Six months ago, I made the decision to delete my dating apps, which I had been using on and off for a decade, indefinitely. Nothing dramatic or terrible had happened. In fact, it was for him that I deleted Hinge and Bumble , my then-dating apps of choice, at the beginning of the year. As so often happens with early romances, we fizzled out, rather than imploded. The shared memories that no longer had a home. When we stopped seeing one another, I felt, immediately, the familiar urge to download the apps againβlike I had done time and time again, on and off, for the past decade since Tinde r launched in But I resisted itβand instead, I chose to process the disappointment I was feeling in losing the thing-that-could-have-been-a-thing.
I felt better after a week or two. What I realised was that there was an opportunity cost to all the Sundays I spent swiping; the non-starter dates where I spent my Thursday evening; the month or two I spent dating someone exclusively. I was missing out, regularly, on a Big Life: travelling; reading; learning; nurturing relationships of all kinds. At first, I decided to channel my dating app hiatus into focusing on real-life romantic connections, and that was a rewarding exercise.
Nothing ultimately went anywhere, but I felt like there was a greater level of mutual respect, and communication, because the foundation of our relationships with one another was built on more than pixels. The reason I was able to do this, I think, was because I was no longer in the practice of spending hours swiping alone waiting for a match or not.
I spent an evening flirting with an event photographer, then a man I met unexpectedly during a hour airport stopoverβwithout even trying to analyse whether these connections were more than friendly from their side. Eventually, I decided to take a mindful break from dating as a whole. Which leads me to my next pointβ¦. Without that immediate, pressing sense of the Next Romantic Prospect, my mind is more likely to stray towards the people I most love, and feel excited byβhow they are, or our future plans together.
Such is our societal fixation on romantic relationships that for a long time I failed to see the love that was always there. I used to leave most Thursday nights open, in case I could plan a date for then I realise this is the whole premise of the new dating app, Thursday, but I was ahead of my time.
