Experts say apps like Tinder and Hinge make it easier than ever to meet your match—but it’s also easier than ever to cheat. What’s a married couple to do?
A few weeks ago, Vanity Fair‘s article on “Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse” came out and almost shut the Internet down with gems like, “It’s like ordering Seamless. But you’re ordering a person.” Married people were feeling all smug and relieved until they got to the part about how many people on Tinder are not actually single: GlobalWebIndex found that a full 30 percent of Tinder users are married, 12 percent are in a relationship, and the majority of those dishonest users are men. Tinder disputes the statistics, telling Redbookmag.com they did their own study and found that just 1.7 percent of users were married. However, they wouldn’t detail how they conducted the survey, and GlobalWebIndex stands behind its research, saying their firm talked to 47,622 Internet users around the world.
Even if Tinder’s numbers are correct, we’re still talking about tens of thousands of potential cheaters out there. (And that’s not counting the millions of AshleyMadison.com users who had their information leaked recently.) Yes, people have been cheating since the dawn of time, but some experts think dating apps are changing the landscape more quickly and in a much more troubling way than any pre-Internet tryst ever could. “Exploring online is a known gateway to experimentation,” says Dr. Pepper Schwartz, love and relationship expert for AARP and Life Reimagined. “It’s like going down the street looking in windows. Once you look, you might buy.”
That seemed to be the goal of a guy named Ray*. Nicole*, 29, says she tried Tinder since everyone was talking about it, and came across Ray, who seemed cool and well-educated. They matched, got to chatting, and eventually exchanged phone numbers. At first, he kept asking her to come over to his house during the day, telling her he rents out his house, but all his tenants were away on vacation. She (smartly) said she’d rather meet in public, but the two hadn’t yet met in person. Then, one morning, she woke up to this text message:
“I was thoroughly offended and disgusted,” Nicole says. Since she didn’t get the text message until a few hours later, she figured it was too late to call Ray’s wife and tell her he was trying to cheat. But now, she says she’s learned a lot from the experience. “I assume that everyone on Tinder is single,” she says. “Now I actually have to ask people on dating sites whether they’re married or attached!”
Tinder – The First 48 Hours.
I’m kind of an insular socializer. I tend to stick to the group of people I know, occasionally branching out to the people they know, but mostly just staying in my comfort zone. But here I am, heartbroken for the millionth time, same guy as always, same story, too. I know that the only way to change patterns is to actually do things differently, so I decided to try out Tinder. I have a ton of friends who use it, and though none of them have formed solid relationships with the guys they’ve met, they’ve at least gone out with new people and gotten unstuck from their ruts, which is exactly what I need. Now I’m not totally new to Tinder, but I’m pretty close. I’ve had it on my phone 5 times, 4 of which ended in app deletion within 10 minutes. It just hit me wrong, when the app would ask if I’d like to “keep playing” after I matched with someone, it always felt weird. The admission that the hunt for intimacy is just a game makes me sad, and then I’d feel bad for swiping left so quickly, so much so, that I’d lose any recognition that all these faces blurring together were actual people sharing the same city, sidewalks, air as me. I thought it wasn’t fair of me to deny the possibility of a connection with someone just because I found their photo on a boat or mountain, or crouched in front of a graffiti wall (as though they had anything to do with it) embarrassing, and I’ve always deleted the app almost as fast as I’ve installed it, never giving it any sort of actual chance to grow on me. So I decided to commit to 48 hours on Tinder, and reply to any and all messages I receive. Here’s the diary of my first 48:
Hour 1:
I’ve downloaded the app. Can’t bring myself to open it. I don’t want to find a date on my phone, I want to find one face to face. Maybe I don’t even want to find one at all.
Hour 2:
Ugh. Why does it have to say my age? I hate this. Changed my profile pics. Hard to find the right ratio of good-weird, cats to tits..
Hour 6:
Opened the app to find that someone “superliked” me. Closed the app, took a Xanax. Didn’t realize “superliking” was a thing, that’s a pretty bold claim to make.
