tinder

Diary of a Ghosted Girl

Kate Sloan

Sunday night. I am depressed. I have been depressed for a solid week, with no hypomanic reprieve. Shit is dire.

I have guzzled more wine than I ought to’ve, and smoked more weed than is probably reasonable. There are one or two crusted tears on my cheeks, but mostly I’m numb. Aching to feel something; aching to ache.

A new OkCupid message lands in my inbox, and I open it with the characteristic slowness of a person weighed down by depression. “Fuck. This profile was an intensely enjoyable read that had me grinning like a total idiot,” it reads. “I don’t even know where to start except HEY (for now).” Then he asks me something about toxic jelly dildos, which I mention in my profile. My ears perk up, and so do I, a little.

I flick through his profile – pictures, paragraphs, compatibility question responses – and it achieves the rare thing of making him seem more interesting rather than less. (Most men are atrocious at writing online-dating profiles.) I message him back.

Our conversation kicks into high gear almost immediately. Jokes. Stories. Questions. All-caps shouts of “ME TOO!” and sparks of recognition. He likes my puns. I care if he likes my puns. I talk about my work and he doesn’t take it as an invitation to ask invasive questions about my sex life, as so many OkSuitors before him have. I am absurdly, miraculously, hastily hooked.

He tells me his full name – “incase you’d like to move this over to Facebook/creep me for mutual friends/affirm I am in fact a real person and not an elaborate cat-fishing account” – and, to my shock, it’s almost exactly the name of a person I used to be in love with. Their first names are as close as Lee and Leo, and they have the same surname. Intellectually, I understand that this doesn’t mean anything. Emotionally, it seems to mean quite a lot. It feels like the universe is shining a spotlight on this boy and shouting in my ear: Notice this person. Pay attention. He could be important.

We move things over to text. We talk about sex in a way that is flirty but not explicit – my favorite, when I don’t know someone well yet. He’s such a good flirt that I’m screaming and cackling at my phone – indeed so good that a friend christens him “Mr. Goodflirtz” when I relay the key points of our conversation later.

I send him a picture of me. Not a nude – just a cute selfie, where I’m pleased with how I look, and I look like the kind of girl that a man like him might be interested in. “Fuck,” he writes back. “…Fuuuuck. I mean you are just so fucking good-looking.” More cackling at my phone. More blushing, sweating, and covering my eyes. My heart is thudding.

But it’s late, and I have to get some sleep – which I laughingly tell him even as he’s still blowing up my phone with compliments in little green text bubbles. “Yes yes sorry,” he writes. “Good night.”

I do a thing I have done too many times, and have promised myself not to do again: I get over-invested. I turn his name and face over in my mind. I lie awake thinking about the dress I’ll wear on our first date, and what we’ll do after he tugs it off of me. Eventually, somehow, I fall asleep – and dream about his pretty mouth all night.

On Monday morning I am pinged awake by my phone’s text tone. “That picture was the first thing I saw this morning as it was still open on my phone,” I blink sleep out of my eyes to read. This is followed by some gratuitous information about how his dick is reacting to said photo and what he is doing about it – information I find charming, not alarming, because at this point I feel like I know him. He is a wizard with words. His words alone have made me want to kiss his face, suck his dick, build some kind of future. It’s ridiculous.

“I’d gladly take any other pictures you’d like to share,” he adds – politely, I think. But I have a boundary around this, which I explain to him: I don’t like to sext with people before I meet them in person. It often makes me lose interest in them, or feel weird, so I tend to avoid it, especially if I suspect I might actually like the person. “Fair enough,” he writes back. “Let’s hang soon, then.”

“I am free tonight or Thursday,” I tell him, and he replies, “Thursday is probably best, but mayyybe tonight.” We talk logistics – locations, times – and lapse once again into giggly half-sexts laced with wordplay. I’m still barely awake; I tell him I’m going back to sleep, and I’ll be in touch later.

That afternoon, I send him a selfie of me looking put-upon and adorable. “This is my ‘You should have drinks with me tonight’ face,” I caption it.

No answer. I try to keep myself occupied with other diversions. Four hours pass. I complain to my best friend, stare at my phone for far too long, then decide to take a nap, hoping I’ll wake up to a text notification.

