Why My Goal Is To Go On More Bad Dates
A quick recap of my last 2 years on Hinge
Illustration by New Yorker hot shot/ boyfriend of my dreams, Nicholas Konrad.
I. The Origin Story
When my last relationship ended and I was deciding for the first time whether to get on Hinge, I would ask friends what their experiences on the app were like. All of them - really every single one - said a version of the same thing: It’s awful and you should definitely make an account.
I liked this as a sales pitch because it seemed both honest and optimistic. Honest in that dating could be hard and disillusioning. Optimistic in that almost all of my friends knew someone, or were someone, who had met a long-term partner through an app. But mostly, if I’m being honest, I liked it because it established a kind of benchmark I could measure myself against: Be less miserable on Hinge than everyone else I know.
II. Data Collection
It started as a kind of playful experiment. I found myself soliciting bad date stories from friends, colleagues, people I met out at parties and eventually, people I was out on dates with. “What’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?” I’d ask when there was a lull in conversation.
The reaction was always a little bit different. Some people laughed, some people squirmed, some people thought for a long time, saying something to the effect of “hmmm I’m not sure there’s one that really stands out,” before stumbling (like they didn’t think about it every night before bed) on the memory of an unbelievably fucked up date. Like the one that ended in a hospital room after the guy’s stitches came apart during sex. Or the time my friend got trapped with a man in mourning who sobbed on and off the entire night, but insisted at every opportunity that they get another drink, go to another bar.
The details and plot points were all different but the substance of what made the dates bad was surprisingly consistent. Truly bad dates - by which I mean the kind that make you wonder if you want to stop dating altogether - seem to follow clear patterns. They are either (1) unbelievably awkward, (2) unbelievably insulting, (3) painfully boring or (4) hauntingly mysterious.1
Now really, pause for a second and consider that. Could it really be possible that something as unpredictable and universally dreaded as a bad date could be sorted into one (or some combination) of just 4 distinct groups?2 The cleanliness of it startled me. It rang out as the ultimate provocation.
If I could just pick apart all the different factors that contributed to a bad date - from the selection of the match, to the location and activity for the date, all the way to the biology of the person: their genes and what they smelled like - I could conquer dating and avoid the demoralizing experiences everyone else I knew had gone through.
III. How To Avoid Bad Dates
After a lengthy analysis of the data (which in addition to asking prying questions of almost everyone I knew, included several deranged weeks at the Carroll Gardens public library reading about sweaty t-shirt studies and trying to contact the woman who advertises pheromone treatment in the back of every Harpers mag), I arrived at some conclusions. My guiding principles, if you will. (Big emphasis on my.)
Only go out with people you are confident you can hold an interesting conversation with. If someone you match with on Hinge doesn’t want to do the small talk and goes straight for: let’s meet up in person. Say: oh I’d like to chat a little bit more first, if you don’t mind. And then suss out whether they can tell you anything even remotely entertaining over text: an interesting story, a thought provoking observation, a hot-take that isn’t totally asinine.
Propose locations for dates you want to go to, and activities that you trust will make you feel good. This will put you at ease and allow you to be the most relaxed version of yourself - particularly if you pick places and activities you’re familiar with. This will also serve as a kind of buffer against disappointment. On your walk home, you will be able to say to yourself: well, at least I got to spend time in my favorite bar; at least I got another 5,000 steps toward my daily goal.
Trust that everyone you go out with has something interesting to share. They’ve got a job you’ve never truly understood, they grew up in a community or with a worldview you’ve always been curious about, they appear to have a personality disorder you’ve only ever read about in books. Whatever it is, the onus is on you to uncover it. And if when you ultimately dig deep enough to hit on it, you discover that their treasure is rusty and crusted and not your kind at all, switch on the anthropological mode of your personality and marvel at how utterly strange the human species can be.
If, when on the date, you sense that the person you’re sitting across from is not particularly interested in or excited about you - just ask them about it directly. Say you’re waiting in line to get coffee - a mere 2 minutes into meeting each other for the first time - and you can just tell by the way the person is avoiding eye contact with you, looking everywhere other than in your direction, that they are not excited to be there. Get your coffee and, as soon and as kindly as you can, acknowledge that you recognize their disinterest. After a brief moment of unease where the person will almost inevitably insist that they are in fact very interested - and you will have to double down and say: “No, really, it’s ok. I’ve also been disinterested before - sometimes these things happen,” they will breath a sigh of relief, and suddenly you will find you have unlocked a new level of intimacy. You can both be yourselves, you can laugh about your shared secret, and out will spill their latest trauma or deepest insecurity. “Sometimes I worry I’m too fucked up to ever find someone” they’ll say. Or “I broke up with my girlfriend of 6 years a few weeks ago.” Now, you can refer back to point #3 and learn all about this strange person who doesn’t like you, warmed by the internal glow that is feeling connected - feeling pride even- for your community of singletons navigating life and all its awkwardness and adventure on their own.
If their scent gives you pause, get out. No matter how kind they are, no matter how much you like spending time with them, you must trust your nose. (Those sweaty t-shirt studies are pretty unequivocal about this.) It seems that we have evolved to prefer mates with some shared genetic composition - but not too much! And a large number of people can tell that just based on the kind of general scent of a person. Not their body odor - though I guess if their hygiene is questionable, that’s something to consider too - but their broader aroma. The distinctive notes you know to be theirs when you walk into their apartment. If you don’t even perceive them, great. But if they displease you in even the teeniest perceptible way, you must trust that it is your cells screaming out to you as clearly as they can: This is not right.