Hour 8:
Reopened it. Left swiping like there’s a pot of gold at the end. Dude in a business suit sitting in full lotus position? Left fucking swipe. Cop with tattoos superliked me? I hate this. Guy on a boat, guy on a mountain, guy on a jet ski proudly wearing wrap around shades, another guy on a boat, and another. All left swiped. And now they won’t show me any more matches. They say I have to swipe on someone to see more matches. Maybe if you gave me ANY acceptable choices, but this has been shit so far.
Hour 12:
My phone tells me I have a new superlike. I throw my phone.
Hour 12.25:
Curiosity is killing me. So many new superlikes, none of them fuckable. I swipe right on a guy who says he likes dark humor, and that nothing’s off limits. We match, whaddya know. I’m not going to reach out first, I’m not at all invested or intrigued, I just don’t want the machine to make me stop. Keep letting me play mystery date!!!
Hour 16:
Two bulging handfuls of matches, no messages yet. I’m okay with this. I’m finding it kind of therapeutic to embrace my pettiness without consequence, mocking the photos with wild abandon. Doubting loudly one’s age, another one’s actual blood relation to the child on his lap, yet another one’s sincerity in general. Score one point for the hidden benefits of this terrible, terrible social experiment.
Dressing Too Sexy…What’s Underneath It?
They do want attention, but if you need to ask, then they don’t want it from you.
I don’t wear sexy clothes. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t shave — anything. None of that stopped me from getting sexually assaulted, catcalled, harassed, and stalked. I have suffered because men are sexually attracted to me, and no choice I make will stop this. Refusing to conform to the norms of sexual attractiveness does not stop it. Binding my breasts does not stop it. Being read as gay does not stop it.
So why fucking bother?
If I’m going to be harassed no matter what, why not look good for the people who are respectful and who I might actually want to fuck?
I have spent a long time blaming myself for the harassment I’ve received, and every time that happens, I cut out another part of myself. I stop wearing things that I think I look good in so that I don’t accidentally turn people on. I stop flirting with people, I stop casually affectionate touch in case it is misread. I even stopped consciously recognizing my own sexual desire in case I accidentally communicated it to other people.
I read the saddest email I sent a few years ago:
Your continued affection makes me uncomfortable. It’s the same feeling as when someone I’m not into holds me in a hug too long, or someone I don’t like enough grabs my boob as a joke. It’s a creepy sort of feeling. I don’t look down on you or think of you as a bad person or a fool, but continued conversation with you makes me feel violated in a small way. And it’s ok, I’m willing to tolerate it if it helps you, but your love does not feel good to me and you should know that.
I told someone I was willing to tolerate feeling violated so that they could feel better. And, that’s how I used to look at the word. I felt obligated to suffer to any degree so that male sexuality would not be inconvenienced. I carried immense guilt for men who were attracted to me and whose attractions I did not return. But, my sexuality completely shut down, and I was left unable to form romantic connections to anyone. Being unsexy led to a miserable, sterile dead end.
Why do women wear sexy clothes?
Because women are fucking horny! Because there are few socially acceptable outlets for women to communicate desire, but how they dress is one of them. Because women are looking to get fucked, just like men are.
Two Years Later My Tinder Date Finally Paid Off!
“I’m in finance.”
Oh, great, that’s a decent response to the ever common, “so, what do you do for work?” dating question. I was especially relieved at this response considering the fact that on my Tinder profile I specified, “no comics.” I had just broken up with a comic, the third of which I had dated, and I was, as they say, “over it.”
There’s a certain unmatched immaturity and weird competitiveness that comes from these special little beings, particularly when they’re paired up with a female comic such as myself. Now, don’t get me wrong, not all comics are assholes. But a great many of them are, and when they’re not, they’re often quite immature, or very sexist, or extremely egotistical, or unbearably cynical and insensitive, or terrible with their finances and in incredible amounts of debt, or just overall difficult to have any real conversations or sweet moments with. But again, they’re not all like that. Just the ones I’ve dated. And met. And heard about.
But it wasn’t just comics I was trying to avoid. I wanted someone far away from the entertainment industry as a whole, which can often be a challenge when dating in a place like Los Angeles, but here we were. Finance. Lucky me!
