So here’s the context—-
Gay, early 40s, an open LTR (we both communicate fully and are ‘on the grid’). In the last few months, I’ve been on a personal wellbeing journey—got a little too in my feels and wound up going to therapy and working out basically six days a week.
The change has resulted in me feeling better about myself, openly questioning my professional happiness (in a positive way), and the gym time (which was more for me to get out of my head) has resulted in me losing, so far, 25 pounds.
And real talk here—I’ve updated my pics, accordingly, and I’ve gotten nearly 3x the thirst as before, from taps to messages.
(I say all this with as little ‘humble brag’ as possible)
Now to the conundrum—
With these messages, I’m getting more messages from people, even ones I’m physically attracted to, being very persistent with messages.
I’ll see a notification that I have like 10 messages and the first emotion is exasperation. Why? Because a large majority of those messages fall into several categories—people who live almost an hour away or more in current traffic (almost none are close), are legit hitting me up long after I’ve logged off and are expecting a response and are seemingly offended that I exited the app for several hours for work and it’s a stream of consciousness on their emotional state (I clearly state I’m not on there 24/7), or people who clearly didn’t read the profile and are propositioning me to do something I’m not into.
(EDIT: I should add that the messages I get have been lately from people who feel like they’re entitled to responses. Because they follow up even if I don’t respond)
Some I’ll respond to. Some I won’t. Some I’ll get downright cunty with. And whatever it is, I’m getting turned off.
And I’m getting fed up with it.
One could argue that I just need to stay off the app. I can’t argue with that, and I’m working to get numbers for people I want to stay in touch within the app.
But—and not to put too fine a point on this—I’m wondering if I am actually fed up and becoming more monogamously minded (me and the bf have been on a good passionate streak lately, just us), or if I’m becoming one of those snooty assholes the app is known for.
I qualify this because I’ve been blasted on Reddit before for not responding to Grindr messages from those in neither not into or don’t want to immediately engage with (I don’t want to dedicate my lunch break to a long missive with an anonymous headless torso).
TLDR ‘The Sunmer I Turned Pretty’ results in a ‘Heated Rivalry’ with feelings about remaining on an app that I have a ‘Beef’ with.