Hinge Isn't Designed To Be Deleted

The reason for my aversion to dating apps.

I spent a healthy, chunky time of my late teens to early twenties in a relationship. Around 4 and a half years. From the ages of 19 to 23 I was blissfully unaware of how dating had developed into such a bizarre affair. Now I’m 25 years old - 26 in a few weeks - and I quite literally can’t stand dating apps. For the absolute fun of it I downloaded it when I had gotten out of my relationship and I would say I had such apps downloaded on my phone for maybe just over a year. Ask me how many dates I went on in that year. Go on ask me. HOW MANY TELL US!? One. I went on one. Now I just want to preface this by saying it wasn’t because I got no likes - in fact I got too many and from this you might think I’m picky - it was always odd. It always felt off. Nothing ever felt right about it.

The one date I did go on was pleasant enough and one might even say I had a nice time talking to someone new. He was handsome and a gentleman, I couldn’t name you a flaw about him. The whole time we were sitting there having dinner, the only thing I could think about is if he was only worried about sleeping with me at the end of the night. That thought snowballed into me thinking about the way I now believed we were forcing conversation all night only to pay the bill, walk out the door and simply look at each other. Until one of us utters the two cursed words, “Now what?”. God I hated it. To be quite frank I could’ve gone on another date with him but I stopped talking to him even though there was nothing wrong with him. I promise you, a normal functional person would’ve wanted that second date. They would’ve been eager for it, because the first date was simply flawless. Yet deep down inside of me something clawed at me and said, ‘this isn’t the story you want.’

And here we are, 2 years since my break up and only a single date I’ve been on. Now I did keep Hinge on my phone for over a year, and the conclusion I came to about that cursed app, is that it is absolutely not designed to be deleted. The app always made me feel slightly dissatisfied with the people I’d speak with. There was always something that made me think ‘huh that’s kind of odd’. To be honest, I could write a whole article about the pick up lines I would receive and how people’s confidence skyrocket when they can hide behind the safety of a phone. But the point is, Hinge ropes you in big time, making it a little difficult to let go of it.

Don’t take this as me saying no successful relationship comes out of Hinge. One of my closest friends met his partner on Hinge, and I quite literally think they’re perfect together. I absolutely do think they are the exception however and not the rule. In my eyes, they were simply meant to be. For the vast majority of us, I don’t know if we would get that lucky on Hinge. Maybe, I’m simply more old school than I realised. Maybe, I enjoy a more traditional form of meeting. But in the age of ‘situationships’ even that has been ruined.

Now between the atrocities on Hinge and the odd ways men approach women nowadays, where does that leave me? In a fantastical land of fictional men. None of it exists. A part of me envies people who have met their person or soulmate or whatever you want to call it, in ways that would make me swoon. My heart sometimes tries to drag me into the dark pit that is ‘when is it my turn?’ and as a response my brain needs to rationalise that feeling into something logical. I begin to question my own standards and equally argue back at myself that it is completely justified.

For a year straight I would scroll through Hinge, finding it hard to muster up the emotional courage to really go on a date with anyone. As a hopeless romantic who was equally emotionally unavailable, Hinge was possibly the worst place for me to be on. Yet deleting it felt like I was shutting the door on love. As if I was turning my back on something I had no right to walk away from. But in reality, it had given me nothing but even more hopelessness. So after a year of wasting my time on there, I deleted it.

I decided I wanted something that would make my heart skip a beat. Something tangible. Not a circumstance where I spend two weeks texting with someone I’ve never met. I needed to feel again. Yet no matter how much I wished to have a companion again I couldn’t bring myself to have one for the sake of it. So I’ve left it out of my hands now. It was no longer in my control, and in that I found a little peace. Now I didn’t need to think I was obliged to date because I was on a dating app. I left my fate to the universe.

What changed you might ask? Nothing at all. But I guess I’m starting to restore my faith in the idea of love. Even if it’s only 1%. Maybe I’ll meet someone waiting for a train, or in a restaurant where they’ll be on the next table over. Or I’ll lock eyes with a guy in a house party. Because it’s in those small yet fleeting moments when my stomach fills with butterflies. And I’m waiting to feel them again after years of dormancy.

Maybe one day.