We were both really excited to meet, but I was working a day job in addition to an internship at a comedy theater in exchange for free classes. My schedule was slightly hectic and he and I lived a “far” distance from each other. (I was in the valley and he was in Hollywood, which in any other part of the country would be close, but in LA we might as well have been in different states) These circumstances meant that it would take awhile for us to set something up.
As time went by, he was seemingly more frustrated with the wait. His impatience was becoming quite clear, but he was cute and I was still serial dating at the time. We had sexted a couple of times and he seemed like he might be fun in that area of life. My policy at that point was to say yes to a date with anyone and everyone because at the very least I’d have a great story. So when someone got an attitude with me, I didn’t really care. I wasn’t looking for “Mr. or Ms. Right” at the time. I was looking for someone to have wild sex with, or at the very least give me something entertainingly bad to talk about later.
Eventually after a bit of whining and attitude, he told me he might be able to meet me during his lunch hour on a Monday. He worked from home but could pull himself away at around 1 if that was okay with me. Best part about it up until this point was the meeting place he chose: Target. There’s a Target in Hollywood with outdoor seating, in a sort of strip mall-type atmosphere. So that’s where we met. Not for lunch, just to meet. It was clear by this point that he wasn’t even intrigued enough to pay for a meal, or even go halfsies. Despite my policy of saying yes to everyone, I hadn’t had a super douchey date yet. Up until this point, that is.
I couldn’t really figure it out. He would sip on his green can of Monster energy drink while telling me things like, “you’d probably be a pretty good cam girl. You could make like…15 bucks an hour I bet.” He talked about his ex girlfriend a little more than most would consider to be polite on a first date. We also talked about my comedy a little bit. I told him I just received an email about the Last Comic Standing audition at the Hollywood Improv. I showed him the email because I was excited, and he said, “Oh, so, it’s probably like an open mic or something.” I explained that, no, this was an invite-only type of situation, to which he replied, “But probably a lot of people get invited, like thousands I’m sure, right? ‘Cause they have to have bad people to film at those things.”
I didn’t get it. Why was this guy being such a jerk, and why was he acting like every comic I’d ever dated? Was I wrong in thinking that the competitive asshole element would be removed if I dated someone outside of my chosen career path? Why was this guy starting to turn into the green monster that he drank before very my eyes?
I left the “date” feeling strange and almost defeated. What was it all for? I wasn’t even left with a good story. It was just…icky. I put it out of my brain for the most part but every now and then I would think about how odd it all was. About four months ago I deleted our message thread, which I had forgotten even existed, during a phone cleanse.
A few weeks ago I asked a neighbor if she had any good dog watchers/walkers that she could recommend. I was preparing for a trip and wanted to get a good person at a decent price so I was asking around. She texted me the contact numbers of three people and said they were all great. I went to contact the third one and realized…he was already in my phone! IT WAS HIM!!! The asshole “finance” guy was a dog walker?! No WAY!? I texted my neighbor to tell her and here’s how the conversation went:
Me: One of your dog walkers is a guy I went on a TERRIBLE tinder date with! I went to message him and he was already in my phone! Eep!
Neighbor: Wait whaaaaaaat!!! (Dog Walker’s Name)??? Lololol
Me: It’s funny too cause I saw him walking (Dog’s Name) once and was like, that looks like that (Dog Walker) guy, nah, no way, he said he was like a big shot finance guy. Can’t be (Dog Walker).
Neighbor: What?? Rly??? He is like an unemployed comedian.
Boom. And there you have it. The explanation. And a justification. It suddenly all made sense! The way he always came back with a snarky remark when I texted, “Tonight won’t work, I have a show.” The way he acted when I told him about my audition, and the way he acted in general. Everything finally added up! He was just another in a long line of asshole comics.
So the date wasn’t completely pointless. I guess I did get a pretty decent story out of it after all.
I’m No King Henry V111: For Better Or For Much Worse
Imagine the mess he would’ve made if the King had Tinder?
