Sioux Lookout, Ont. Fifty kilometres? That's not too far. One hundred kilometres? That's only an hour's drive. One-hundred sixty kilometres? That might get me far enough to reach the neighbouring town, or maybe even the city. The screen refreshes, and three swipes later I am again staring at my own profile picture. Red circles radiate like sonar from my location, searching for any signs of life, with the words underneath: "There is no one new around you. I am one of many young professionals who start their careers in a small rural town.
After graduation I got my first job in Sioux Lookout, Ont. With some young people migrating away from cities to find their first job , it creates a unique situation where young adults find themselves looking for love in places with limited options. Using dating apps like Tinder in a small towns has very different issues than in the city. A rural, heterosexual, female Tinderer me gets to swipe through about as many pictures of fish as she does human men. The irony of "there are many fish in the sea" is palpable.
Small towns change the rules of the game. In a place with a small dating pool and even fewer date spots to meet up, some interesting complications arise. In big city centres it is considered weird, or even immoral, to date a guy your friend had already dated. In a small town, if you eliminated all the guys your friends dated, you'd quickly run out of men.
Of course, there is still etiquette. You don't pursue anyone your friend dated seriously β but even then, with permission, it happens. Privacy is something I try not to hold onto too dearly in a place where everyone's connected by only a few degrees of separation. It feels like everyone knows everyone, and news spreads like a bushfire. Even if you try to keep your dating life a secret, try to go out in public on a date and you will most likely run into someone you know β if not your entire extended family that actually happened to a friend of mine.
I tried to keep a relationship a secret once. I had only been in town about a month at the time, and I don't think I really understood just how small the place was. I went to grab a coffee one morning and ended up in line directly behind a Tinder date's ex-girlfriend.