I wake up a few hours later. “I’m dying of anxiety,” I tell Bex. “Why hasn’t he texted me back?!” Bex, the greatest friend anyone could hope for, replies: “You don’t know much about him. Maybe work got out of hand, maybe he has food poisoning, maybe something came up with his family, maybe a friend just went through a breakup, maybe he was up all night last night and fell asleep, maybe he got hit by a bus, maybe he’s secretly a superhero and is fighting his arch nemesis, maybe he burned all of his fingers making tacos and can’t use a phone, maybe his phone broke and he’s at the store trying to get it fixed, maybe Pennywise lured him into the sewers with the promise of all the pussy he could eat, maybe he is volunteering at an animal shelter and got distracted by all the puppies, maybe he got lost in that weird circus store y’all have and has no phone service and is wondering if he’s going to starve and should start eating his own arm… I could keep going.” I laugh, but I’m still sick with anxiety.

“Or maybe he’s a dick who decided to ghost after 12 hours,” Bex continues, “in which case, you dodged a bullet, because you don’t want to hang out with him, because he’s a dick.”

I do want to hang out with him, is the thing.

My anxiety disorder has decided this is the most important thing in the world. I barely sleep, barely eat. I feel nauseous over the idea that not only does “Mr. Goodflirtz” not want me, but no one wants me, no one has ever wanted me, no one will want me ever again. I wonder if he was only ever looking for a sexting partner. I wonder if he Googled me and got scared off. I wonder if he was using fake pictures and fake information to solicit nudes from me. I wonder if he was an undercover creep from 4Chan or the Red Pill. I can’t stop wondering. My sleepless night is a whirlpool of uncontrollable wondering.

On Tuesday morning, I resolve that I will not text him.

On Tuesday afternoon, I text him. “Hey, would Thursday still be a good night to get drinks?” I hate myself immediately after pressing “send.”

By Tuesday night, he still hasn’t answered. I log onto OkCupid to stare longingly at our messages – and I see that he’s online. After fighting the urge to anxiety-puke, I fight the not-altogether-different urge to message him some variation of “Yo, what the fuck, bro?!” I have to physically close my computer and walk away from it to keep myself from doing this. It feels like the most difficult thing I’ve done in a very long time.

On Wednesday I go to a therapy appointment. I sniffle and sob while telling my endlessly compassionate therapist about this dumb boy and all the dumb feelings I’m feeling about him. It’s a double-whammy: I’m hurting because he disappeared, and because I’m embarrassed by how much this has hurt me. He didn’t owe me anything. I know that. And yet I can’t help feeling wronged. Dropped. Ghosted.

“You just lost your job, you’re still dealing with the fallout of unrequited love, and then this happened,” my therapist points out, reasonably. “You’ve been rejected a lot lately. Rejection hurts. But it’s not a reflection on you. It doesn’t mean you’re unloveable.”

Tears stream down my face. I know she’s right. But I don’t believe she’s right. They are two different things.

My phone’s been on Do Not Disturb mode for the duration of our appointment, like it always is – and as I walk out my therapist’s office door, I press the home button, blindly hoping. But nope. Still nothing. The ghost is still dead, and so, it seems, is my heart.

A fuckbuddy I was supposed to see on Wednesday night texts to say that he’s sick, and to ask if we can reschedule for next week. I know him well enough to know he isn’t lying, but my anxiety suspects he might be – because I distrust all men right now. If someone could be so enthusiastic about me and then disappear off the goddamn face of the earth, then everyone could be lying about everything. I ignore the anxious voices in my head and choose to accept that a request to reschedule is indeed a request to reschedule – not another rejection, perched upon my already precarious heap of recent rejections.

On Wednesday night, I spend hours in bed just numbly staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what I did wrong, what I can do differently going forward. I grab my phone and open Tinder. I know it’s bad. I know. It’s like an alcoholic trying to nix their “one last” hangover with “one last” hair of the dog.

But it makes me feel a bit better. I flirt with a few boys, until I find one I actually connect with on some level. We talk, and joke, and learn about each other, in the formulaic dance that early online-dating interactions all tend to follow. It’s not fiery with white-hot excitement like it was with Mr. Goodflirtz, but it’s something.

