“The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

 – Unknown 

Bumble, Happn, Hinge, Inner Circle, The League, Tinder.  When the list of dating apps out there begins to sound like a rundown of The Shipping Forecast, you know that you have to get onboard, or risk landing on the dating rocks.

I’ve previously heard it said that those who are single in London are either dating via an app – or they’re lying. I’m now here to tell you the truth.  We’re all scrolling through the app that looks like a flame / arrow / bee / hinge / and hoping for the best. A lot. This may or may not result in a date.  You will note that I say “date”, singular. Don’t get your hopes up.

I’ve been back in London for five months now and I would be lying if I didn’t say I hadn’t been on Tinder and that I haven’t been on several dates.  I even managed a relationship for two months, which in the 21st century felt like nothing short of a miracle.  On closer inspection, it was a terrible relationship, largely because the man in question decided that “he didn’t find me attractive, but it was hard to get company.”

Yes readers, those were his final words and ever since I “set him free” by storming out of his flat on New Year’s Day into a waiting Uber, (dragging my own case as he stood there and asked me if I had forgotten my pen…) I’ve had a real love /hate relationship with dating in London.  Still, let’s not forget the spoils of his festive gifts to me: an apron and a woven jewellery box, which when spied by my sister, received the verdict:  “Well, Co, at least you can take it back to the charity shop now.”

I say dating, but anyone out there who is single and has ever dated, anywhere, will know what I mean, you’re picking your way through a minefield which you can only navigate based on the Tinder Odds. The Tinder Odds are, on paper, good.  You scroll – left for no, right for yes and if you have both swiped right on each other’s profiles, the three immortal words, “IT’s A MATCH!” jump across the screen, a bit like a dating fruit machine.  Theoretically, you can then start a conversation. And this is where it gets tricky.

I’m a bit old fashioned.  This means that I’m not sitting there behind a virtual fan, being all coy in my geisha outfit, but I just cannot send the first message.  I can present to lots of people, I can stay calm in a crisis and I can cook for many mouths, at once, in a tiny kitchen. I just can’t take the first dating step. I lasted two days on Bumble, which prides itself on being female-led in its messaging set-up, because I could not say that first hello. It’s 2019, but I still need the man to do the asking. I know. I buzzed off.

Let’s do the Tinder maths.  On a conservative estimate, let’s say that you have swiped through 200 pictures. Here, I’m discounting the pictures of men with no face but who do have a naked torso, the ones of quotes taken from Fifty Shades of Grey, the ones with photos of a woman kneeling down (he wants a sub) and the ones with a masked man licking stilettos (he wants to be dominated and you can make him clean things, too).  I’m editing out the ones of a silhouetted man and woman that say: “We’re a couple who love to play” (please  – get out of my pond) and disregarding the ones where you can just see a pilot’s epaulette, a suit and tie or a huge, expensive watch, and the words “It’s complicated, I’m married, but my wife knows I’m on here.” Of course she does. And I’m Cinderella. A lot of profiles start, funnily enough, with the words: “Don’t judge.” I have no intention of judging, I’m too tired.

So what of the magical, disappearing men of Tinder?  The ones who want a second date seem to be rarer than the drugged tigers that they are often stroking in their profile pictures. And those are the ones who don’t have a picture of them with their ex in their photo deck, but with her face scribbled out like he’s used a sharpie.

And men have their own complaints.  Apparently there a are a lot of women online who think that the best way to get some interest is through the use of Snapchat filters (I didn’t know that grown women actually did this) and can, apparently, attract a first date mate by judicious use of bunny ears, a kitten nose or little fairy stars and flowers around their face as they search for a Sugar Daddy.

So, on to the dates themselves.  Maybe the 200 profiles you viewed have resulted in 10 (or 5%) “likes” and five of those are mutual.  Out of that final five (2.5%), perhaps you will exchange a couple of messages with two.  And then, maybe one of those potential partners will have “unmatched” you, as I watched two male friends do the other night, as they are “only on Tinder to see how many matches we get – we don’t actually want to meet anyone on there.” Oh. Right.

That said, there have been some memorable first dates. Most recently, I met someone who kindly observed that in his view, I had been to a “Tier 2” University (which was news to me), and crossed himself before we started to eat dinner, the one where the man had a photo of himself  piloting a plane as his screen saver (I saw this as he pointed it out to me:  “Look! Look at my phone! At least I get to look at myself flying – isn’t it great?” Yes, it’s marvellous). And the one where the gentleman in question (and he was a gentleman) had obviously been “49” for quite some time. Maybe for 10 years.

Of course there has been fun along the way, and I expect you’re wondering why I come back to the dating app like a moth to the tinder flame. As I summed it up to one friend:  It’s a lot of false starts and sometimes it feels like false hope. But, as the married silhouette men say in their profiles:  “Don’t judge. I’m only human.”

Keep swiping. Until next time. x