How Tinder Made Me an Adult
Okay maybe this title is click bait. I’ll admit it. Tinder didn’t radically change my life; it didn’t make me start using place settings when eating or doing my taxes by myself or paying my own phone bill. This isn’t a story about sexual liberation. Tinder didn’t make me an adult because of sex (Let’s be real — sex doesn’t make a person an adult.) What did make me feel like more of an adult was the ritual of dating: those first dates full of surprises and dead silences, of figuring out an exit strategy, and trying to secure a second date. I tried and learned this ritual without any real goal of a relationship but more for myself and I have learned a lot along the way.
The concession of mutual attraction a.k.a. my fancy words for admitting you both have the hots for one another.
Pre-Tinder me had the twelve-year-old’s mindset that your crush can’t know you like him or her. Why? Maybe I thought that it would give them power or drive them away. This mindset was dumb for many reasons. First of all, I guess I thought they would just come to like me on their own terms, when in reality, my coldness was probably (most definitely) repellent. It’s not even like I was playing “hard to get” or whatever because I just refused to show any interest in the first place.
So that “It’s a Match” notification and the ensuing conversations that followed helped eliminate that mindset. I’m still working on how to apply this to the non-digital world — if someone seems interested, my first instinct is still to run and hide — but Tinder has made me more mature in how I feel as I travel around the world. Now, as I walk around and see people I’m attracted to, I mentally swipe right or left. Some people disdain Tinder for this but it’s helped me. Before Tinder, I would avert my eyes as soon as I saw a cutie. Now, I think, “Hey you’re hot and I don’t care if you see me looking because I am an adult who is allowed to date and who people find attractive.” It’s not a myth: Tinder can be incredible for your self-confidence.
Transferring dating skills into business skills
I know, this may sound dumb but hang on with me for a second. Backstory: I’m a fairly shy person. It takes me a while to get comfortable with people and be able to freely talk to them. Yet, I hate feeling uncomfortable (like a normal person) and therefore I had to keep the conversation going. The first date I went on had many of those moments where neither of us knew what to say next — the moments where I peeled all the paper off my beer and racked my brain for something — anything — interesting to say. I probably ended up telling him weird, boring anecdotes like how I had just gotten Spotify Discover Weekly and loved the variety it was giving me. As I went on more dates, I got better at keeping the conversation flowing, still peppering in a few weird anecdotes, but quick to ask genuine questions like it was nobody’s business.
I started to realize that this was becoming helpful in my professional life as well once I got an internship that required sitting in on meetings. I would occasionally be alone in the room with a guest of my boss and acted very differently than I would have four months ago. Instead of that panicky moment of “I should say something instead of sitting here dumbly. This is my moment to make an impression,” I would actually, at ease, be able to ask them about something they had mentioned or about themselves. Yes, this sounds like something any human should be able to do comfortably but, like I’ve hinted at, I get extremely anxious when I feel a certain pressure to be social or say something impressive.
One night, before one of my dates I realized that I was already going into the date with the mindset that I wasn’t going to see him past the one night. All I was really expecting was the one first date, nothing more. Why was I putting myself through the painful first date — because really even if it’s a good first date, it’s still slightly painful. If I wasn’t hoping for a relationship or even a hookup, what was I there for? Well….besides wanting to practice dating, I wanted the stories. I wanted those stories that I could whip out at parties populated with adults holding cocktails and wearing blazers. Something witty that I could say that would offer the slightest bit of knowledge of what I knew about dating. What I didn’t realize was that beyond just learning how to date, I was also becoming more confident as an adult woman.