We schedule a date, and I go to sleep, dreaming of someone new.

I don’t think about my ghost much on Thursday. But late that evening, my phone’s text tone beeps, and my heart leaps into my throat. I claw the thing out of my purse at lightning speed.

“How are you feeling today?” a friend has texted to ask – and I’m so goddamn angry at myself for being disappointed.

Links & Hijinks: Tinder Troubles & Fisting Femmes

Kate Sloan

• I love this comic about how toxic masculinity fucks up your sex life. “Sex is not something you do to somebody, it’s something you do with somebody.” Amen!

• This article is about femme fisting covens and you don’t need any other reason why you should run-don’t-walk to read it.

• Apparently T-rexes may have engaged in foreplay. This article says that the T-rex was therefore “a sensitive lover,” but I don’t think prioritizing foreplay is necessarily something you do only for your partner’s sake: it makes sex better for you, too!

• After the above article came out, Tracy Moore wrote about how to fuck like a T-rex. Amazing.

• This article about bionic penises is fascinating. C. Brian Smith is one of my favorite sex journalists, and he shows why here: he went above and beyond reporting on the scientific/mechanical story of penis reconstruction and found, in addition, some conflict between his two main subjects (apparently they hate each other). What a story!

• Here’s an interesting article on why rapists rape, and how our cultural ideas about rapists’ motivations have shifted over time.

• Consistently good sex with a partner takes consistent work, practice, and conflict resolution, according to a new study. So next time you have bad sex with a new partner, don’t think of it as proof you’re not meant to be with them – maybe view it as an opportunity for growth and improvement instead!

• I found it cathartic to read women’s responses to straight-dude Tinder clichés. God, why are most straight men on dating apps so dreadfully boring?!

• Is Tinder the new meet-cute?

• And while we’re talking about Tinder… Here’s why people are getting bored of it and what might come next.

• Okay, one more Tinder thing… I loved this essay about dating-app fatigue, particularly this revelation: “Just knowing that the apps exist, even if you don’t use them, creates the sense that there’s an ocean of easily-accessible singles that you can dip a ladle into whenever you want… the apps’ actual function is less important than what they signify as a totem: A pocket full of maybe that you can carry around to ward off despair.” YUUUP.

• A very sweet and smart reader of mine wrote this response to my post about the orgasm gap. It explores these issues from a (cis-het) male perspective: the frustration of not being able to get a female partner off, and some ways to center female pleasure without being overly pressure-y or goal-oriented. I wish more men had this attitude!

• The great Alana Massey wrote about how the internet never forgets anything. Here she is, mirroring my own childhood back at me: “A born adventurer and a blossoming pervert, I regularly pretended that I was a hot and bothered 19-year-old, and lured men away from group chat rooms to private chats where my digital captive and I would proceed to have cyber sex…”

• On porn sites and encryption. I’m not as savvy as I would like to be about this kind of stuff, so this article was illuminating for me.

• Many people have written about why you should watch porn with your partner; here’s the case for why you shouldn’t. This made me think long and hard (har har) about my own porn preferences and how a partner might interpret them.

• I know why men announce when they’re about to come, but this article on it was an amusing read nonetheless. “So we agree this is a very useful behavior in men and women, gay and straight. Cumming must be announced, and should be announced. Declared, even.”

• Two of my current favorite writers, Helena Fitzgerald and Alana Hope Levinson, both wrote about the “boyfriend shirt” and why we love/want/crave ’em. (I am guilty of this. And admittedly not just with boyfriends.)

• Catcalling and sexual harassment are normalized in our culture and nobody knows how to “properly” react to them. Ugh. Fuck the patriarchy!

• Nicole Cliffe wrote fanfiction about what life would be like if Benedict Cumberbatch was her lover, and it’s divinely funny. “I had decided to play Irene Adler, of course.” “Such a brave choice, considering you are not particularly attractive, and have never acted nor shown any aptitude for it.”

• Ever wonder how the concept of a fetish came into being? Here’s a psychological history of the fetish. Particularly interesting to me: sexually progressive physician Havelock Ellis was apparently an impotent virgin until the age of 60, when he saw a woman peeing and realized he had urolagnia (a urine fetish). Brains are so cool!