Marriage is a beautiful union between two people who think they can stand being around each other for the rest of their lives. Many people get wed. Some do it twice it’s that good. Any more than that and you’re just being greedy. Granted, life expectancy during the 20th Century increased rapidly, so now it’s easy to cram a couple of marriages in there. But back in the Middle ages, you were lucky if you hit your 30th birthday. So it’s impressive that King Henry VIII had 6 wives in 55 years. His claim to fame is being a polyamorous screwhead that it coined this famous rhyme. “King Henry VIII, to six wives he was wedded. One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded.”
Catherine Of Aragon
The first victim was once divorced from Henry’s brother, Catherine Of Aragon. I mean, already this is off to a bad start. You don’t date your brother’s ex, even if he is dead. Have some respect. But the King doesn’t have any as he was having coitus all over the place, while poor Catherine had years of multiple miscarriages and stillborn births. You’d think the disrespect he displays to his wife would be a sign of what kind of man he is to the next wife, who happened to be one of the women he was having an affair with.
I Always Meet In Public First…Now
My relationship is such that if I want to have a little somethin’ somethin’ on the side, I’m free to do so, and vice versa.
My partner and I are both pansexual, so our needs can’t always be fully met by one another, and we also have quite insatiable sexual appetites, so this arrangement works out great for us. Quite often, we like to invite others into our bedroom because as we see it, the more the merrier! I felt the urge to invite someone to join us one Friday night after a set at a show. Because many LA comedy shows are overbooked, they tend to go a little long, and this show was no exception. My attention span can be quite short, especially after having just performed, so, as in many similar situations, I started to play my favorite phone game: Tinder!
I quickly matched with a guy who had some pictures of him playing soccer. He appeared athletic, which, when all I’m in the mood for is sex, is really about all I look for in a guy, at least at first. Now, I will say that I, like everyone reading this, have heard all the reasons to be terrified of meeting up with strangers. In many people’s minds Tinder and other dating apps are filled with nothing but murderers, rapists, and other crazy types. There are a lot of warnings, especially for ladies out there, to be careful before inviting someone into their lives in general, so I tend to be careful about who I invite into my home and whose homes I go into.
One way that I exercise precaution is to meet people in public first. However, after you’ve dated, say, a hundred or so different people, you tend to get sick of the whole meet-up-for-coffee-see-if-there’s-a-vibe routine. Every time I’ve ever done it, it’s been a formality, a fairly unnecessary step toward the inevitable goal of fucking each other’s brains out. It also wastes precious time that could’ve been spent in between, on top of, or underneath the sheets. Because I’d had such good luck up until this point, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just invite the guy right over. Part of my boldness and desire to get right to it was because my partner was going to be home, and this guy seemed to be into the idea of both of us. Pairing that with the fact that he mentioned Tantric massage, and said that was actually something he did professionally, made my decision a no-brainer. So I invited him to come over and give my partner a tantric massage training session of sorts. I felt like this was a pretty safe bet, as my partner is over six feet tall, and works with his hands for a living. He’s a very strong guy, what could be the threat?! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!
10 Ways Millennials Do Relationship but Don’t Date
Is dating dead?
Not only is it challenging for Generation X to understand the new millennial mating rules of the 21st century, it’s difficult for millennials themselves to understand them, since there’s often so much grey area. Here, we try to define the terms explicitly, so we can all get on the same dating page. Even though dating is dead.
1. Dating or Going on Dates:
This does NOT happen anymore. It’s too old fashioned, too formal. The best you’ll get is coffee, a casual drink, or hanging out at someone’s house or apartment. If you want to be taken out to a nice dinner, take yourself. Even if people do get together in a way that an older generation would consider an official date, millennials will never call it a “date.”
2. “Talking”:
This means texting between two people who have a clear interest in one another in some romantic or sexual way, but who aren’t ready to make anything official. It may include face-to-face communication and/or sex, though it’s not a requirement. A.k.a. hanging out.
3. Hooking Up:
Some kind of early sexual exchange without commitment. This can be anything from intercourse to just making out, though it’s usually more NC-17 than PG. Hooking up, no matter how good the sex is or how many orgasms were had, does not determine or inform seriousness, exclusivity or commitment.
