Dating in the 21st century: Does it exist?

Whether you like the idea of online dating or not, it is hard not to accept it as a concrete part of modern day society. You can’t sit on the tube without an advert promising you that the love of your life is just a click away screaming in your face. Even if you’re not actively looking for your other half it is intriguing to see what the web is going to throw out and tell you is your perfect partner.

How do you find your other half when you don’t even know what you like yourself? Questions upon questions asking you what your favourite colour is, to what your diet consists of. It is hard to figure out why so much information is needed to make love appear. I think this is where most people’s wariness grows for such websites because it forces you to take a look at yourself and genuinely think what IS my favorite colour? If I were a dog what WOULD I be?

Then you look at the complete other end of the spectrum at an app where you swipe yes or no to someone based on a first impression of his or her face. It can feel shallow. It can feel bad but it can feel great. After those first few days of staring intently at some strangers face, hoping there a screen away doing the same, you get a little cocky. Your matches start to pile up and you can afford to be a little more picky, after all with one click you can unmatch and have nothing to do with these people.

It is hard not to get hooked on an app that relies so little on how you are as a person. This is not to say it cannot work, and perhaps this is our future. A first impression based on innocent and pure attraction really does have the potential to blossom into a promising relationship.

There is, and always will be something charming about meeting someone in the corner of a coffee shop where you both reach for the same cup or maybe you bump into each other and he picks up your books and you stare into each others eyes thinking ‘he’s the one.’ For a lot of us, this is a pipe dream, which can resort to 3am sessions on Tinder (nothing good will ever happen after 3am on Tinder) but then why if so many of us are on it, do we scoff at others who use similar?

I have downloaded Tinder on two separate occasions in the space of a year, once back in my hometown Cornwall and once since I’ve lived in London. My first impression of Tinder was tarnished when I sat in an apartment on a second date and the man returned to the room stark naked and looked at me as if this was a normal occurrence, so I swore off it for a whole year but 2016 came around and I left a relationship and friends coaxing me to just go for it. The app hadn’t changed much in a year and soon enough I was back into the habit of swiping through people so quickly as if it was a game and I was winning.

Within a week I went on a date with a nice enough man who was in London for the weekend, we met at Leicester Square and said we would take it from there. Naturally, we ended up at a Wetherspoons two minutes down the road and we got talking, we got laughing and suddenly sitting with this stranger in front of me came so naturally. It was like having a drink with an old friend. It felt good.

We ended up walking across the Thames at about 10pm on a Sunday night when the river was calm and the London Eye blinked back at me and it was like something out of some sort of romantic comedy where you stare into each others eyes and kiss for the first time and maybe there are fireworks and the credits roll. Except the words that came out of his mouth were: “So, shall we go back to yours?” and the night was cut short and I went home alone.

But the moral of the story is what else was I going to do on a Sunday night apart from binge watch The Office. Instead of sitting at home, I had walked across the Thames and counted the landmarks like constellations in the sky. Surprisingly I did not see the gentlemen again but I went home that night content and ready to take on Tinder. I went on a few other dates and I was whisked around London from day dates in Camden Town to drinks in Covent Garden, I was going to places that without these dates I probably wouldn’t of even thought about going to.

I think the stigma behind online dating is outdated, for the first time in our lives we can wake up one morning with no plans for an evening and by the same night we are out looking up at the stars! There is something charming about this idea of a complete abundance of traditions - we are growing into a society where it is socially acceptable to meet up with strangers online, and that’s okay!

What is more okay is that you don’t have to fall instantly in love with these strangers; you can go on these dates and just be happy with the night spent. There are a million little ways to find the one, and a million other ways to have a good night out and now more than ever, online dating is one of these options.