• What should you do with a condom after sex? “You can also tie the condom off before tossing it to work on your career as a balloon animal artist,” Tracy Moore reports. (God, I love her.)

• The science is in: what makes a relationship last is good talkin’ and good fuckin’. This does not surprise me, but it sure is affirming!

• Timely: last month I got fucked with a penis extender and this month there’s an article on MEL about them. I, for one, always celebrate there being more options in the “toys for penises” category. I can also vouch for the fact that you don’t have to be insecure or have a small penis to derive some enjoyment from using these; the partner of mine who wanted to try an extender with me is quite well-endowed as is, and just wanted to explore a fantasy and try something new. Yay, sexual freedom!

Unmistakeable: Myths and Realities of Attraction at First Sight

Kate Sloan

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It’s funny how sometimes, the beliefs you hold most firmly are the ones you most need to dismantle.

I have a core belief about relationships that’s probably stunted my romantic possibilities on many an occasion. That belief is: if someone is meant to be my next beau, I’ll know it. I’ll have a good feeling about them from the first. The sight of their face, the jokes they make, the words they use, the energy of their presence – these things will all feel immediately captivating and right to me. I’ll have a hunch, and if I trust that hunch, it’ll lead to good things.

A few weeks ago, on a romantically distraught evening, I wrote this prayer of sorts in my journal:

I am ready to let go of my unrequited crushes and welcome a new person into my life.

I am ready, but I need that person to incite feelings in me that are unmistakeable. I need to be SURE – in my gut if not in my overzealous anxiety-brain – that this is a person I could and should be with.

Their presence should light me up, set my sparkly heart ablaze. I should crave them, but not in that NRE-soaked way that’s clearly a flash fire headed toward burnout. I should want them because of my neurons, not just my neurotransmitters.

They should embody the word “crush” for me, take up space easily and obviously alongside that word in my life. Zing, bang, boom!

This preference for immediate attractions even shows up in how I navigate online dating. Lately, when I swipe through potential matches on Tinder, I do it mostly based on gut feelings about people’s pictures. Some part of me believes that when I see someone who would really make me happy and enrich my life, I’ll know. Like one of those movie moments where two protagonists meet serendipitously, look into each other’s eyes, and are rendered speechless by their sudden mutual attraction.

Writing that journal entry put words to this idea I’d long held, and those words punctured holes in my logic. I’d never thought about it before, but those “zing, bang, boom!” moments have actually been almost nonexistent for me – even with regards to people I adored, who became crucial to my life story.

My first girlfriend was one of the most intense crushes I’ve ever had, but the first time I saw her, I didn’t have romantic feelings for her at all. She was giving a presentation in ninth-grade English class. Though she was funny, smart, and adorable, I didn’t notice those qualities until I looked back at that memory months later through my newly idealistic lens.

Similarly, when I went on my first date with the man who would become my first serious boyfriend and my first love, sparks didn’t fly right out of the gate. I was intensely anxious about the date and didn’t even want to go. We chatted easily for three hours and I liked him, but I wasn’t sure about him, not by a longshot. We didn’t even kiss until the end of our second date, because it took me that long to figure out how I felt about him. And he ended up being one of the people I’ve loved most in my life.

My unrequited attractions haven’t been instantaneous, either. My biggest high school crush didn’t ensnare my heart until, weeks into improv team practice, he sat down at a piano and started playing Vince Guaraldi tunes. My favorite podcast host, whose voice makes me swoon every week, didn’t capture my attention til I noticed his stellar pun skillz a few episodes in. The cute local theatre actor whose career I follow avidly didn’t turn my crank until after I’d seen him in a few different roles.

It’s obvious, when I look at the actual evidence, that my attractions are rarely immediate. In fact, off the top of my head, I can’t think of a time that an initial “good feeling” about someone led to anything substantial. A bad feeling about someone is usually worth heeding, but I can’t identify a future life-changing individual when I see one.

