No War, No Match
Stories with Humor and Truth from the Tinder Era for Dating with Less Anxiety, Understanding Dating Apps, and Remembering That If You Don’t Love Yourself, No One Will Love You
- Published
- Language
- English
- Category
- Autoayuda
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Synopsis
Read the beginning
From the chapter «Welcome to the war (bring your phone fully charged)»
There’s a simple way to know a relationship is over: you stop sharing your location, stop arguing about who’s buying the toilet paper, and start wondering again whether your profile picture should show you wearing sunglasses.
Single life often begins with a strange mixture of relief, fear, and a 14% battery. At first, you say you want to take some time for yourself. Then a friend mentions that “everyone’s on the apps these days.” Someone else shows you a profile and says their cousin met his wife there. You pretend to be interested, ask how long they’ve been together, and before the conversation is over, you’ve already downloaded Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, or whichever app happens to be popular at the moment.
The screen asks for a few photos, a witty line, and your preferences. The process seems simple. You select an age range, distance, gender, and maybe a hobby or two. Your phone vibrates. A person appears. You swipe. Another person appears. You swipe. Suddenly, you’ve spent forty minutes moving your thumb as if you were approving or rejecting applications for a job that nobody has defined.
You’ve entered the war.
It’s not a war with trenches or uniforms. There are better photos, bios that seem to have been written by a marketing department, and invisible enemies called “seen,” “last active,” and “how are you?” Ammunition is limited: time, patience, and a self-esteem that’s best not left charging next to your phone, because it can overheat.
You downloaded the app with a fairly reasonable idea: meeting people. Maybe finding a partner. Maybe going on dates, having conversations, feeling butterflies again, or checking that you still know how to dress for something other than going to the supermarket. You expected possibilities.
What you usually find is a human catalogue with uneven lighting.
There are profiles that say:
“I love to travel,” alongside five photos taken in airports. “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” written on an app that exists precisely to help you do something there. […]
