My best dating app advice is “don’t.” It’s rich coming from me. I was on and off the apps for a decade and only hard deleted my profile and all its data four months ago.
It’s also not high conviction advice. Meeting someone offline is inefficient verging on unrealistic. Fix-ups are scant, matchmakers are frauds, run clubs skew young.
When I declared myself off the apps forever, my single friends told me I just needed a break. Another break.
I wanted to argue these technology companies took my years and sanity, while I offered a customer lifetime value that would thrill the greediest chief financial officer. Swiping until it became too excruciating, taking a break, swiping again, like the old joke: the nice thing about hitting yourself with a hammer is it feels good when you stop. It also feels like trying.
Instead I said the apps are not my oeuvre. I’m good in a foxhole, with high executive functioning. I’m nice. These qualities don’t translate to dating apps. Meanwhile I’m an awkward texter who can’t take a sexy photo.
I’d come to see the apps as a funhouse. Participatory attractions one paid to visit, knowing images would be distorted and there’d be scary dark corners, but expecting to come out happy. Maybe somewhere inside, there’d even be magic.
Funhouses are windowless and it’s easy to lose your bearings. I almost married a man I met in the funhouse. It felt like magic, but it was an illusion. When our engagement imploded, I was trapped, unable to move forward. I saw a psychologist to assess the tangled web that bound me. She was interested in every snarl. I kept picking at the first knot.
My fiancé had fibbed and aged himself up on the apps, by one year, from 29 to 30. He came clean on our first or second date, citing disinterest in twenty-somethings. I was 32, my age filters set 30 to 45. We were never supposed to meet.
The last man I met on the apps revealed in an early message that the name listed wasn’t his real name, but an anglicized one, and he wasn’t actually from New York. He’d moved here a year ago from southern Europe. I should have unmatched him, but I was lonely and open to life’s strange opportunities. Perhaps next summer I’d float blissfully in the Adriatic.
My date showed up shorter than advertised, but smart and ambitious. He was living in corporate housing and had few friends in the city. I’m a co-op dwelling native New Yorker. It didn’t seem like a fit, but I’d recently watched a reality show where the matchmaking protagonist’s mantra was “date ‘em ’til you hate ‘em” and I didn’t hate him, so I agreed to a second date. We couldn’t settle on an activity we’d both enjoy so we went to another dinner.
For our third date he proposed a road trip. I neither wanted to be alone in a car nor away overnight with this person, but I still didn’t hate him. We planned a city afternoon. Within an hour I hated him.
He wanted to walk, kissing, in the park. The public affection was gross. Because he’d lied about his height, I had to crouch uncomfortably to meet his lips. His work stories grew tedious. His tales about his home made me dread a future where I’d have to visit. He thought we were similar, but I had internet stalked him enough to know we weren’t, and that made me feel unseen, like he’d hastily mismeasured but decided I fit well enough.
When I said we lacked chemistry, he demanded reasoning, debating every point. He texted the next day. I reiterated disinterest. He continued to text. Annoyed, I blocked him.
A florist called asking for my address. My erstwhile match, using his anglicized name, wanted to send flowers. I declined to provide my address and rejected the bouquet. Then I received several long messages via the dating app, where this person and I were still matched, in his mind a door left intentionally ajar. He needed to list all the reasons I was wrong about us. He had been looking for a woman like me for a long time. Educated, with style, who he found humorous. And he wanted to sleep with me.
I went from annoyed to frightened. I sent the messages to a friend. An arch romantic, she replied, “He gets how great you are!”
Via text, I lashed out at her and would later have to apologize. Everything was about the boxes I checked for him. Not one word about what he offered. I told her about feeling unseen and frightened. Then I deleted my profile and removed the app from my phone. Forever.
In this last match I saw a monster chasing me through the corridor of the funhouse. I outran him, and slammed the exit door before I caught my breath in open air. Eventually I realized the monster was part illusion. He’s not a good guy. But he is probably lonely, like me. Lonelier, as I have many friends. The funhouse mirrors might have enlarged his fangs and claws. They certainly showed him a vision of me that wanted to go on road trips, loved his stories, was his own size.