4. The Quick Jump:
After talking or hooking up, if both parties are interested in a relationship, they will eventually become significant others. There is no in between phase where they are going on dates. Things are quicker today: it’s a yes or a no, a few short weeks of being unofficial, followed by a serious relationship. There is an extreme casual and an extreme formal, and pretty much nothing in between.
What Dating App Are You Using? See If You Are On the Right One.
The best dating app out there right now is totally up for debate.
Some people love good old, reliable Tinder, while others prefer meeting friends of friends through Hinge or making the first move on Bumble. A lot of it comes down to personal preference. But what isn’t up for debate are which apps we’re actually using. And according to technology company Quantcast, which looked at over 480,000 searches from January 6, 2017- February 5, 2017 for Bustle, there’s a really, really clear winner when it comes to the most searched for dating apps right now.
Before we dive into all the top ones, I’m not recommending you go and download all of the most popular apps right away. You need to stick to what works for you and — crucially— you don’t want to overwhelm yourself. “They say you can have ‘too many cooks in the kitchen.’ I say you can have too many apps on your phone,” Erika Ettin, online dating coach and author of Love at First Site, tells Bustle. “I generally recommend that my clients stick to two apps, with the caveat that they use them proactively. This does not mean getting 20 matches a day and writing to none of them. This means limiting the number of matches they get to, say, three to five, and then reaching out to all of them. If, of three matches, one converts to a date, that is more than enough to line up per day! Just like you archive your emails (well, I do), I advise keeping your app inboxes clean.”
It’s really sound advice. So keep it in mind and check out the most popular dating apps this year:
1. Tinder Was The Clear Winner
Damn. I mean, damn. Seventy-four percent— that’s total domination of the market (and the pie chart). It seems like we’re creatures of habit and we really do like sticking to Tinder to get us by.
2. OkCupid Was Runner Up
OkCupid came in second, which was no surprise to me. Of the less “app-y” dating apps, all of my friends use OkCupid, and some have had a lot of luck on it, so I’d say it’s a safe bet.
3. Grindr Held Its Own
It may have only gotten five percent of searches, but that’s enough use to nab Grindr third place. It’s well-established, easy to use, and people love it.
4. PlentyOfFish Came In Fourth
We’re already down to four percent of the market, which pales next to Tinder, but is still enough to rank POF at fourth place.
5. eHarmony Rounded Out The Top Five
Finally, eHarmony — and their commercials that I cannot escape whenever I go to visit my mom in New Hampshire — finished out the top five. Maybe it’s their advertising campaign, maybe it just works, but it nabbed three percent of the usage.
Well, if you want to play a numbers game then there’s a clear winner on which app people are using this year. But like I said, it’s more about what works for you. You’re better off having three matches you actually speak to than 40 you rack up and ignore. Stick with what fits.
Curated by Erbe
Original Article
“Behind the Swipe” with LOVE TV — The Story of 10 Tinder Dates in One Month
My name is Amor Yates and I’m the girl who went on ten Tinder dates in one month for a podcast. That’s my pitch. If you’re questioning my sanity right now then you’d be right.
Ten Tinder dates in a month is a huge undertaking even if you weren’t trying to produce a show. But I was trying to produce a show. So, I set myself a target goal: ten dates in one month, ten interviews, ten hours worth of audio. Easy, right? It seemed like enough material to make a compelling story, especially when online dating has become as ubiquitous as it is today.
I thought the show would write itself. I was wrong.
There were a few factors that I did not consider when I got the idea for “We met on Tinder.” I thought that once I had done the interviews, collected the tape that the hard part would be done. However, that wasn’t the case. It also wasn’t the case that I was entirely interested in documenting this dating digital age. I wish it were that easy.
Instead, I had a few hundred different motivations, but one in particular that was compelling me more than ever. So I had to make the show. There was no question that I had to make even when friends and family thought it was a weird concept. But I don’t want to ruin the story for you. Instead, I want to let you in on a few “We Met on Tinder” secrets.
I am teaming up with LOVE TV to showcase a behind-the-scenes of “We met on Tinder.” As I release the swipes on iTunes and anywhere you listen to podcasts, I’ll also be releasing articles discussing what happened behind each swipe. Swipe 1 has been released and is available to listen now. Enjoy the swipes.