If You’re Not Swiping, You’re Not Trying: A Dating Myth
There’s never only one way to do something. Especially dating.

Last year, a few days before my 27th birthday, I decided to open my first ever online dating profile. It was something I’d been avoiding for a long time, and even though I still wasn’t crazy about the idea, I decided at the very least I could write about my experience, whether or good or bad. I even gave the experiment a catchy name: Swipe-tember.
After the 30-day period of swiping and typing and cringing and ghosting, while I didn’t delete the app, I also didn’t sing its praises either. I wrote my blog post, which mostly regarded the experience as a chance to learn about myself and how far I’ve come since I first dug myself into an online hole at the age of 14, and I wished my fellow online daters well, sending them luck in the (online) battlefield.
These days, while that app still sits on the very last page of my phone, and its notifications still inform me of the activity that I’m “missing out on”, I don’t log on much. Sure, some nights when I’m feeling particularly bored or lonely I might open it up and swipe for a few minutes, but this almost always makes me feel worse.
The only reason I find myself (and my thumbs) carving their way through the profiles is because there’s a voice in the back of my head, spoken in the vernacular of my friends and family, that is telling me that if I’m not swiping, I’m not trying.
But can that really be true?
Has the notion of love and the process of dating fallen so far that the only way to ensure you’re giving yourself a fair shot is by checking out of the real world and logging on to the internet?
What ever happened to friendly suggestions to “try new things” and “meet new people?” What ever happened to encouraging drink clinks that promised your time was coming or circular back rubs that promised patience was key?
When did possibilities disappear from reality and solely exist online?
Personally, I hated the experience of online dating. It made me feel like I was back in high school, sitting at my family’s computer, making up new versions of myself to impress boys on Myspace and AIM. It made me want to crawl back into the shell I’d long abandoned after I realized that I was allowed to be myself, for myself, before introducing that person to anyone else. It made me feel uncomfortable, but not in the healthy way I’d learned to push past over the last ten years. I just didn’t like it. I tried it, but I didn’t like it, and that’s okay, right? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Isn’t that how it has always worked since we were all young and picky and leaving vegetables on our plate?
Don’t knock it before you try it, right? Well I tried it and, at least for now, I’m knocking it.
Dating is tricky. It always has been, and it always will be. It takes courage, and the ability to be vulnerable. It tests your capacity for compassion and patience and understanding. It puts you in the position to get hurt while at the same time offers you the opportunity to find someone that would do everything in their power to ensure that never happened. Dating can lead to love and it can lead to pain, and it can start online, offline, and one million places in between.
The key, they say, is to keep an open mind. An open heart.
They say it finds you when you least expect it.
They say it finds you when your ready.
They say you should put yourself out there, and step outside your comfort zone.
They say a lot of things, though I’ve found that they never really know which one of them is true.
I very well might meet someone when I’m not ready. I might meet someone today or tomorrow or five years from now that they will take ownership for in their “I knew it’s” and “I told you so’s.” They’ll say whatever instruction I finally “followed” is what led me to the person they thought I would find.
But the truth is, whenever I find that person, whichever path leads me to them, it won’t be by chance or flippant consequence. It won’t be because I finally followed specific instructions or took an outlined risk or stepped out of my designated comfort zone. It will be a result of a careful treading of hills and valleys and smiles and frowns and mistakes and triumphs.
Call me a hopeless romantic, but the right one becomes the right one not only because of all the wrong ones you’ve found before, but also because of the almosts, maybes, could have beens, should have beens, and I guess we’ll never knows.
Could the “right one” for me be someone I’ll only ever get the chance to meet online?
Maybe.
Will that curiosity get the best of me and cause me to log back on and start swiping again?
Maybe.
But does my lack of swiping now, in this present moment, mean I’m not taking steps forward towards that person, that experience, that “end all be all” they always like to talk about?
No.
Every day I get up and get dressed and move forward, I’m trying.
Every time I meet someone new or smile at a stranger, I’m trying.
We’re always trying, whether we know it or not, and we’re always moving forward whether we like it or not.
Life doesn’t come with a pause button, and no matter how often it feels like we’re standing still and trying to hit play, we’re actually in a constant state of fast forward, be it online or in reality. We’re hurdling towards our next destination and we’re doing it in our own way, with our own twists and turns, and our own loves and losses.
So don’t feel like there’s only one way to do something. Especially dating.
There are possibilities online, sure, but the world wide web is nothing in comparison to the great wide open.
Keep moving, keeping trying, and you will find your way. Even they would agree on that.