Recently, another friend called. “I think I found your husband.”
A religious person with an aspirational marriage, she threw around words like basherte and mitzvah. “Let’s get through drinks first,” I replied, guard up and heart hardened.
The man who could be my husband was my friend’s old family friend, recently open to meeting someone after heartbreak. He was geographically inconvenient and at a different life stage. I was still lonely and open to strange opportunities, with an upcoming meeting close-ish to where he lives.
My friend connected us and the man and I set up a date. I didn’t stalk him. With my app matches I went to the ends of the internet, trying to confirm they were who they said they were. My friend knows three generations of this man’s family.
When he texted a few hours before our date to apologize for running late, I became certain he was going to flake. This happens a lot in the funhouse. I told myself I’d been stood up before, it wouldn’t kill me if it happened again.
I arrived at the restaurant early and the hostess asked if we had a reservation. “Unlikely,” I said, before seeing his name on her tablet.
I’d forgotten about our mutual friend. He wasn’t going to flake.
The man was handsomer than expected. He made me laugh and then admire him. I made the man laugh too. My guard dropped, greater relief than any psychologist snipping at threads. I showed him myself, maybe not sexy or cool but good in a foxhole, dependable and nice. It turns out we both like skiing.
My long-held fear of premature menopause, because it had been years since I’d felt desire, proved unfounded. I missed my train home and the train after that.
He offered to drive me to catch the last train. It felt good to sit next to him. Parked outside the station he asked, “Will you be back anytime soon?”
His life is more complicated and less mobile than mine.
I chose not to lie. “I could be, if you wanted.”
I’d spend the next four days regretting that transparency.
He leaned over to kiss me goodnight. It wasn’t my best work. As a native New Yorker unaccustomed to kissing in the front seat of a car, I was thrown by the center console between us. Should I ever find myself shotgun with a face coming at me again, I’ll try turning more from the waist than the neck.
I texted the friend who set us up from the train. “He’s great.”
The man texted. We texted the next day, too.
My friend said the man said, “she’s wonderful,” about me.
Then he didn’t text.
A few days later the man called our mutual friend and said he wasn’t ready to date after all. The next day, he and I had a polite conversation, during which my guard was back up and my impression of him changed. But unlike being ghosted on the apps, I wasn’t left crying on my couch wondering if I’d said or done something wrong or wasn’t pretty enough. The man’s a good guy. He couldn’t have ghosted anyway. He’s my friend’s old family friend. There are few dark corners outside the funhouse.
“I’m pissed at him,” my friend said, even as she knows his heartbreak.
I’m not.
I sensed our date was a one-off, possibly before the man did. There was a silent “but,” where the ask for another date would have been. “I had a really good time tonight,” but. “She’s wonderful,” but. Try it: I had a really good time tonight, when could you come back? She’s wonderful, I can’t wait to see her again.
Within a day I’d come to believe the date was a bottle episode, or more accurately a “departure episode,” due to the guest star and travel setting. In a television series departure episode, there’s a sharp break from how things usually work, creating room for the main character (that’s me) to gain insight.
When I left the funhouse, I wondered how I’d ever find another date. I didn’t know if I could let my guard down, or what might be left of my capacity to feel. Maybe the hundred cuts of getting ghosted and stood up and lied to and asked to sext had gnarled my heart with scar tissue. I’d bought into dating as a war of attrition, where the best I could hope for was to not hate ‘em. I forgot it was possible to be dazzled, or sit across the table from a man and have my lizard brain scream “BUDDY, TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT” even as my prefrontal cortex tried very hard to pay attention to…English words…regarding…scientific field valuable to humanity…and funny story…lived in Chicago…
I’m not pissed. I’m standing in sunlight.
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Elizabeth Gordon lives in New York. This is her first publication.
© 2025, Elizabeth Gordon
Halfway Down the Stairs 