Where did all the real men go?

So you’re dying to hear what happened with Dimples aren’t you?

Well – if the title of this blog is any indication, the answer is not very well.

I sent him a link to the blog and got a response. Which I guess is something in the harsh world of online dating. It went like this:

That was a week ago. I’ve had no response. I think we can all agree that the slow burn on this one is now extinguished.

My reaction: well the only words that spring to mind are weak, toothless, gutless, no balls.

“Hahah, that’s so cool!” Is that all you can bloody muster? What kind of 40 something year old man responds like that? I mean thanks for the compliment on my story-telling but you’ve completely failed to grasp the social convention to openly communicate. I don’t want to be “cool” – it sounds like something a teenager seeks out. What I really want is to date, I want to connect with someone, I want romance, I want to meet a grown-up who  can muster more than a few “lols” and “hahahas”. I want to stop with the tedious bullshit that online dating constantly spews at me.

I want to meet a real man!

And as this all washed over me, I was reminded of a comment from a friend on my Facebook post about Tinder needing to be renamed Kinder (as in kindergarten) because of the lack of maturity of so-called men online.

My own dating experience over the past six months has equated to boys who endlessly text and never want to meet; the Friday night hook-up guy who cancels when he realises your not up for one night stands; the boys looking for cougars; the so-called men my own age who instantly rule me out because I’m not in my 20s; the boys who bother to text and then unmatch you when you mention taking part in a social activity like photo-walking with friends (clearly a dating crime!); the boy who told me I was not attractive enough to have sex with on a first date (I wasn’t offering to have sex, but thanks for making me feel a million bucks, loser)….. the list goes on.

And then I read a blog post shared by a friend which features an article by Vanity Fair Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse (it’s a good [insert depressing] 15 minute read) on how millennials feel about online dating and how disposable women are made to feel on dating apps. Don’t get me wrong, I know women can do the same to men, but my experience is that I’ve generally always responded to anyone matched to me and given them the courtesy of an email or reply. The vast majority of these encounters have been promptly followed by the so-called “man” unmatching me or deleting me. No comment, no courtesy email, nothing. I’m told it’s because men use search bots that like every photo and then they go back through their “matches” as an ego trip and then unmatch those that they don’t consider aesthetically pleasing enough.

 

By the time I got to the end of the article, I opened Tinder on my phone and then promptly deleted the app. No more swiping for me. No more online dating. I’m a happy, positive person and Tinder and the so-called men on it were perpetually making me feel like crap. Like I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough or sexed up enough to be worthy of an encounter with the opposite sex.

Well, I refuse to be treated as a commodity, based on how I look in a photo. I refuse to be rejected for being kind enough to send an email saying hello. I refuse to allow any male to make me feel like I’m not good enough for them, without even having a conversation with me or getting to know me. I refuse to live in a superficial world and I refuse to allow these boys playing a swiping game make me feel like I’m not worthy. I am not disposable and no woman on a dating app should ever be made to feel that way.

Well, I’m out. Farewell Tinder. I’m going back to dating in the real world, where hopefully I’ll find a real man!

 

 

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