September 28, 2023
Alright, let’s talk about the dating apps. It is absolutely baffling to me that there are people my age who have never experienced these dating apps, because I feel like I’ve been on and off of them for all of my adult life – at least the entire portion of my adult life where I was paying rent or a mortgage. I guess I got on Tinder and Match.com for the first time in 2013? 2014? I was in graduate school and I didn’t have any full body pictures in either of my profiles because I thought I was fat. I actually thought I was the most hideous person on the planet back then, so it’s honestly shocking that I put myself “out there” by getting on the apps. But loneliness will make you do crazy things. My very first online date was with a man named Jarred who I met on Match.com. He took me to a Lexington Legends game on a nice summer night. I had just lost a bunch of weight and my friend Sarah helped me pick out a little denim mini skirt from Old Navy, and a coral colored blouse to wear with it over a white camisole. He took me to dinner before the game, and I was so self-conscious about my weight (and my face and my personality) that I ordered a wedge salad with ranch dressing (I hate ranch dressing but that was all they offered) because I didn’t want to eat barbecue in front of this man. While we were at the game, I could tell he was having a terrible time and he pounded so many beers that I didn’t feel comfortable letting him drive me back to my car that I had left at the restaurant, and I asked a friend to come pick me up. Talk about a rough start. I never heard from that guy again.
If you’re unfamiliar with the landscape of modern dating, let me describe it for you. Unlike when I “matched” with Jarred in the web browser on my MacBook Pro when I was probably supposed to be working on my dissertation or grading some papers, most “online” dating occurs on your cellphone now. You download these apps, enter in some information about yourself (Name, age, do you smoke, how tall are you, body type, eye color – think like all the shit you have to reveal when you’re getting your driver’s license renewed), add some flattering photos, write a quick bio about yourself and voila! – you’ve got yourself the key to a miserable fucking time. Once you’ve made your bio and chosen all your preferences – search radius, age range, deal breakers like smoking and religion – then you start swiping.
Each app is a little different, but in general, a person’s bio will pop up on your screen and you will swipe right if you like them and left if you don’t. If you swipe right, all you have to do is wait to see if they also swipe right on you. If they do, it’s a match! Then the real work begins:
- You have to talk to this person;
- Then you exchange phone numbers;
- Then you plan a date;
- Then you cross your fingers that they show up for the date;
- If they do show up, you have to hope they look like their pictures or better;
- Then you have to hope that they are nice and funny;
- Then you have to hope that they think you are nice and funny. This will not always be obvious;
- You have to figure out how long the date should last – another round? Should we order dinner?
- Then you go through the whole kiss-or-no-kiss thing at the end of the night;
- Then you go through the whole “so do you want to hang out again sometime?” thing;
- If you both agree on that, you have to play that game to see who texts first the next day;
- Then whoever does text first gets to experience the agony of trying to find out if they’re being ghosted or not;
- Then if the other person does respond, you have to basically do it all again for date two.
This cycle continues until you exchange nuptials, or more likely, one of you slams on the brakes three months in, cheats six months in, or just disappears without a word (any time – this can literally happen any time). Like I said, a miserable fucking time.
It’s a tricky dance to say the least, but after my experience with Jarred, I did improve at the online dating game a little bit. I had some more good and bad dates from Tinder after that, and then found myself in a long term relationship with one of my former students. We moved to DC together, realized that we weren’t really enjoying our relationship, and I found myself back on the apps again. Tinder introduced me to an abusive, pathological liar who cheated on me every chance he could get – yet I was with that guy for about a year. Once I shook free of that, there was this nasty virus going around that caused a lot of people to stay in their houses for a while. Being single during Covid was really interesting. I met a really nice law enforcement officer (on the Bumble app) at that time. He was 6’5″ and we looked absurd together, but he picked me up in a nice Chevy truck and had his shirt tucked in for our first date. For our second date, we had a picnic on his porch one afternoon. It was the only time a man has ever called me after a date saying “Hey, I think you should get tested.” He got Covid back when Covid meant you had to stay home for two weeks and then things just sort of fizzled out after that. Many dates later, I met my most recent ex on an app called Coffee Meets Bagel and thought “WOW I’m finally done with all of this shit.” Narrator: She was not done with all this shit.
These last two years have marked my longest sentence in dating app jail. It’s no wonder I’m getting burnt out and tired of it. I have friends who are in healthy relationships who sometimes ask me if they can swipe on the apps for me. I get the appeal for someone who doesn’t get to do it every day – it’s like window shopping when you don’t have money – no guilt involved but you still get to make that judgement of “oooh, that looks nice” or “woof, not for me.” But man, I am tired of the swiping. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some fantastic men on the apps. I met one man who brought me flowers two dates in a row. I met one guy who took me to a flamenco dancing show in DC. I’ve made some friends on the apps. Hell, I met my ex on an app and I thought the sun shined out of his ass. But I’m trying to move on and I’m playing this numbers game, and Lady Luck has not been on my side so far. It’s such a frustrating thing. I’m so confident that I’m ready for my person when he gets here, but I just can’t find him.
