{"id":1717,"date":"2022-12-07T00:40:52","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T00:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/?p=1717"},"modified":"2022-12-07T00:52:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T00:52:52","slug":"i-swapped-apps-for-dating-in-real-life-this-is-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/2022\/12\/07\/i-swapped-apps-for-dating-in-real-life-this-is-2\/","title":{"rendered":"I swapped apps for dating in real life \u2013 this is what happened"},"content":{"rendered":"I swapped apps for dating in real life \u2013 this is what happened<\/title><\/p>\n<p>Over the past five years, my online dating CV looks like this: two one-year relationships, five four-month relationships, several flings, 30 first dates, and around 2,500 Tinder matches.<\/p>\n<p>It’s why I’ve never approached someone outside my phone before \u2013 I’d rather have thumb strain than ask a stranger out.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I downloaded Tinder in 2014 during my final year of university, because I was ready to find a boyfriend. Sure, we knew about matchmaking sites where people spent hours filling out pages of specific (read: yawn) info about themselves. But using our phones to simply swipe our way to (potential) love?<!--more--> Well, that was game-changing, and millennials everywhere, including me, signed up, adding a couple of selfies and an Arctic Monkeys lyric to our bios.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward four years and I’m not surprised Tinder is registering\u00a01.6 billion swipes\u00a0a day, or that we’re spending\u00a010 hours a week\u00a0on dating apps because with my (not-so-lucky-number) of seven, I’m <a href=\"https:\/\/datingranking.net\/idaho\/\">check my site<\/a> definitely upping the average. My app spectrum runs from Coffee Meets Bagel, which offers just one match a day based on curated options, to Feeld, which is for, erm, \u201ccurious and kinky\u201d singles and couples.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Now, aged 26, I’m on seven dating apps and, until recently, the thought of meeting someone IN REAL LIFE would bring me out in a cold sweat<\/h2>\n<p>Despite the growing ubiquity of these apps, one YouGov study says people (in the US) would\u00a0prefer to meet someone IRL. That over there, but, for me,\u00a0once you get used to the anonymity of private swiping, the fear of “chatting up” someone IRL increases.<\/p>\n<p>Equally, I know it’s not impossible.\u00a0I have a friend who fell down some\u00a0stairs and got flirty with the paramedic once she’d recovered; another who bagged her boyfriend on a train; and one pal pulled someone advertising a food\u00a0delivery service on the street. Which is why I recently ; and I don’t mean upgrading to Bumble Premium.<\/p>\n<h2>Back then, the dating app world felt new and exciting<\/h2>\n<p>I mean, if Craig David can meet a girl\u00a0on Monday, and be chilling by\u00a0Sunday\u00a0in 2000, how hard can it be for me to do the same in 2018?<\/p>\n<p>But first, I needed a plan. Speaking to a few experts to work out how to go about making myself look “available”, dating coach Hayley Quinn told me to not look “busy”. In other words, ditch the headphones and put my phone away. And how would I know if somebody was single? \u201cBesides the wedding ring, it’s hard to tell,\u201d adds dating coach James Preece. \u201cBut looking for people who are taking longer to enjoy their coffee or sitting alone is a good place to start.\u00a0Watch them for a few minutes to make sure they’re definitely on their own, then go say, ‘Hey’.”<\/p>\n<p>James suggested I try talking to guys in bookshops. Why? I love books and, as he pointed out, bookshops offer a calmer space to start a conversation than a packed Tube. But it was terrifying. I’ve seen it done so badly when guys approach me, it meant my guard was up. Smiling feebly and murmuring, \u201cOoh, that one is particularly good\u201d when someone’s browsing the non-fiction section didn’t feel\u00a0natural at all. And even though a couple of guys responded positively, I was unable to transition smoothly from “off-hand comment” to “breezy flirting”. I left the shop with zero phone numbers and more titles to gather dust on my shelves.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Outside of shops, I felt just as lost with conversation starters. I don’t smoke, so I couldn’t ask people for a light. And although James suggested I ask for directions or pay them a compliment (apparently men get less, so they mean more), I seriously struggled to compliment a guy on his shorts. Not only did the energy to make the first move zap the follow-up conversation, the lingering awks factor felt far worse than a no-swipe back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I swapped apps for dating in real life \u2013 this is what happened Over the past five years, my online dating CV looks like this: two one-year relationships, five four-month relationships, several flings, 30 first dates, and around 2,500 Tinder matches. It’s why I’ve never approached someone outside my phone before \u2013 I’d rather have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1718,"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacabrasalvaje.com.mx\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}