u/NamuhNoserp

EDIT TO THANK YOU ALL

Thank you all so much for your comments. I see and I'm reading it all. I'll try my best to upvote all as a sign that I saw your comments even though I did not leave a response.

I appreciate the positive comments and the warnings alike. I guess I needed both sides.

We're still talking on WhatsApp, date planned for some days away. It will be shorter this time.

I will do well to update everyone on a month. I hope everything works out for us all, regardless of how it turns out.

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Went on a first date with a guy I met on Hinge, and it was sooooo good.

We spent over 15 hours together, which is by far the longest I've ever spent on a first date. At one point we were just sitting together, staring into space, not talking, and it wasn't awkward at all. We were different in a lot of ways but also weirdly similar.

Before we left, he said, "I really, really like you. I had such a good time with you, and I want to see you more." And he didn't want me to leave.

I woke up this morning and saw he unmatched me on Hinge (he's showing up in my past matches which means he didn't delete the app).

We had already exchanged numbers before that, we're still talking on WhatsApp, and we've even made tentative plans to see each other again this week. So logically, I know unmatching could simply mean, "We have each other's numbers now, so we don't need Hinge anymore."

Emotionally? My brain has decided this is a five-alarm fire.

I also know modern dating is... modern dating. Lots of people date multiple people until they become exclusive. Meanwhile, my emotions are aggressively monogamous. The second I genuinely like someone, everyone else ceases to exist. I can't even hold conversations with multiple people anymore. I haven't responded to my hinge messages since the date and hinge keeps notifying me about my pending conversations.

I know everyone is going to tell me to just ask why he unmatched me. And maybe I should. But it also feels like such a huge thing to ask when we're literally still texting and making plans. It makes me feel like I'd sound completely unhinged.

The scary part is... I think I really, really like him. I'm terrified by how much I like this person after just one date. I haven't felt this way in a very long time.

My heart has been doing the weirdest things ever since. I feel both peaceful and troubled.

It reminds me of Michael Scott(the office) saying, "I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." Except I'm the one who's afraid of how much I like him.

If he ghosts me or eventually hits me with, "I don't think this is working," I genuinely think I'll lose my bananas.

In an attempt to calm myself down, I've taken cold showers, drank Coca-Cola (which I never drink), eaten ice cream and wings, journaled, watched TV, cleaned my entire house, gone for a run where I literally screamed into the void... None of that has worked.

When we planned the date, we both agreed it would either be great or a disaster. It was great, toooo great and it wasn't extravagant. We just did things we both loved to do together and now my emotions are all over the place.

Like, I want to watch him dance, hear is laughter, watch as his eyes crinkle while he laughs, watch him sleep, cook, talk, walk, and cycle ahead of me. I want to know everything there is to know about him. I want to stare into his Brown eyes...

I don't know what to achieve by this post. That I like someone and the feeling is alien to me yet I like it and I want to shout it from the rooftop, that I need help to get myself together or to summon the courage to ask why he unmatched me.

Maybe more help with how to keep my emotions in check. Do I even need to keep it in check? Why am I even pessimistic?

I also wish you all good dates so we can all feel this gooood. Maybe with less pessimism and more excitement that we will not be ghosted.

Some months back, I matched with a guy on Hinge. When we finally met up and I told him what I do for a living, he said, "One wouldn't know you do that based on how you’ve been texting."

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Ouch. But he was right. I was going through an incredibly busy season in life and wasn't giving dating my best effort. Taking his comment as a wake-up call, I decided to take a much-needed break from the apps.

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Recently, I decided to get back out there and downloaded both Hinge and Tinder. Yesterday evening, I found myself thinking it was finally time to delete Tinder because the "success rate" was abysmal for me. I had plenty of matches and messages, but the conversations went absolutely nowhere.

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Well, today I got the final push to delete it when a guy I’d been talking to for a few days suddenly unmatched me. The conversation had been incredibly dry, and I was doing all the heavy lifting. I had been giving him the benefit of the doubt, thinking, "Hey, maybe he’s just having a busy couple of days like I did a few months ago." He would reply with one line and I'd reply with enthusiasm, so maybe I wasn't too low effort with him.

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But it wasn't the unmatching that broke the camel's back. It was the realization that I didn't even know his name. I have sat here for a while now trying to dig into my brain to remember what he was called, and absolutely nothing came to mind. I had been talking to this human being for days, and he was a total stranger to me.

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IDK but I consider that a wake-up call. It signaled to me that I have completely checked out. The experience of using Tinder is turning me into someone I don’t want to be: someone who juggles multiple low-effort people at the same time while giving the bare minimum in return. In trying to shield myself from the inevitable disappointments of modern dating, I’ve become hardened.

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I mean, I wasn't even mad or anxious that he unmatched me; I just felt total numbness. For me, that indifference is a huge red flag.

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Maybe it's the paradox of choice these apps create, or maybe it's just the compounding fatigue of so many disappointments, but I am genuinely dissociating. I also wonder if my subconsious approach to Tinder was poor because it has that reputation of being the "low-effort, quickie" app, whereas Hinge has always felt a bit more intentional for me. Most of my meets from Tinder have been also crass too.

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I used to be excited about talking to new people which meant I remembered their names, but not anymore. Now it's like the same dance every time and I've just lost touch with myself.

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So for now, I'm sticking to Hinge and focusing heavily on my life outside of the digital world because I think if you've been on an app for months and are only getting breadcrumbs, it's time to change the environment (you or the app), in this case, I'm taking control by deleting Tinder and choosing to touch grass.

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I know the apps increase our chances but on or off the apps, I hope we all find what we are looking for out there.

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TL;DR: Deleted tinder and choosing to touch grass after realising I don't remember the name of the guy I was talking to for days after he unmatched me.

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After yet another dating fail where, despite a lovely conversation and a date that spanned hours, I got the "I think you're amazing, but I didn't feel any spark" text, and I am genuinely amused, and perhaps a bit concerned, by the unrealistic expectations that have become normalized through the "fast-food" logic of dating apps.

Everyone claims they are tired of apps and want "traditional dating," but they seem to have forgotten how traditional attraction actually works and the effect of continued exposure to people. In the past, you grew attracted to each other because you were confined to the same spaces over time, doing stuff together or having brief interactions here and there.

Your colleague is just a colleague until, after months of shared projects, you discover you like them more than expected. Your friend is just a friend until you realize you're attracted to them. Everyone is just someone you're not attracted to until time changes how you see and feel about them.

Yet modern dating has abandoned this gradual discovery in favor of a "slot machine" vibe. A person you’ve barely spoken to expects "Fourth of July" fireworks within two hours, or they move on. They treat dating like a social media feed that, if they aren't hooked in the first 30 seconds, they tell you "there was no spark" and move on to the next person.

I’m not saying you shouldn't want chemistry; I do, too, and by all means, buy a taser if you want a spark that badly. But we are conflating raw, instantaneous sexual attraction and anxiety with the actual foundations of a relationship. Again, don't get me wrong, those are just as important...

And the rhetoric that, "if you don't feel it in date one, you won't feel it ever" is even more interesting because that's not how it works!!! Give yourself and your dates time to ignite or whatever.

And outside dating, this is also how we live; we have grown into people who have forgotten how to let something grow. We want instantaneous success, financial growth, and everything else without putting in the work, as if the people we admire just had it dropped on their laps.

Jokes all around. End of rant. I'll be fine, we'll be fine.