It’s easy to get swept up in myths popularized by romance novels and cheesy chick-flicks. We want to believe love is simple and binaristic: someone’s either right for you, or they’re not. But as with many facets of human existence, the truth is somewhere in the grey area. The love of your life could be hiding behind a face you wouldn’t give a second glance.

I grew up precocious and too smart for my own good, and sometimes that does me a disservice. I can be so sure I know what I want, what I need, and what works for me – but those notions get turned on their heads time and time again. It’s like the universe keeps trying to teach me the importance of staying open and going with the flow. It keeps teaching me, because I keep forgetting.

You think you know what you want, but maybe you don’t. Maybe your next big adventure is hidden behind the door you never would have chosen. Maybe your perspective is skewed, your lens is dirty. Maybe falling in love is best when it’s like a literal fall: terrifying, unexpected, but rewarding as hell if you survive it.

These days, I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the world and everyone in it. I’m trying to give people a fair chance, even if at first they don’t seem to be what I’m looking for. I’m trying to accept that I don’t know everything, and that sometimes I should let fate take the wheel instead of desperately clinging to it myself.

That means saying yes to invitations from people I might’ve said no to before, and sometimes swiping right when I’m tempted to swipe left. It means setting aside my prejudices about how people look, and choosing to find out more about their brain and heart before I decide how I feel about them. It means being open, which is the scariest and loveliest way to be.

But I’m still a baby, at just 24. There is still so much about love that confuses and defies me. What are your experiences with attraction at first sight? Does it mean magic is about to happen, or is it a red herring? Were the greatest loves of your life a slow burn, or an instant inferno? Did you ever see a face on a dating app, think “I could love this person,” and find out later just how right you were?

Strength, Courage, & First Impressions: An Illuminating Tarot Reading

Kate Sloan

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In mid-February, I couldn’t stop crying about boys. All in a row, I’d crossed paths with a series of people who I adored, who felt almost mystically perfect for me, who nonetheless couldn’t or wouldn’t date me for various reasons. Such is life, I suppose. And although I knew I’m worthy of desire and would find someone awesome eventually, and although I kept telling myself “This too shall pass,” tears still kept pouring down my face as I sat in bed wailing along to Missing Ember.

“It has been a year and a half since the end of my last relationship,” I wrote in my journal, “and whereas that break-up initially made me feel wonderfully free and independent, now I just feel weirdly unmoored. I miss the emotional support and consistency of having a primary partner.”

After writing some more and effectively soaking my journal with tears and snot, I fired off an email to Carly from Tiny Lantern Tarot. (Carly uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, so I’ll be alternating between those.) I had read an interview with Carly on Up, Down & Out and loved her nonjudgmental, intuitive and queer-friendly approach to tarot, and since my emotions were so tumultuous at that time, I felt I needed some direction. Some types of emotional turmoil call for a visit to a therapist, or a long phone call with a best friend, but for some reason I craved advice from someone wise and witchy. “I have some concerns around romantic and sexual relationships in my life that I would love to get some guidance on,” I wrote in my initial email to Carly.

A few more emails and a couple weeks later, I headed to Carly’s home office for my reading. They made me tea and we sat on their little couch. We talked a little bit about my concerns around romantic relationships, and then she drew some cards.

Carly uses the Collective Tarot, a deck whose illustrations are bursting with queer people, people of color, and a diverse array of bodies. This immediately felt right to me. Tarot cards are usually traditionally gendered and free of flagrant sexuality, and my life is… not those things. Carly’s calm manner, and the cards themselves, affirmed to me that this was a safe space for me to talk about my queer/sexy/kinky life, if need be – and that’s important, when you’re getting a reading about relationships!

Two of the four cards Carly drew were major arcana cards and the other two were face cards, which they told me meant the issue at hand was an important one to me. It certainly was!

The card at the center represented “the heart of the matter,” and it was the Seeker of Feathers. Carly explained that this card is about communication and assertiveness. “It’s more important that you say the thing,” she explained, “than that you say the thing nicely.” I’d gotten into a habit of downplaying my needs, of telling people I was okay with my romantic and sexual entanglements being “chill” and “casual,” when actually I wanted something more. This card told me to be more honest with potential beaux about what I want – and I interpreted that to mean honesty about not only my feelings but also my desired relationship structure (non-monogamous) and the kind of sex I want to be having. I’m not always good at communicating my needs if I think they might ruffle feathers, so this card reminded me to do so regardless.