In the spirit of Rebecca’s Love Equation, I decided to try something new. I scheduled a consultation with a matchmaker. Now, I’m not talking about that matchmaker from Mulan who is going to make sure I can pour tea like a lady and then match me up with a son in my village, or those matchmakers from reality tv – I’m not Indian or Jewish, and I’m not hot enough to go on Millionaire Matchmaker. I’m talking about these modern matchmaking services that are supposed to be designed for professionals who are too busy to date. Now, let’s get real. I’m not too busy to date. I’m willing to expend time and energy on things that matter to me, and not dying alone matters to me immensely. But I am busy and I am a professional, so I thought, why not?
I went to the website of the matchmaking service. I’m not going to mention the name of the specific service here because I might be a famous author, comedian or criminal someday and I don’t want to give them free advertising or slander them to the masses. We’ll give them a fake name here: RebeccaOnly.com. So I went to RebeccaOnly.com and there was little tag line on the page that said something like “Your last first date could be one click away.” I assumed that the one click they were talking about was the big blue button that said “Start Dating”, so I clicked it. The site asked me for my region and city, and a few basic pieces of information (name, email, phone number) and within minutes of filling out the online form, my matchmaker, let’s call her Kelly, texted me. She had me set up an appointment for Saturday at 11:30 am. When Saturday at 11:30 am rolled around, I had of course completely forgotten all about it and was elbow deep in some homemade tacos when she called. I begrudgingly answered the phone (for science!) and looked longingly at my beautiful chicken tacos, knowing they were going to be cold by the time I would be able to focus on them again. This, boys and girls, is why you need to have a personal calendar on your phone in addition to your work calendar.
Anyway, Kelly started the conversation by asking why I had reached out to RebeccaOnly.com. I told her a condensed version of my dating app rant above- I told her that I felt like I was putting a ton of effort into my dating life and getting no results. She asked me what I had tried and I described all the swiping and the ghosting and the crying. Okay, I didn’t mention the crying. I got the feeling that this was some sort of interview for her to assess whether I’m someone worth dating – or at least, she was trying to give me that impression. She made a comment about how RebeccaOnly.com was made for people like me, but then she said that most of the people in the service have never actually tried to date before. Apparently these are all people who have been so busy with school and their careers that they had never tried to date. “So…they’ve all been single all this time?” “No, no, they just usually date people they work with.” This little tidbit of information made me think these men are all a bunch of Mad Men types – powerful men who sleep with their administrative assistants OR, more likely, they are all a bunch of dweebs who haven’t left their home or the office in ten years. I realize my toxic trait of jumping to conclusions is at play here, and I didn’t mention this red flag in my periphery to Kelly.
Kelly kept making comments about how hilarious I am (look, I know I am hilarious, but people usually don’t tell me that) and how much she liked me and hoped that I wouldn’t “say something crazy” later in the interview. Every time I talked about “meeting men in the wild” she giggled with delight. She called me a “Powerhouse Lady” and regaled me with tales of other Powerhouse ladies who had been her former clients – ladies who went through life intimidating the ever-loving-shit out of every man they met and couldn’t find love because of male insecurities. She told me a story about a woman who kept taking lunch dates through the service (as opposed to dinner or drinks after work), so she was showing up for dates with her “work-attitude turned on”. The men didn’t like it and gave that feedback to the matchmakers. She started taking evening dates and wore jeans instead of trousers, and smiled a little more and BAM – married with two kids. The whole time she was describing this, my analytical brain was trying to figure out the key take-away here. It sounds like she was trying to tell me that I need to join RebeccaOnly.com so I can find those men who aren’t insecure and won’t be intimidated by a Powerhouse like myself…but also, the men in RebeccaOnly.com are intimidated by trousers and a bossy attitude, so I should be sure to smile more than usual? I was literally taking notes and wanted to raise my hand to get clarification, but the professor had already erased the white board.
I told her the truth, that I don’t think a man has ever been intimidated or insecure about me, and I don’t think that’s my problem. She disagreed wholeheartedly and said “When you meet one man of your caliber, you’ll understand the difference.” Yikes. See that’s the other thing, I don’t think my problem has been that I haven’t met quality, high-caliber men. I’ve met men with excellent jobs, interesting passions, great work ethic. I’ve met some who didn’t have those things, but for the most part, I’ve dated some people who had a ton to offer. Did they have PhDs or fancy job titles? No. But I wouldn’t describe that as “not of my caliber.” I stopped her there and said “See, that’s the thing I don’t care about. My dad doesn’t have any fancy degrees, but he’s one of the smartest people I know. I got my math brain from him, I know it. Not to mention how nice he is and how hard he works. If I met someone like him, I would say they are high-caliber.” I’ve definitely met men who weren’t high-caliber. That guy who told me his wife was dead probably wasn’t on my level. But what’s funny about that is that he had the same job title I did. Degrees and job titles don’t get you there. I think my problem is that I’m meeting some men of high caliber who either: 1) aren’t really into me and sometimes don’t treat me great as a result of that or 2) don’t do whatever it is that I need them to do for me to be into them.
