Listen: What I Learned From The Bad Dates Everyone Should Hear

We met for a beer in the bar that was going to close in a month. A few weeks ago, we had been chatting online, and the boring information made him look interesting and knowledgeable. We discussed our favorite books, When his name appeared on the screen of my mobile phone, I began to feel excited. The day before we were scheduled to meet, he had to change his Hinge resume to get a warning signal.

He complained: “If you use the dating application to collect Instagram attention to verify vanity, or if your resume is’ dog love and travel ‘, it should not come out because it is a walking corpse.” In three of his five photos, he grabbed a serious looking pocket dog, which is not ironic. In the remaining two photos, he shows Indian yoga travel and jungle travel.

“Do you want to cancel?” I asked my active colleague.

I played for a long time to find out the warning signs, hypocrisy, how tired of online dating, pushing women into simple stereotypes, and so on.

“Let’s go,” my friends urged. “He may surprise you!”  

So I put on my favorite tights and drank gin and tonic after preparation, which improved Dutch courage. But the only thing that surprised me was how impossible it was to say a word in a two-way conversation

“I’m just tired of dating apps,” he complained uninvited. “Girls are all the same. They’re just looking for self-improvement. When you really meet them, they have nothing.”

“You may need to take a break,” I began, but soon broke off and drank the beer in confusion.

On the way back to the railway station, he happily explained why women should bear the burden of contraception. Because men become less masculine after taking hormones, women have relatively nothing to worry about. This is a reaction to the mention of nearly dying from the side effects of taking hormonal contraceptives. I think we will never meet again. This fact hardly needs discussion. But a few minutes after we broke up, there was a light news that disappointed me.

“You are beautiful(your eyes are different.) But I can’t seem to find the rhythm in our conversation.” The report wrote, “to further clarify: your next report ‘You are as unique as others: dating applications are old, and there are a lot of content to cover.”

My friends and I laughed our heads off. The best actors in the world will tell you that soliloquy is hard to find rhythm. After I saved WhatsApp chat, I started to swipe my card again

Only a few days later did he retell the story with additional embellishments(“Then he told me about the menstrual period!”) Oh, I see. Of course, this guy won’t run for the Feminist Award this year. But apparently, he completely concealed some of his bad dates and disappointments about women. Dating showed him the worst. Is it possible that he is doing the same thing to me?

I have been a mature dating app enthusiast for a long time, but I have never spent much time checking my behavior before. My last long relationship was largely in line with the rise of apps. I have appeared in the brave new world. There, I can get the next contact from my family’s safety. I enthusiastically put myself into it and began to fall in love one after another, short love and single life. I soon found that our love life is no longer binary. A place where you are single or married. We are all looking for the next suitor, meeting a lot of people, and we are comfortable in the harsh terrain of Tinder’s era when we are infatuated with a person. In this era, the problems of exclusivity and when to delete applications far exceed meeting parents and becoming a Facebook organization.

But the light of swiping cards soon disappeared. When I ordered Deli Buru, the excitement of using that number to choose a date was old. I decided to let go of meeting someone. Most of my friends settled down and started moving with their spouses. Isn’t it better to bring real people to our dinners and parties instead of anecdotes about disastrous dates?

With so many choices, I think it’s easy to find love. But when I started dating the fate of the male plaintiff, I was already disappointed that my lovers could contact Ben and Jerry on their own initiative. Whenever I announced that I had met a new friend, I would line up at Netflix and Bridget Jones. My date may admit that he is tired of this process, but in fact, I feel the same way. I’m just rational and didn’t advertise on my resume.

The rise of dating applications means that love and sex are the most important issues in our minds, whether we are at the wedding table, eating spaghetti on the sofa in pajamas, or watching the latest real crime documentaries. To be your perfect partner, at least in theory, you can constantly provide others with what you need with just a few clicks. If things don’t go well, it may not seem to go well at all.

So I’m used to it. As long as someone suggests that my new lover may not be my perfect partner, I will be cold to him. I spent endless time trying to meet one person while keeping everyone I met at a distance. Compared with my disillusioned date, you may not want to express my feelings, but I quickly refused. Like him, I have low expectations of everyone, but more importantly, I have lower and lower expectations of myself.

So after I told my friends about the last bad date I decided on, I went home and deleted my app. This is not to get angry, nor to find new people in the legendary real life. I don’t want to leave the dating software. Because my mega girl date is right about their problem. I took a step back. Because when I saw him, I saw the person I didn’t want to be

Six months later, I started dating again, but now I hardly focus on marriage. When I meet someone, I often have a few drinks and go deep into someone’s mind for several hours without expectation. I am very happy with people and really enjoy their company. I am not going to weigh their words and find out whether they are really ready for stability. If you decide that the basic mode is single, the pressure will disappear.

Now, when I see my friends, they still ask me what dating news I can share, never. Instead, I told them about my travels, my writing, and the work girls I had hated for years. We can still share and laugh at many things, but now we really care about sharing and laughing, not the people whose names I can’t remember in a few months

I don’t want to communicate with people who don’t know each other. I want to observe my friends more often. I agreed to be one of my best friends’ groomsmen, busy planning her bachelor party. I gave my best friend some advice through many dating dramas of my childhood, and then we got drunk together and jokingly said that we were the other party’s backup plan. Instead of dating strangers, I arranged a date night with my roommate. We prepared an exquisite dinner and shared a bottle of wine. I spent a lot of time exercising to take care of my body. I took care of my soul by rereading my exercises and my favorite books. I have found many people, but not the ones I love. I am one of them.