The card on the left represented “what to do.” It was the Code, which features what appears to be a queer kinky person flagging red for fisting. (So, so, so awesome.) Carly told me that this card refers to boundaries, borders, and communities, and recommended I consider the communities I run in: in what ways do I fit into them, and in what ways do I stand out? In the places where I stand out, do I want to accept that and be proud of it, or do I want to adjust my approach so I fit in better?

This card made me think about how often I feel like a baby/newbie/impostor in the sex-positive communities I’m in. Though I’ve been running in these circles for years, it’s still hard for me to accept that I’m a valued member of the Cool Kids’ Club. I’m well-liked and respected by the members of that “club” who know me; there’s really no reason for me to feel like I don’t belong. This card reminded me that I should dive even deeper into that scene, unapologetically and enthusiastically.

Naturally, given the kinky content of the illustration, this card also refers to power dynamics. As we talked about my issues with anxiety and feeling out of place, Carly suggested that maybe I need to develop a power dynamic with myself: be my own dom, so to speak. This might involve bossing myself into doing stuff that is slightly uncomfortable for me, but will help me grow and meet potential partners – like attending social events that make me nervous, talking to new people, and entering new social scenes. I found it strangely helpful to have my anxiety re-framed in this way – as something I can challenge bravely if a cute toppy person tells me to, even if that cute toppy person is me.

The next card represented “what to think,” and it was the Apprentice of Bottles. Carly explained that this card usually evokes a person who is very charismatic, charming and shiny, but then turns out to be shallow and disappointing. They weren’t entirely sure what the card was trying to tell me, but it made a strange kind of sense to me: a lot of my emotional upheaval at that time had happened because I was idealizing people I had a crush on. Some of these people appeared to be my perfect partner, but of course, they weren’t actually perfect, and in many ways we would’ve been a bad match if we’d gotten together. I felt like this card was telling me to take people off the pedestals I’d put them on – and also to consider what qualities I actually need in a long-term partner, rather than just the dazzling qualities that capture my attention in the short-term.

Carly told me that this card can also refer to first impressions: making a big splash, and then retreating. We talked about how I often worry that the first impression I make is misleading. “I’m a sex blogger” is usually one of the first things I tell new people about myself, and I think it gives some people an incorrect impression about my personality, my priorities, and what kind of relationship(s) I might be looking for. Carly encouraged me to experiment with the way I talk about myself – which I started to do later that night, by removing the phrase “sex blogger” from my Tinder profile. I figured it’ll be easier for me and potential matches to discover each other organically if I roll out information about my sexuality more slowly. (Preliminary results: Tinder dudes have indeed been less skeezy and more curious about me since I did this. Innnteresting.)

The final card represented “what to avoid,” and it was Strength. Carly told me this card refers to strength not in the traditional/brawny sense, but in the sense of emotional bravery and vulnerability. At first, she was puzzled that this card came up in the “what to avoid” slot, since obviously, these traits are usually a virtue in relationships. “The only thing I can think,” they said, “is that maybe you have a pattern in your dating life of being too vulnerable and open, of letting too many people in too quickly.”

I almost started crying when she said this, because it was so amazingly true and there’s no way Carly could have known that. I give far too many people the keys to my emotional kingdom, and it results in me getting hurt a lot. When I choose to invest emotionally in someone I’ve just met or barely know, at first it feels like an exciting rush, but it quickly gets heavy and painful, with very few exceptions. “Vulnerability is necessary,” Carly told me, “but not everybody deserves your vulnerability.” They were so right, and I made a promise to myself to be more careful about getting invested in people who haven’t yet proved they deserve my heart.

I left Carly’s house with an immense sense of clarity and inspiration, like I’d just been given the road map to my next stop on life’s path. The despair of feeling unloveable had lifted. I was still just as single, my life just as devoid of serious romantic prospects, but that felt less important and less permanent than it had before.

