How I relit my romance with Tinder - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Life How I relit my romance with Tinder By You Magazine - September 11, 2022 As the dating app celebrates its tenth anniversary tomorrow, novelist Lucy Vine explains why, after countless dodgy dates, she decided to give it one last go Five years ago, aged 32, I made a life-changing decision and wrote about it for YOU magazine: I was giving up Tinder. And if that meant staying single forever, so be it. The alternative – continuing to go on exhausting, disappointing, horrible dates with strangers I’d met through the app – felt much worse. When Tinder launched, ten years ago tomorrow, I was an early adopter, revelling in the endless possibilities it offered. I would spend days delightedly swiping, chatting and going on as many as five dates a week. It was fun and exciting. But – as I wrote back in 2017 – the whole thing slowly soured. By then, I’d been single for around five years and had been on hundreds of dates. Not all of them were bad, but none of them had gone beyond a handful of meet-ups. Tinder felt increasingly like a ghost town of faces I’d seen before and messages that went unanswered. I was at the end of my patience with it all and ready to try dating in real life. However, after two years of single life, in summer 2019, I decided to give online dating one last try. I’d moved from London to the countryside the year before to be closer to my family and wondered if I might find new options in Cambridgeshire. I signed up for a few real-life events, like speed dating and singles nights, but app dating still seemed like the easiest option. By then, it was a crowded market, with new apps launching apace. I downloaded Bumble, where women have to make the first move, Hinge, which has the tagline ‘the dating app designed to be deleted’, and my old frenemy, Tinder. Predictably, things started off fairly miserably, with my brother the only option in a five-mile radius. But, after shuddering for an hour (and expanding my search options), I found a few potentials who seemed – and this was now my bar – normal enough to swipe yes to. But it turned out my brother might’ve been a better choice, because the next few weeks saw me go on some of my worst dates ever. One guy spent the evening showing me videos of himself from the 90s, another just wanted to pitch me a book idea. A third turned out to be the man behind a well-known Twitter account, with millions of followers loving his hilarious bon mots – and yet, in real life, he was the most unfunny person I’d ever met, and didn’t ask me one question in four hours. There was one man I went on a few dates with, who turned up late every time without an apology, always wearing the same unwashed T-shirt. The final straw was when he arrived four hours late to a day date because he was ‘napping’. I came close to giving up on apps again. Then, one night, my finger hovered over the Tinder profile of David. Three years my senior, he was exactly my type: dark hair, dark eyes, beard and glasses. The only potential drawback was that, at 6ft 7in, he was a whole foot and a half taller than me. I swiped yes on a whim, and felt the familiar dopamine hit of hope as we matched. We exchanged messages and it was clear right away that David was funny and sweet. We swapped silly jokes for the next few weeks. But – I kept reminding myself – I’d been here before. There had been so many apparently nice exchanges like this that ended either in a ghosting or with a tedious, expensive date with someone who bore only the faintest resemblance to the profile I’d swiped on. In early September, I packed my suitcase for a friend’s wedding in France and made the cowardly decision to ghost David. I told myself I didn’t want to spend my holiday texting someone – the truth was, I couldn’t face yet another disappointment. But he wasn’t so easily dismissed. Back home, a month later, his profile cropped up again on Bumble, and then again on Hinge. David messaged: ‘We have to stop meeting like this and actually meet.’ It felt different right from our first date. We spent the evening laughing in the corner of a pub, playing 90s songs on the jukebox, and – yes – kissing. Our second date was an all-day trip to a food market in London, and we played hide and seek on the train. I apologised for ghosting him, and we laughed about our winding journey across apps to finally finding each other. David hadn’t had the same battle-scarring experience I’d had on Tinder, having only been single for a couple of years and rarely dating in that time. It meant he’d been extra perplexed – and annoyed – when I disappeared, but he wasn’t put off. He said he had a feeling about me. Within a few weeks, we said the L-word to each other, and when lockdown arrived in March 2020, we decided to quarantine together, despite only being a few months into our relationship. We took up jogging, we walked my dogs, and I gave him the worst lockdown haircut in history. We met each other’s friends and family through Zoom quizzes. We bonded over dressing up as Tiger King characters and bickering over the worst contestants on Married at First Sight. And, on our first anniversary – still under lockdown – David and I celebrated with a night in, playing Uno and snakes and ladders, while listening to a playlist we’d compiled together. As a Taylor Swift song played, he presented me with a series of gifts – in-jokes from our time together – as he talked about how amazing the past year had been. I giggled nervously, knowing something big was coming. It was then, over the detritus of board games and presents, that David proposed with my great-grandmother’s ring, acquired from my mother – and I forgot to say yes because I was laughing too much. It was exactly what I wanted. I’m not a traditional romantic and David knew I wouldn’t want anything showy or public. It still blows me away how much has changed over these past three years and I’m grateful it worked out the way it did. My brother is still on Tinder and tells me things are worse than ever when it comes to people ghosting each other – and apparently it now charges for ‘premium features’, like being able to become a ‘top profile’ in your local area. But despite all that and how miserable a time I had, I do feel fondly towards the app. Without it, I wouldn’t have met David and I wouldn’t be heading to Las Vegas with him in November to be married by Elvis. Maybe I’ll request he sing ‘Burning (Tinder) Love’. RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR Everything we know about The Crown season 5 Aldi s exercise equipment is on sale with up to 50% off The best Halloween events for 2022 across the UK Popular in Life The You magazine team reveal their New Year s resolutions December 31, 2021 Susannah Taylor The TLC tools your body will love January 23, 2022 How to stop living in fear February 6, 2022 Susannah Taylor My pick of the fittest leggings February 27, 2022 Women’ s Prize for Fiction 2022 winner announced June 17, 2022 These BBC dramas are returning for a second series June 30, 2022 Susannah Taylor gives the lowdown on nature s little helper – CBD April 17, 2022 The baby names that are banned across the world April 27, 2022 The Queen has released her own emojis May 26, 2022 Sally Brompton horoscopes 27th June-3rd July 2022 June 26, 2022 Popular CategoriesFood2704Life2496Fashion2240Beauty1738Celebrity1261Interiors684 Sign up for YOUMail Thanks for subscribing Please check your email to confirm (If you don't see the email, check the spam box) Fashion Beauty Celebrity Life Food Privacy & Cookies T&C Copyright 2022 - YOU Magazine. All Rights Reserved