this city. The beauty of Tinder is that you can see just how much is out there. The downside is that most of it is hot garbage.

I don’t want to just rag on Tinder, though I could. They have a filter for age, a filter for distance, but they don’t let me set a filter for douchebags (again, those guys who think I’m impressed by their refusal to let shirts dampen the glory of their doughy physiques). However at least Tinder respects my filters.

On the advice of a friend I also tried Coffee Meets Bagel, the site where she met her current boyfriend. While CMB seemed a bit more promising at first with its “select picks” it is rapidly disappointing me. I am 32 right now, and a very different person from when I was in my 20s. I told CMB I only wanted to date guys over the age of 30, but 75% of my picks are 29 or under. One time they selected a 28-year-old man for me that was clearly in his 50s. Between his gray goatee and his paunch he looked like Santa Claus with a mid-life crisis. Is that a fluke? Doubtful. Today the same thing happened, except this guy’s alternate pictures are all of Jesus. I think I’ll pass.

DON’T: Ignore Yellow Flags

Sure we all can recognize red flags when we see them, but what about yellow flags? I ended up falling hard for a guy who was funny and introspective. He loved to sing and act goofy, and being around him made brought out the light-hearted dreamer in me. He also ended up being a massive jerkwad.

He would schedule every date to be at or around his place. This part I was sort of okay with because I don’t want near-strangers knowing where I live, but it did mean I did all the driving. He tried to reschedule our first date so he could hang out with his friends that night, and did reschedule our second date. On said second date he had his phone out during dinner so he could play a Ghostbusters game. In my head half of me would say, “Whatever, we don’t know each other that well, plus you know he has ADHD. Nothing like being a high-maintenance bitch to drive men away.” The other half would say, “You came all this way, battled for downtown parking, worked your ass off to look cute for this date, let it be rescheduled, and he can’t even set his phone down for one minute? WTF?”

Yet somehow this guy emerged as the leader of the pack despite the fact that if I made a list of “Guys Who Displayed Basic Consideration For My Time” he would rank 3 out of 4. What can I say, the heart wants what it wants, and also I have terrible self-esteem and judgment. It came as a shock to absolutely no one that after our third and final date he sent me this text message:

Hmm, yes, “exhausting.” This was technically true, because I was exhausted. On the evening of our last date I bolted out of work at 5:00, drove home, took a shower, shaved my legs despite being on my period and knowing there would be no shenanigans that night, picked out an outfit, got dressed, decided that my outfit was too sexy for a night free of said shenanigans (I’m not cruel), put on a different outfit, looked around for my steampunk earrings because he mentioned he loved steampunk, did my make-up, and drove downtown to hang at his place at 7:00.

He got out of work late, fit in a workout, took a shower, and ordered pizza. Poor baby. Poor me. I had thought of calling him on this BS multiple times but refrained because I didn’t want to scare him off. Now here we were a month later, him running away anyway and me peeved I had invested so much effort into a guy when I had seen from the start he wouldn’t do the same.

So here I am now, licking my wounds from this latest foray into dating. I won’t give up completely, but I have learned that I’m the kind of person that needs to take things slow. If that means I only date one person at a time, then I’m going to make damn sure that person is worth it. Will I go back to online dating? Maybe, although now when I check out Tinder or CMB instead of seeing possibilities all I see is a vast wasteland of strangers staring back at me. I’ll try again in the new year, but for now I’m back to my previous dating strategy of hoping to get hit on the head and ending up with a special kind of amnesia where I get transported into my favorite TV universes to romance the hot male leads. Sure Peter Stone has issues but at least he won’t constantly reschedule our steady date night on Thursdays at 9:00.

#blog #words to live by #dating #tinder

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