Now, here’s where shit gets weird. Two days later, I met a boy on Tinder. We went out. We hit it off. We started dating. I leapt headfirst into a relationship with him, before knowing if he even ticked all the boxes that matter to me (“Is he a feminist?” and “Is his sex drive compatible with mine?” being the two key ones in this case). I was so desperate for a boyfriend that I viewed this dude idealistically, filling in the blanks and paving over problems to round him up to a person I could date.

I should have communicated my needs more clearly, more quickly. I should have held out longer before calling him my boyfriend and pinning my hopes on him. I should have remembered that first impressions aren’t everything and people change as you get to know them better.

These are all things that Carly told me in my reading with her. But it was like the universe wanted to hammer these points home. And hammer, it did.

In the end, I learned these lessons the way I learned so many math and science concepts in school. Someone smart explained the lesson to me – and then I had to put what I’d learned to use in the real world.

Well, I sure learned quick. I won’t make those mistakes again. And if I do, maybe I’ll pull a few tarot cards to learn how to fix it.

The Anatomy of a Good Tinder Message

Kate Sloan

Ah, Tinder. Shallowest of shallow dating apps. Devourer of time, energy and brain cells. Cesspool of tiger-obsessed weirdos, hostile Felipes, and “Netflix and chill” jokes. So terrible, and yet so enslaving.

I’m currently in the throes of a full-blown Tinder fixation, which happens to me from time to time. The gameified rush of swiping left and swiping right turns me into a rabid date-seeker, desperately flipping through my available matches for anyone who seems not-awful. And even when the motivation to find partners is removed, I still find Tinder fascinating on a sociological level. Look how far we’ve come, us clever humans, that we can find companionship and sex just by flicking our fingers and staring at colorful images on a tiny screen.

But although I’m enthralled with Tinder, I still kind of hate it. And the thing I loathe most about it is that the people on it are boring. Or, rather, they’re generally not good at demonstrating how interesting they (probably) are.

Sending an initial Tinder message isn’t like walking up to a stranger at a bar. If we met in real life, the content of your greeting would be less important than its delivery, your attractiveness, and my mood. A simple “Hey, how are you?” at a bar could turn into a rollicking conversation if I found you cute, I was in a talkative state of mind, and we had good conversational chemistry after that opening line.

On Tinder, however, “Hey, how are you?” is boring. I get several messages like that every week. And though I could glance at your profile again when you message me, I might not. The content of your message is all I have to go on. So if it’s bad, I’m probably not gonna talk to you. Like, at all. Not even in weak pleasantries, the likes of which you might get if you “Hey, what’s up?”-ed me while I was grumpy-drunk at a bar.

Before I go any further, a caveat. This post might make it sound like I never initiate conversations on Tinder, or that I expect men to be the initiator in all cases. Neither of those things are true; however, that is how it’s gone down in most of my Tinder chats. Blame it on patriarchal gender roles or the Dickonomics of Tinder; men tend to drive the action on this app, and on most online dating services.

Since that is the case, I, as an active female user of Tinder, am by default an expert on what kinds of messages I do and don’t like to receive. Months of boring conversations and uninvigorated openers have sharpened my sense of this. Here are the three things I think you crucially must do when you send an initial Tinder message to someone you think is cute:

  1. Compliment them. Choose something specific about them that you genuinely like, and tell them that you like it. Assuming you’re looking for something more than a hook-up, it’d be smart to compliment something non-physical, like a personality trait that comes across in their bio or a hobby shown in one of their photos. If you can’t think of anything to compliment them on, well, why did you swipe right on them, then? Surely there was something about their pictures or description that appealed to you.
  2. Prove you’ve read their profile. Reference something from their bio or photos. If your message is so generic that you could copy-and-paste it to many different matches, you’re not trying hard enough.
  3. Ask a question or two. If you don’t, they’ll have nothing to respond to! Try to avoid boring, commonplace questions like “How’s your week going?” or “What are you up to tonight?” You can ask those later, once you’ve got the conversational ball rolling. To start, ask them a question they’ll be excited to answer – maybe something about one of their passions or interests.

Those are the three basic building blocks of a solid Tinder initiation. Bonus points if your message is also funny, properly spell-checked, and hints at an activity or interest that might make for a good first date if the conversation goes well.

