Dear God. I never thought I’d hear those words, let alone say them.
I’ve always been your quintessential ‘old school’ dater with a fear of ‘going online’ that rivals my 76 year old father’s fear of ATMs … you just can’t trust them. The unfortunate consequence of this irrational refusal to keep up with the times, however, is that my dance card usually has one entry on it every three and a half years.
The reason for this approach is that I really liked my life the way it was and felt absolutely no sense of urgency to find someone to share it with. If Mr Right was out there, I thought we’d find each other through the natural course of things and if we didn’t, it just wasn’t meant to be … and I’d start learning to like cats.
My roommate was an early Tinder adopter and my inspiration to join modernity. Every second night she’d wander into our lounge room like Carrie Bradshaw off on another evening of potential Sex in The City. She wasn’t expecting these dates to be the beginning of forever, nor was she whoring herself around town. Most of the time she’d just have a great night, thank the guy and start getting ready for the next one.
I envied her joyous nonchalance. She knew she could date seven nights a week if she wanted to, so no single date had the gravitas that tends to be present if you’re only ‘putting yourself out there’ twice in a decade. Plus, she was meeting a whole raft of people she would have never bumped into naturally and all from the comfort of her jim jams.
In a time where it’s harder and harder to meet really ‘good’ people I couldn’t help but be attracted to the way it opened her world up. So I downloaded the app, chose my three ‘best foot forward’ Facebook pics and got to swipin’.