I renounced love forever (for the first time) three years ago. My last long-term relationship was a messy one, and its ending was even messier. Nothing says “this isn’t working out” quite like taking a job on the other side of the world, so I left my life in London and moved to Melbourne. For future reference, if you decide to break up with your boyfriend, move continents and start a new job all at once, quitting smoking on the day you board the plane is more ambitious than realistic.
Nevertheless, I resisted nicotine’s comforts over the broken-hearted six months that followed – even if I did succumb too much both to bursting into tears and staying home on Friday nights to eat Nutella from the jar. The girls at my new work soon tired of my blotchy breakup face and staged an intervention, recruiting me into their strange fellowship of internet dating.
Internet dating has become such a ubiquitous experience within our digitised universe, looking back on my embarrassed and naive start strikes me now like a half-remembered dream from a forgotten other century. The gay community embraced – ahem – the “hook-up app” with Grindr in the dawning days of the smartphone universe but it took until 2012 for Tinder to transform “dating” for everyone else. Whereas match sites like OK Cupid and RSVP sold themselves on their ability to detect attraction through surveys and algorithms, Tinder reduced compatibility to mutual likes, mutual friends and a couple of photos.
It appeared so easy, yet, like anything left to the devices of organic humanity, it became rapidly complex. There’s a herd phenomenon the girls at work and I endured with equal amounts of mirth, competition and disgust: having the same likes and similar attributes of your colleagues and friends will attract and match you to the same suitor. In an office environment, all dating the same guy is not collegiate – it’s too cosy.
I learned a lot about myself through the expanse of my digital dating adventures. I learned that I am uncomfortable with strangers eating food from my plate, that boys from Orkney are good kissers, and that every comedian in Melbourne knows each other – or, if they don’t, they are merely pretending to be a comedian. What I learned most of all was that my right-swipe match reverted again and again to the “type” I have been dating all my adult life; mostly bearded hipsters in corduroy, loving vinyl, smoking rollies.
What I didn’t find was love. On dating apps where “compatibility” is measured in shared interests, aesthetics and friends, matches default to the mirror of yourself. Mine just had beards. No matter how sweet-tasting the kisses, it was basically still Friday night and I’d merely progressed to banging Nutella, not eating it.
Of course, there were unexpected advantages to bringing different versions of myself into my life. My tentative return to stand-up comedy after a 15-year absence was nursed by comedian Bert, who got all my jokes and laughed aloud in all the right places. Then there was young David, seeking an older woman but also a media career, and found in me if not the cougar of his dreams at least a mentor to talk him through contracting. The handsome gynaecologist, who’d also dated a friend of mine, was the person I knew I could trust to recommend a new specialist. It is a great relief to my ego that that particular affair ended before he got near my vagina.
It was after gorgeous, brilliant, charming musician Richard and I fumbled through a realisation that our attraction was artistic, not amorous, that I renounced love forever for the second time. It was a time-management issue as much as anything else – with my career and social circles so enriched by the men who internet dating brought into it, David negotiating a new contract, and Richard and I collaborating on two music theatre pieces together – the red notifications of Tinder messages appeared as onerous as email. Deleting internet dating apps from all my devices was an act of unburdening as potent as leaving a bad relationship, or giving up smoking.
This may explain my rosy glow as noticed by a dark-eyed stranger when he spotted me across a crowd of a thousand people, tumbling into a big, boozy party I had not planned to attend. Yes, our eyes met, yes, we both blushed as we smiled, and in the fulfilment of many cliches about love at first sight that exist perhaps – just perhaps – because they are true, we spoke, touched, exchanged numbers ... and have been together ever since.
We live within a small radius, and were both on Tinder not long before we met. I’ve wondered if we skipped one another instantly or whether my eyes lingered a second on his face before seeing we had no favourite bands in common and swiping him away. He may like pop, while I like punk, but he does, after all, have a beard.
