Nine months after deleting my dating apps, I had a lapse in judgement a couple of days ago and signed up to them again. With every ping on my phone since, I’ve debated whether to start deleting them all over again.
It’s not that I’m not attracted to people, or that the chat is terrible (although my matches could be more inventive than opening with “where are you based?”). It’s that dating in your forties is wildly different to dating in your twenties and thirties.
When you aren’t driven by the need to get married or have kids, you have to really examine why you’re doing it. At the start of this year, I went on a date that was neither bad nor good. My date looked like a slightly worse version of his profile photos but nothing wildly off-base, and apart from the fact that he went on about his ex slightly too much, his conversation wasn’t awful. But 45 minutes in, I couldn’t bear another minute more.
I didn’t want to talk about how many siblings I had or what I did for work, and although I’m known for being so chatty I could even have a conversation with a pot plant, I couldn’t think of a single question I wanted to ask him. Twenty years ago, maybe I’d have stuck it out. But these days, I simply won’t.
I made my apologies and said I wasn’t feeling well, but judging by the fact that he unmatched me before I even got home, he knew the date had bombed.
I mostly use apps to meet new people and form new connections, and hope that they can deepen into something romantic so that I can share my life with someone. Sex and intimacy is one part of that, of course. But I already share my life in a deep and meaningful way with a lot of wonderful friends – something that has only got better with age. So I’m less inclined to plod through a bad date in search of something which, at this point in my life, I have in abundance.
At the end of this date, I realised I’d been feeling like this for the last few dates I’d been on, regardless of their gender. Feeling profoundly disconnected, unable to muster up much interest and struggling with conversation, I knew part of the problem was me. But I also suspected that part of it might be to do with the nature of dating apps. While they promise meaningful connection, they rarely deliver, and spending time on them often comes at the expense of doing things with people you already like and care about, or indeed doing them on your own. So shortly after that truncated date, I decided the best thing was to delete the apps completely and see what arose in its absence.
In the first week of going cold turkey, though, I worried about whether or not I’d ever meet anyone again. After all, as a 44-year-old freelancer, my life was arranged in such a way that meeting new people is limited: most of my friends are married, and my solid routine of the gym, home, and seeing friends and family leaves little time for anything else.
But I decided my half-heartedness wasn’t fair on the people I dated. Along with quitting drinking for the foreseeable future, and felt like a necessary reset.
In the last nine app-free months, I’ve made some interesting observations. I haven’t felt lonely or felt that itch that I might be missing out on meeting someone amazing. Something I only noticed in its absence was that while I was out with friends while on dating apps, a part of me would feel sad about not being out on a date.
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No matter how wonderful a time I was having, I had the nagging feeling I could be doing something more exciting. I hadn’t noticed that this has such strong parallels with why dating apps themselves feel so hollow and empty; even when you’re scrolling, you’re always hedging your bets against what else might be out there.
I’ve also experimented with something that a lot of people who’ve never done online dating seem, frustratingly, to think is the answer to your problems: dating people I’ve met organically in the wild. And the result is much the same: a mixture of ghosting and dodgy conversations about politics.
On Davina McCall’s Begin Again podcast, she recently told Paloma Faith that dating when you’re over 40 is hard because everyone comes with so much more baggage. And while I think that is true to a certain extent, emotional baggage tends to be hard only if one of you has little to no emotional intelligence, or refuses to work through their own issues.
Part of the reason I think it’s hard isn’t that there is necessarily less choice, but because when you take marriage and kids off the table, what you’re really left with is the truth and reality of what you want and can give, and what the other person can reciprocate with. It’s stark, and it can be a difficult thing to confront.
In the last two days back on the apps, I have realised two things – that although my life isn’t without worries, I mostly really like it and the people in it. And that’s why the apps aren’t working for me: I don’t have enough time to see the people I love as it is, and I feel less inclined to give up what I do have. The older I get, the less choice I want, and the more I want to take my time with things.
When I wasn’t constantly checking my phone for messages and feeling guilty for not replying, I had extra brain space to be curious about people I met while out and about. I was more open to meeting up with them because I wasn’t having my time and energy sucked up by endless messaging.
I don’t think dating apps are inherently bad, but I feel like they take me further away from the things that make me feel human, and what I require to actually make a connection with someone. On that note, I’ll be right back – there’s something I need to delete.
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