Lust Actually:

In the movie Love Actually (2003), Hugh Grant opens the film with the famous line, “If you look carefully, you’ll notice love actually is all around.” Sweet right? As a hopeless romantic from day one, this is one of my favorite movies. However, the more I look around, the more I fail to see love. I don’t mean any kind of love, I mean the big L-O-V-E. Romantic love.

The age of dating has changed so much just in the past ten years. Back in the days of old, the early 2000’s, marriage was still a holy sacrament. Welcome to 2019. Today, romance is out and lust is in. My entire view on romance is scarred. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in soulmates, but Harry Styles is not available for facetime right now. So, being a young, single, bisexual virgin in this extremely shallow dating pool is hard. After all my crushes crushed me, I have decided to go to extreme measures to find a partner. Online dating.

Now, I knew when starting my quest that I should try to avoid Tinder. So of course, I started with Tinder. I realized early on that finding someone who wants what I want was going to be hard. In my quest I feel like I’m not asking for much. I just want someone who is smart, funny, kind, likes classic rock, has green eyes, and luscious hair. You know, the basics.

I matched with this guy a few weeks before New Years Eve, and I thought things were going well. We had been talking on direct message for a while and we were having genuine conversations about life and what not. On New Year's Eve, I was just chilling with my mom and he hit me up. Clearly drunk, he started asking if I’d be allowed to spend the night or whatever. An obvious and creepy attempt to sleep with me. I told him to go fuck himself. I didn’t hear from him for a while. About a week or so later, he contacted me again and he invited me over. I kindly declined by saying I’d rather go on a date first, to which he replied, “I’d just rather get to the point.” It’s official! Chivalry is dead. Apparently to him, I clearly don’t have worth. Don’t worry, it gets worse.

I thought Tinder would be ok to look for women too considering men are just looking for a good time. So, I switched my settings to show women. I got my first match within two hours, only I had not read her bio. It said “looking for a third for me and my boyfriend.” Great! Well that wasn’t going to happen. I thought, it’s okay, there will be more. I was right. There were more open relationships and open marriages. I may not be the best catholic, but I still believe in marriage being a holy sacrament and that if you have found The One to commit completely to them. I guess that’s just me. I have been single for 18 years and here are these couples who claim to be with their soulmates looking for more partners. I guess they think this more liberal approach to life is sexy. You know what I think is sexy? Monogamy. Monogamy is sexy. No matter, I have gotten a few decent matches.

I could honestly go on and on about my nonexistent love life, so I will. I suck at chatting people up. Like I’m the worst conversationalist when it comes to complete strangers. When I first started on dating apps, the app would actually point out my horrid chat up skills. If you are not familiar with these apps I will enlighten you. When you swipe on someone and they have also swiped on you it pops up that it is a match and gives you a spot to send a message. Well, the first ever match I got I was like, “what’s a good opener? Ooh I know, ‘Hey’.” Good right? I thought so, until the app said “Opener not strong enough. Would you like to change it?” Seriously, what is wrong with “hey”? So I decided to start sending people cheesy pick up lines, and boy did those get interesting! But what happens next? Nothing. My conversations are so dry. If I want to stay relevant to these potential partners I have to hit them up once a day. It’s exhausting. Maybe it’s not completely the other party’s fault but I feel like I shouldn’t be the only one making an effort. I mean, how hard is it to wake up and message me “Good morning beautiful. I hope you have a spectacular day. Can’t wait to hear from you.” You know the stuff everyone says to people they don’t know.

Now I never had any real plans when getting on this app. It was mostly just for fun and games. Fun and games to distract from the people I actually want and can not have. I had no real intention to meet with someone in real life. However, when one of my actual love interests came home and proclaimed to have two dates lined up I decided “What’s the worst that could happen?” I mean obviously I had a real answer to that question in my mind, but I did not want to spend my life in fear. So when I saw I had a message from a guy who seemed fairly unthreatening, I agreed to meet him the following day.

I can honestly say, the most traumatic thing to happen on our date was discovering that he does not know the difference between a frappuccino and a caramel macchiato. I mean seriously, who raised this guy? Other than the horrendous coffee mix up, the date was alright. Until he said it was not a date. We were talking and it came up that he was the first person from a dating app I had met and I jokingly said, “Looks like you are my first Tinder date.” To which he responded, “This isn’t a date. We are just hanging out.” I’m sorry what? Is buying someone coffee and then dinner and spending a total of three to four hours together not a date? Because if so, more about dating has changed than I thought. I mean not to mention he asked me to spend the night with him more than once so we could “cuddle”. Ugh men! Looks like when I told him he was not a homework assignment, I lied.

Long story short, dating is not the same and I see being a crazy cat lady in my future. It works for my grandma. I think I will keep my Tinder account open though because it is fun to mess with these people. Also it is a major confidence boost. Well, as Bill Nighy says in my favorite romantic comedy, “Let’s get pissed and watch porn.”