I decided to try dating again in March. TL;DR — it was exhausting.
It probably didn’t help that once again I was in MAFS season (as a freelancer this time, but still, it’s a consuming show!) but if there’s one thing I love doing it’s going from 0-100 and that’s pretty much what I did with my work and social life in the first three weeks of March.
One week in March saw me go on three consecutive dates as I trialled the horny app Feeld to see if it was better than all the normie apps (three dates in three days! It was exhausting!). I’m writing about Feeld for a publication so I’ll post it here when it’s published, but the short story is there are a lot of potential date options on Feeld. In fact, I’d guess a lot more normies are heading on over there to check it out vs. the likes of your usual Tinders, Hinges, and Bumbles because they’re tired of the same old apps and want to experience something new.
I certainly had new experiences in my month on Feeld but not the type most people would assume. If you talk about Feeld to people not using the apps, they just assume everyone’s on it to fuck, get fucked, and then fuck off. What I found was that the effort on the app from men starting conversations, rebooting conversations, and wanting to go on actual dates, was quadruple to what I had been getting on other apps where it feels like most people have basically given up and just swipe and match for a dopamine hit.
Feeld was almost too much for me but not in the way I expected. I just simply couldn’t keep up with the constant messaging and, you know, hold down a job at the same time. I really don’t mean that to sound wanky, I’m not out here looking like Miranda Kerr but I think it’s a supply and demand issue.
I don’t know if it’s because Feeld is known as the horny app so people feel more comfortable about being open on it, or if there are just more men than women on the app, but men seem to be trying a lot harder on there. Yes, you’ll get sent unsolicited dick pics and there seem to be a lot of men on there in open relationships pretending they're single until after you start chatting, but maybe this behaviour is less surprising on Feeld because you’re already kind of expecting it.
To break the stereotype, my dates weren’t about hooking up. Most of them actually felt like a screening test or a job interview of sorts and if you got to the second round, maybe you’d want to have sex. I went on lunch dates, coffee dates, and drink dates and while I met some really nice guys, the elusive spark never flared. Feeld was good for me in a way: normally I buy into the “well, this person wasn’t a murderer and didn’t say anything racist or misogynistic so maybe he deserves a second chance” mentality even if I’m not feeling a spark. I have these chats with other women too — we’ve all expected the bare minimum for so long that we convince ourselves guys are worthy of a second chance even if they didn’t do anything that made us overly attracted to them other than being “nice” or “normal”. Meanwhile, I can almost guarantee for the first few dates men are only thinking about whether they want to hook up. That may sound grossly stereotypical but I really don’t think many men are out there convincing themselves to go on a second date because the girl was “nice”. They’re thinking about attraction and I’m starting to learn I should be thinking of it too*.
*Just a note to say attraction for me is usually very much beyond physical appearances which is why I can be a slow-burn person and get caught in the above cycle, but that’s neither here nor there.
The pressure of knowing that people on Feeld were mainly there to fuck meant I found it much easier to cut things off after first dates: wham, bam, no thank you ma’am. It fed back into what I’ve been trying to do when it comes to dating and talking to men in recent months: instead of zeroing in if they like me and wanting them to like me, I’ve finally learned to sit there and question if I like them. It sounds so fucking basic, but as a (mostly) reformed people pleaser you’d be amazed at the people I’ve dated based on the fact I just wanted them to like me without ever thinking if they were doing anything to light my fire.
My final Feeld date was a drinks date and it was with someone I had talked to the least on the app which maybe should’ve been my first sign. Normally I like a baseline of conversation to, you know, get the vibe that we’ll get along enough to give up a few hours of our precious time for each other. But I thought his bio was funny and he seemed to not be taking the app very seriously, so it was a nice change from the ‘So Tahls, are you into kink? What are you doing tonight then?’ openers I had been receiving.
A few minutes into the date I knew we were in a no-go situation. He talked about how his friends say he is someone who “holds a mirror” up to people and how he enjoys listening to people talk and then try to pick flaws in their thoughts, feelings, or arguments. Basically, my good man was saying he’s a gaslighter, but he didn’t seem to realise that’s what I was taking away from the story because he seemed too proud of it all.
Halfway through the date, he commented about me saying I was “high up” in my job, something I didn’t say. When I told him I didn’t say that, he doubled down and insisted I did. Again and again. When I asked him to tell me the exact phrasing, he fumbled around and gave me the example of how I said I have interviewed “famous people” before (after he asked me, mind you) so he just assumed I would be high up.
Like most men, he had a raised eyebrow when I said I cover reality TV. There’s a certain type of “intellectual” person who presents in a way that they’re superior to others because they don’t have “common” interests or they judge things like entertainment, reality TV, etc. as being lowbrow. Like most men (or people who like to judge reality TV), he didn’t cotton onto the fact that the reason I was wildly unattracted by his behaviour is simply because I watch these types of men on my TV screens all the goddamn time. Show me a season of MAFS that hasn’t had a gaslighting, manipulative POS on it? It’s basically impossible.
There were a few other red flag instances on this date but one of the final ones was when he told me a story where he fell out with a friend, but gave no details about what happened. As I processed the story, he zeroed in on me and asked me why I hadn’t said anything to make him feel better. “You didn’t try to reassure me,” he said. “You. gave me no details about the argument and I met you an hour ago,” I replied. “Why is it up to me to reassure you?” “That’s not the right term,” he replied then stared into my eyes without blinking, saying he “enjoyed” comfortable silences and liked to see how people reacted to them. So basically he was trying to make me feel uncomfortable within his supposedly comfortable silence.
It was only when he went to the bathroom and came back, brushing my lower back with his hand, that I realised this man thought we were on a good date. For every time he tried to say I said something I didn’t, tried to pick a flaw in a story I was telling, or tried to badger me about not responding to his stories in the manner he wanted, he thought we were having “banter” or perhaps even being “flirty”. Except for me, I was in a constant fight or flight mode, my brain racing at what excuse I could make up to get the fuck out.
I left the date absolutely exhausted from the back-and-forth ping-pong game it had become. It goes without saying, but even if first dates aren’t the best, they should feel effortless enough. I was on constant high alert that this man was trying to catch me out, make me feel stupid, or keep twisting my words/stories into something they weren’t in a bid to make himself feel smarter or superior.
This year I’ve been relying on my gut feelings a lot more and shedding my people-pleasing mannerisms. It’s something I think will only enhance my dating life moving forward, now that I’m learning to have the proper boundaries in place. And this isn’t just in dating: I’ve gone through a lot in interpersonal relationships over the years (as most people do) and if someone isn’t reciprocating effort or being a genuine friend or person in my life, I am no longer pandering to that behaviour either. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but in my 30s I’m at a point where I have so many great relationships that add value to my life that I don’t need to waste energy on the ones that have less genuine intentions, and all of this makes it easier and harder to date in many ways.
Ultimately I was really proud of how I handled the disaster date. I didn’t crumble when he tried to intimidate me, I didn’t just agree and let it go when he tried to say I said things I never said, and I didn’t smile and nod to keep the peace when he tried to one-up me in any other way. It’s not something I think I could’ve handled the same way even 12-18 months ago, but even if it’s been a slow lesson that I deserve much better than that behaviour, it’s been an important lesson all the same.
Am I dating at the moment after the month-long Feeld experiment? Not actively. But as per usual, I have a lot of content to talk about in the next few editions.
Next edition: We need to talk about unsolicited dick pics. Yes, in the year of 2023. C’mon now. I should be able to open my Instagram DMs without seeing a stray cock, this is getting ludicrous.