dating apps were ruining my life, so i deleted them.

 

it's been a year since i deleted all the dating apps from my phone. i know most people don't think its the  big feat that i am making it out to be, but i really had to pat myself on the back when i finally swiped that annoying flame app into the trash where it belonged. however, it wasn't just tinder, i ditched absolutely all my dating apps. cold turkey.

tinder. hinge. bumble. hot or not. coffee meets bagel. facebook dating. all of them.

 

i was possibly, inappropriately early to the online dating game back in my late high-school/early college days. i don't quite remember how i found out about tinder, but when i signed up, i truly almost lost my mind. however, the plethora of little ceasars style hot n' ready coitus was enough to turn any sexually available young person into a bit of an addict, which we will get to later. this toppled with the fact that dating apps are structured as some sort of game where the winnings were just an actual response to something you had to say. WITH WORDS. SENTENCES EVEN. NOT. EMOJIS. i think the worst part of my experience on dating apps was the fact i didn't realize how attached i was to "winning" this hypothetical game until i threw in the hypothetical towel, chucked up a deuces and walked off the court.

 

i thought that somehow finding "my person" would suddenly mean that all bets were off and that i'd won the "game." however, i did find someone on dating apps, but we opened our relationship, wanting to get more from said dating game because we needed more. soon realized that this game i'd created for myself ran a little deeper than finding a single person that would complete me because i had done all the work and i still wasn't complete. however, outside of the crippling mental illness, i was actually quite content with myself. i knew i had some growing to do, but, before i deleted my apps, i constantly associated my own personal growth with the growth i did in the relationships i got from these apps. that "more" that i thought i needed was "more" sexual and intimate relationships with other people and thus, online dating became the perfect fix for a problem that i didn't think i had: a problem with being alone.

 

dating apps always preach the message that their goal for people to delete their app. that is a lie. that's essentially where the aforementioned game comes into play. you sign up, swipe, exchange a few messages here-and-there, go on a few bad dates or maybe even a few good dates, have a little sex and maybe, just, maybe, you'll meet your match. 

 

and then what? 

yes, there are benefits from dating apps: sex, validation, and even, if you're lucky, a meaningful relationship or two. maybe you'll get married, have a few kids or so? or maybe you don't? but what happens when you don't want a conventional relationship with kids and a wedding? what do you when you're not with the significant other you spent so much time trying to find? what happens to the shit you liked to do before you started dating them that you ditched in order to find them? obviously, we live in a progressive society that teaches people that YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL. you can get the happy ending that you see in rom-coms AND still have a life of your own (or at least you're supposed to), but i think that society makes you forget that all of that is possible and that, finding love isn't anyone's biggest problem, its figuring out what to do outside of that.

 

when i dated online, it consumed me. whether it be swiping on people, responding to messages, editing my profile, checking out the profile updates of my other matches and even just analyzing all the shit people were saying to me, i probably spent most of my time on dating apps. the tinder notification literally gave me the kind of adrenaline rush that mfs get from doing key bumps in the club. it was sickening. however, deleting dating apps forced me figure out other ways to spend my time besides looking for love and really enjoy that time. in deleting my dating apps, i got my life back. i started looking in front of me and noticing what was there the entire time: that fact that i already had love in my life.

 

love from my partner. love from my friends. love from my family. love from myself.

i realized that even if i wasn't actively looking for love, i still deserved love and i was going to get it, even if it wasn't at that exact second. the kind of love that people think they're getting the moment they match with someone wasn't going anywhere, even though i wasn't swiping on people. i wasn't wasting time focusing on my own life, i was building the kind of life for myself that i thought i could only get from other people. the kind of life that i thought i couldn't have or that, at least, i wouldn't be happy having if i was single.

although i do find myself wondering, especially now during a pandemic, how i'm going find new people to date, but the thing is, since i deleted the apps, my life really hasn't changed. i'm still not going on dates. i'm still not meeting anyone worthwhile. hell, i didn't even really get much sex from the apps, so the decline in my sex life wasn't that drastic of a change. but, at least, i don't have to worry whether or not someone is going to send me a picture of their penis. i also haven't had to worry about the slew of  3 AM "u up?" texts from people who only knew me by a first name and a photo. although it was fun to go around and screenshot the massive amount of text messages i got from white men calling me a "nubian queen",  i had spent so much of my life worrying about matches and romance that i forgot that i deserved much more than a one-word response and a thumbs-up emoji from someone who could not comprehend the idea that my hair could go from waist-length braids to short and curly in the matter of a few days.

 

i deserved someone who could make me feel as good as i made myself or at least, a fraction of that, a quarter of that, an OUNCE OF THAT. dating is supposed to be fun. dating apps made that process into a full-time job. i already had one and moreover, most of the people on them were definitely not putting in the same work as me, so we definitely didn't deserve the same title at the same company. and i sure as hell didn't want to feel like i needed that job when i could have just a more fun freelancing, making my own schedule and booking meetings with actual clients who could "deliver."

i know that i jumped around a lot with various euphemisms about dating, but at the end of the day, the message is: you do not need dating apps. they need you.  your self-worth isn't and shouldn't be determined by an algorithm. people aren't just faces on a feed. when you get on an app, your focus shouldn't be to delete the app and how many people you're meeting, how the people on the app make you feel about yourself outside of it.