‘Ah, yeah, no, so we met in a club.’
‘Was it love at first sight? Did your eyes lock across the room?’
‘I mean no, not really, or maybe, I guess…’
‘And so, you danced and then found somewhere quiet to chat? Did your two groups of friends get to know each other?’
Little does my granny know it was more love at first swipe than love at first sight. Also, given the deluge of men my lonely drunken self waded through during a couple of nights of Freshers’ Week this year, it was barely even that. I think my family must have some idea that I’m lying to them. Or maybe, they don’t understand how hard it is to meet someone in real life when you’d rather spend your evenings Netflixing in bed with a nice cup of tea than pounding it up in the club (yes – the choice of phrasing here should make it clear that I’m not hip). Arguably, the club is the only place where people under the age of 25 engage in active flirting anymore. I know I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable wandering up to someone on the street, or across the Arts Block concourse, and only in the pub after I’d had enough drinks to ensure that they wouldn’t understand what I was saying anyway. Plus, after too much drama in my course last year, I decided I really needed to steer clear of anything with anyone who I might have to awkwardly encounter week after week in tutorials. (To the professor who gave us our welcome lecture in first year: you were right, tutorial groups and rooms CAN suddenly feel really small when you’ve done something you shouldn’t.)
I decided that the only way I was going to meet someone beyond my circle of friends was through Tinder. I’d been put off the app until a few months ago by the knowledge that, should my family know what I was up to, they’d worry. They live overseas, and perceive Dublin (or of any city which they cannot reach by car or train in two hours) as seamy and potentially harmful to their pride and joy. I infer this from my aforementioned granny giving me an alarm for attacks and made me promise to abstain from all quote unquote ‘casual sex’ whilst abroad.
You now understand why I think they know I’m lying. Clearly, my family has a decent understanding of the attention most young women might be exposed to, and the idea of casual dating. Young women such as myself, are catcalled or eyed up and down every day – an issue facing many of us which I believe deserves more attention, and I think that most of us can remember a time when we’ve been touched up in some way at a club. Anyway, all these experiences, and the encouragement of a friend who’d met her partner on Tinder, made me think that perhaps Tinder wouldn’t be such a bad idea – I mean, how much worse could it really be? My family associates Tinder with a casual hook-up culture. They’re not against technology generally, and my mum has, in her time, used her fair share of online dating sites. Their main concern is my vulnerability. It turns out, their fears were not entirely misguided. Despite producing what I consider a wholesome profile, I awoke the morning after my first swipe session to maybe 20 messages from men looking for sex. Some were easy to spot from a mile off: the undesired, ‘If you were a bike, I’d ride you,’ was a dead giveaway. Others took longer to get to the bottom line; after initially agreeing to meet me for coffee, one man told me that actually, he was only ever free in the evening, but ‘don’t worry, I’ll buy you wine to make up for it‘.
Later that day, I showed my two closest guy friends the whole picture. They seized my phone, sending counter-one-liners to those who had sent creepy stuff to me. I must admit, that by the end of my time on Tinder, I’d got fairly good at the comebacks myself. As they worked their way through my messages, they flagged guys who they thought I should respond to. Here emerged ‘puppy man’, as he shall forever be known to my friends. Amongst the handful of men I messaged seriously on Tinder, ‘puppy man’ emerged as the firm favourite. He wasn’t my usual type (5’11” with brown curly hair and a rugby-player build, if you’re wondering), but he distinguished himself by not being afraid to cut the BS . He opened with an almost off-putting amount of cheese: ‘You and your pup, name a cuter pair….’ but refused to entertain my flattery-baiting ‘Two puppies?’ with anything more than a ‘Fair enough.’ When we eventually moved our chat to Instagram (scandalous, but not half as bad as Snapchat), I was fairly confident that he was mainly interested in dog pictures, rather than anything less PG. I couldn’t have been more correct. In ‘puppy man’ I had essentially found my Tinder equal. He was looking for a real relationship and was willing to put the time in getting to know someone. He was funny, openly lazy, and, generally, a breath of fresh air.
After about 10 days of chatting non-stop – and I do mean from the time I woke up to the moment I put my phone down for the night – we arranged our first date. From then on, we both referred to the anticipated event as ‘Thursday,’ which I took as a good sign that his expectations were just as high as mine. Eventually, ‘Thursday’ became ‘Sunday’ as I realised that I had double booked him with a friend who I forgot was coming to stay. Again, I was pleased that he accepted that I was being honest with him when I rearranged, and that he was willing to work around my schedule. At this point I trusted him, letting him choose the date activity and keep it a secret from me until the day before.
The day of the date came, and it turned out to be Token, just a short walk from where I live. My housemate prepared to provide my security detail, whilst I freaked out about actually meeting ‘puppy man’ in the flesh. The fact that Token was so close was really helpful; I could wait until ‘puppy man’ was there until I left my house, and, once he was there, there was no going back for me.
The date was a roaring success. After 3 hours of dinner, drinks, and games, we still hadn’t stopped talking. I invited him back to mine ( just for tea and a chat) and five hours later, he had to hurry off to get the last bus home. That’s not to say the date was perfect – it took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that I was greeted by a clean-shaven face – but it was far better than I expected, even after chatting with my ‘puppy man’ for so long.
Almost six months later, ‘puppy man’ and I are going strong. I’m still lying to my family about how we met, but I think the lie is worth it. ‘Puppy man’ met the puppy he fell in love with on my profile, and the dog reciprocated that love. My family really like him, and I think that, for now anyway, I’d rather not spoil that by coming clean . I’m sure the truth will come out eventually, but, at the moment, I’m glad that to keep them in the dark about some of the more predatory messages I was receiving. I think if they knew the truth, they’d imagine the worst before remembering that I’m now in a happy, healthy relationship as a result.
The takeaway: whilst hang-ups about using Tinder as a dating app in the more traditional sense of the word are justified, I would encourage anyone lamenting the contemporary dating scene to give it a try. I’ve met a great guy who I probably never would have come across in real life. I know that I was lucky to meet someone so soon – my boyfriend confessed to me a few dates in that he’d been on Tinder for a year with no success – but, you’ll never know who you’ll find if you don’t try. I feel bad lying to my family, as I know it perpetuates a stigma about Tinder, but my reasons are understandable . and that this article brings a few of us a little bit closer to being more open about our love lives and how they are enabled.