She continued the interview and kept casually mentioning that the interview was to see if I could be a fit, and that she liked me so much that she was praying that I wouldn’t say something crazy to make her reject me. I think that’s when my business mind kicked in and I realized that she’s a marketer more than anything. She may be the number one love doctor in all of DC for all I know, but her number one job is to get people to pay their hard-earned money for RebeccaOnly.com. It’s her job to boost my ego and call me a Powerhouse and tell me that all the men in the wild and on the apps aren’t right for me because they aren’t high-caliber. Simultaneously, it’s her job to make me feel like RebeccaOnly.com is very exclusive and there’s a very high bar for getting accepted – that way I’ll feel comfortable paying a lot of money to meet these high caliber men who had to pass the same sniff test I did to get in. Only the sniff test she kept talking about seemed to only require that you don’t have absurd standards. I think if I had told her that I require a 6’5″ man with a well-kept beard who wore his shirts pressed and tucked in and drove a White Chevy truck that I needed help climbing up into – she might have been like, yeah, we can’t do anything for you. But she ran down the list of questions about my preferences that included:
- Deal breakers – whether they have children, whether they want children in the future, religion, politics, smoking. I always think this line of questioning is funny because it doesn’t include things like: does he have any felonies? does he go to therapy? does he have a history of infidelity?
- Physical type – Bass pro hat and flannel shirt usually does it for me. I also described this man I met at work once who had messy hair and a big mustache and was wearing this white button down that was kind of wrinkly with the sleeves rolled up, looking all disheveled like he just stepped out of Kennedy’s Situation Room during Bay of Pigs. I’ve never been more attracted to a man in my life.
- Other preferences: race, height, body type, etc.
- Top three qualities you’re looking for in a partner – I answered funny, thoughtful and accepting. She asked me to explain the third one. I said “Someone who will meet me where I am.”
After the interview was over, she told me that I wasn’t giving her any criteria she couldn’t handle and then she started to explain the matchmaker process. Apparently this is the way it works: The matchmaker matches you with someone and sends you a little overview of that person (no pictures) and you decide whether you want to meet that person. If you both decide you’d like to meet, the matchmaker sets up a date. The matchmaking service makes the reservation for both of you. If you are running late for the date or have to cancel, you text the matchmaking service and they let the other person know. The other person doesn’t get your phone number, last name or any other contact information (they won’t know where you work, what city you live in, nothing) until you decide to give them your number during the date. Then after the date, you each go back to your own matchmaker and give them feedback on how it went – meaning your date will provide specific feedback about you. Then you speak with a dating coach who brings that feedback back to you to talk about strategies for improving. This aspect of it is appealing to me because that’s one thing that dating “in the wild” doesn’t tend to give you – actionable feedback. A lot of times things fizzle out without so much as a “hey I’m not interested, thanks” and you often are left wondering what went wrong.
Unfortunatley, the appeal of the feedback and the safety feature of not exchanging contact info and having people who know exactly where you’re going and with whom was not enough to help me justify the cost of the matchmaking service. The cost was $5000 dollars up front and then about $200 per month of service. That’s like buying a new car – down payment plus a monthly payment. I know I said that finding my person is worth a lot to me, and I stand by that. If they were guaranteeing me that my husband would be in this pool of men I was about to meet, I would pay the $5000 dollars without batting an eye. I think I would even pay more than that. I would go into debt to do it. But what I can’t pay for is the uncertainty. I can’t pay that much for something that may turn out to be another dead end like everything else I have tried. I don’t know, ask me the same question when I make partner at Deloitte in 5 years and maybe my answer will be different. God, I hope I’m not still single when that happens.
I will say, although I was disappointed by the cost, I am still really glad I did that interview with the matchmaker. She had me confused by all of that talk about insecurity and caliber, but the exercise of saying out loud what I’m looking for was really powerful for me. I don’t think I’ve ever listed out the top qualities I’m looking for in a partner like that – I’m the same way with grocery lists, I just carry them around in my head and usually end up coming home with most of the things I need. I know what I’m looking for, but saying it out loud and now writing it down here has really helped solidify those qualities and prioritize the things I’m not willing to compromise on. I’m glad I did it. For science!
I am still collecting challenges and reccomendations for Rebecca’s Love Equation. Please email us at rebeccasloveequation@gmail.com or drop some recommendations at this link.
Cluelessness is the Mother of Invention 