To illustrate how and why a first message’s construction is important, I’ve pulled a few examples from my own Tinder inbox. They’re not pretty, but hopefully you’ll learn something from them.

imageThis dude had clearly read my profile, but maybe only the first sentence of it. I understand that it’s exciting to encounter a sex blogger if you’ve never met one before, but when guys take this tactic with me, it makes me feel objectified and reduced to this one small detail about who I am. And while he did ask a question, it’s a bad question: it only warrants a quick yes or no, and the answer is already in my profile. When you ask someone a question with the intent of starting a conversation, it should require more than a few words in response, and it should be a question you don’t already know the answer to. Finally, he complimented me, but it’s a generic compliment without much substance. I already know he finds me attractive, because he swiped right on me; now I want to know what else he finds interesting about me. And if the answer is “nothing,” then we’re probably not a good fit.

imageSome guys try to initiate convos in gimmicky ways like this, and it just doesn’t work. It makes me feel like you’re a con man and I’m the mark. It’s also an insult to my intelligence: this dude and I both know he isn’t really messaging me to get my help remembering the name of a movie he once saw, so why pretend that’s what’s going on? Online dating can feel so contrived anyway; it’s best to be genuine. Tell me about yourself and ask me about myself, instead of constructing this strange excuse to talk to me.

imageThis is an example of the kind of message that would go over better if it was spoken out loud at a bar or a party, but doesn’t work well in a medium like Tinder. More than half the messages I get are some variant of “Hi,” “Hello,” “What’s up?” and so on. These messages are boring, require the bare minimum of effort to send, and show zero indication of why the person finds me interesting. I’m only motivated to answer this kind of message if the person’s profile is very intriguing to me, which is rare.

imageI get the sense that this guy was probably just looking for a hook-up. If that was his goal, then his approach was a good one: he complimented me on my physical attractiveness, and later asked me straight-up if I wanted to “have some fun” (i.e. hook up). I didn’t answer because I was looking for something more relationshippy. Keep in mind that your messages can and should establish some sense of what you’re hoping to get out of the interaction. I find physical compliments unsatisfying on Tinder because, duh, I already know you’re attracted to my photos; now I want to know why you might be attracted to my brain. But if sex is all you’re after, a physically-based compliment could be a good way to subtly communicate that.

imageThis message is a question, and an interesting one, so it’s got that going for it. But I didn’t reply because the message contained no indication of why I should find this guy interesting. I’m not on Tinder to educate people or to have philosophical discussions; I’m on there to meet people for dates and/or a relationship. So, while it’s great that this guy wants to learn about the poly lifestyle, I’m gonna need a little more than “I don’t understand this thing; please explain it to me!” to get me interested in talking to someone.

imageThis message could have been copied-and-pasted to literally anyone, if he replaced my name with someone else’s. It’s fantastic to get a message from someone who shares my interests, but if that’s the case, I’d love to know what those interests are! All I could really reply to this is something like, “Oh yeah? Like what?” and that’s not the kind of message I’d be bursting to send. Be interesting and specific. Craft your message so I’m excited to answer it.

imageThis is a cool opener. It’s simple, but I like it. Asking someone about their passion is an easy, accessible way to capture their attention and get them talking. This guy could’ve improved his message, however, by relating the question back to himself so I’d be interested in answering him rather than just answering the question. For example, he could’ve mentioned a favorite journalist of his and asked if I’d heard of them, or he could’ve told me what led him down the road to his passion. Providing more information for the person to respond to is always better than not providing enough!

imageThis is the first message I received from the guy who is now my boyfriend (!!). It caught my attention because it’s straightforward and instantly proved he’d read my profile: he’s referencing my bio where I mention that I like old movies, celebrity impressions and Scrabble. He’s given me some information I can respond to (“Why The Wizard of Oz?” “What are your favorite board games?”) and pointed out some commonalities between us that might make me want to talk to him. He potentially could’ve improved this opener by complimenting me, but pointing out shared interests is a type of compliment – it means, “Hey, that thing that you like? I like it too, because it’s a good thing!”

What are the best first Tinder messages you’ve ever received (or sent)? Do you find that some approaches lead to actual conversations more often than others? I want to hear about your Tinder experiences in the comments section!