Why Dating Apps Suck
I’m never going back on one!
Last year, I came out of the relationship of my dreams. It was an unfathomable ending and well, for a very long time I didn’t know how to live life again. Then, I decided it was time to take charge and a few friends decided to create an account for me on Bumble. The first time it lasted for 2 hours and then I wore my ex-boyfriend’s t-shirt and cried in it for a few hours.
Then, some time passed and I was tired of living alone in the same environment for a really long time. So I decided to download Bumble again. This time I started with having some conversations with people. I didn’t meet anyone or even pass my phone number. But I started doing better. This is when I learned that I had started the process of moving on.
I went on my first date on my ex-boyfriend’s birthday to distract myself. I returned and cried in the bathroom for an hour. I didn’t know what happened. My date was nice but I shut him out soon after because I wasn’t ready to meet someone new.
The second wave of Covid hit India then, and I was happy to be confined to my house. I was still on the app but it didn’t bring me anything at that point. I also matched with a really nice guy then and we talked for a few months. Our country was in a strict lockdown during that period so the fact that we had the same professions, similar phases of life, and similar choices kept us going. We met after the lockdown was lifted after 3 months of conversations and it died. We’re still friends though and I genuinely think he’s a really nice guy. Only our timing was off.
The third date I went on was with a guy who insisted on going out with me for 4 weeks. I finally gave in half-heartedly but ended up being pleasantly surprised and having a genuinely nice date. So much so, that I met him again the following weekend only to have it fizzle out.
Anyway, this is when I decided that it was time to go off Bumble. I got assigned to a new project and got a promotion at work around the same time and used all of my time to study to get better at it (it paid off, and my nerdy side surprises me on all such days! :p)
I was going on a solo trip in October and my friends insisted that I get on Bumble again so I’d meet someone. I dropped my phone into the ocean, got a new one, cloud backed up the app but I didn’t turn on notifications and there went their idea of getting me to sleep around. I was on the app for a few more weeks until I permanently deleted it because of how exhausting online dating is. Now before I make my points here, every boy that I’ve met through a dating app has been nice and kind and has never tried to fuck around. So I’m lucky and grateful that I met all the nice people.
But a dating app? Again? Nope. I don’t have it in me. At the end of 2021, I also want to end this stupid phase of dating again. Dating apps are structured in a way for you to keep swiping, and to continue paying for their services. They, in no way, want you to find love or meet the man/woman/person of your dreams. All of their agenda is to run a high paying business and rightly so, but unfortunately, they play with the most vulnerable sides of people and in the name of the most desired emotion in the world- love.
“Love breaks my bones, and I laugh.” — Charles Bukowski
When I first read Bukowski I thought he talks of love as a transaction. The humor in his tone really had me question some fundamentals of my life.
I worshiped love. I loved being in love. So much so, that if someone told me that love was all it took to get through life, I’d believe them in a heartbeat. Now? Not so much. I still like the feeling of being in love, I still maybe still would like to give in to that feeling but every time I’m slightly close to it, I run away from it.
Dating apps aren’t designed to help you find love. If anything, they teach you to brace rejection. And they tell you to swipe people like a fucking catalog. The mere concept of swiping on someone simply because of how they look or 2–3 of their witty answers bothers me so much. I hated feeling like a bloody product on Amazon. Like people could just try it out and go back if they didn’t like.
After I deleted my dating apps, my screen time went down by 22%. I stopped feeling consumed by meaningless conversations and I genuinely didn’t feel drained when I tried to make small talk at the end of every day. I anyway am I little bit of an introvert and more often than not, enjoy operating in my own silos. I feel extremely self-sufficient and don’t feel the need to go all out just so I can find “love’.
Moreover, I love vulnerability. I love meeting people and knowing them in depth. I love the fact that we are all humans and bring a sense of humaneness to all our relationships and that truly gets overshadowed in dating apps. So as this year ends, I sign off and delete, not because I found love, but simply because I found me!
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I’d love to know what your experience with dating apps has been!
