The Girl from the Dating Site

It was shaping up to be another boring night at home, scrolling through the Tinder feed.

I knew it was bad because I was seeing women I’d already passed on weeks or even days before. Clearly the site was running out of women in my local area. And there was only so many times I could play around with my profile, adding or deleting photos...fiddling with my bio... rethinking my likes. No matter what changes I made, though, the women never seemed to ‘like’ me back.

On the rare times they did, the conversations never went anywhere. Typically it’d be me asking about them, perhaps getting a response before a ghosting, but more than likely just no message at all. And the women that ‘liked’ me first, well...I just wasn’t interested in their profiles.

Usually they’d be older than me, or out of shape or heavy into smoking or drinking. I’d spent the better part of the year getting into shape, quitting drinking, and I hadn’t smoked in years. It’s not that I had really high standards – I didn’t