Be maximally kind to everyone. You picture those signs at beaches or nature preserves that ask you to leave the place cleaner than you found it. “Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints.” That’s the goal with humans too. Everyone is insecure, some part of their 5 year old self trapped in their 30-year-old body, wanting to be embraced and encouraged, told that ultimately, everything is going to be ok. Try to meet those most human needs; leave people better than you found them.
IV. A Year Without Bad Dates
For the whole first year that I am on Hinge, dating is a delight. Which is not to say it is an always pleasant experience - I am still prone to waves of obsessive anxiety when a guy I really like seems to not be reciprocating my feelings, or when I sense that someone is more invested in me than I am in them - but, by and large, I enjoy it.
The signs are small but profound. Alone at night, I sprawl out in my bed, taking up space in a way I never could with my ex. I feel the universe expanding all around me, frenetic atoms bumping up against each other, endless possibilities lay before me.
On a bike ride home from a bar in Prospect Heights, peddling so fast through the summer air that the breeze makes me cold, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being alive. I think about the way my date looked at me as he sipped his wine, and how nice my red nails looked against the black fabric of my dress, and how gradually but steadily, he opened up to me like a flower being warmed by the sun.
Even when the guy I have been stalking online for weeks, and showing my closest friends pictures of, tells me he isn’t interested in me, I feel bold and energized. When I ask why and he answers “I just don’t want to hook up, okay?” the overriding feeling I have is not dejection but curiosity. Why would anyone not want to hook up with me?
I have achieved my mission.
V. Or Have I?
It is April or maybe early May. I am 20 minutes late to a group dinner with an unusual mix of friends I have only ever hung out with in different pairings. I show up to the Williamsburg restaurant which is dark in a way that is unsure of whether it wants to be romantic or club-like, and sit down with my 4 friends - all in relationships - who graciously ask about my dating life.
It starts off small and granular. I’m supposed to go on a first date tomorrow morning with a guy who loves his dogs. I have proposed coffee. He has proposed coffee with his two dogs. I don’t particularly like dogs. Should I tell this guy I’d rather not?
Before I can realize it, the conversation is morphing into new shapes, zooming out beyond this one experience. Am I sure I’m selecting for the right people? Am I being honest with myself about whether or not I’m attracted to men like him? Do I even want to be going on dates at all? The table has transformed from dinner to group therapy. I am the patient and my doctors are all looking at me with compassion and concern. They offer suggestions, affirmations, diagnoses. The one thing they all agree on is that two dogs is somehow crossing a line.
And then Abe, the newest friend in the group, raises his voice above all the others. He speaks with such confidence and conviction that I am taken aback. The whole group is.
He says the thing no one else has dared. He questions whether my goals are the right ones. He questions whether my behavior has insulated me from vulnerability. He suggests - no actually he insists - that I am too controlling. I can feel his girlfriend Tara kicking him under the table.
Once he says it, I feel with new clarity how truly exhausted I am. I am using all of my analytical powers to will myself into liking people, into feeling bonded to them, into finding laughter or gratitude for meeting them. And still, I am starved for fulfilling companionship.
I am so dead set on finding people interesting that I can no longer tell whether I’m fascinated in someone as a romantic partner or a sociological experiment. I am so careful about the selection of the location and activities for my dates that I never feel nervous or uncomfortable or exposed. Maybe I am preventing men from failing, from disappointing me beyond belief, from turning me into the kind of cynic that says dating sucks. But could I also be preventing men from succeeding?
VI. A New Experiment: Let men fail.
In the kitchen of a big house party, Kate and Zach help me draft a text to a guy I’ve gone out with twice, who I’d like to see again. We’ve been going back and forth for days with dumb little updates. He went to Coney Island for a baseball game; I got my nails painted pink. He is hunting for a new researcher at work; I am angling for a promotion. When he asks what I’m up to tomorrow, I tell him I’m busy but I’d like to hang soon if that is what he is proposing. He responds “That is what I was proposing.”
Kate and Zach lean over my phone, puzzling at how to respond in a way that says: “ok dude, then make some effort,” without coming across as hostile. We land on: “Lol ok I am free Monday night - propose away.”
The next morning he responds with a link. It is a Google Maps pin for an archery range in Gowanus. There is no accompanying text. No “how about this?” Or “Here’s one idea.” I interpret the lack of options - and frankly, lack of even the performance of concern for what I want to do - as a sign that this man is extremely on the fence about me. He is all but daring me to say: Or we could just not go out again? I imagine myself on Monday night cosplaying as Jennifer Lawrence in the Hunger Games, pulling arrows out of a colostomy-like bag, and groan so deeply that it feels like my whole body is vibrating. This text is the only thing worse than getting no response at all. “You should do it,” Zach texts me. “Out of the comfort zone!!!”
In the fluorescent glow of the Gowanus warehouse, I am having a terrible time. I feel so unlike myself. I am more awkward and charmless and nonverbal than I knew I was capable of. I genuinely feel like if someone says the wrong thing to me I might burst into tears. I think of the story my parents tell about the very first time they dropped me off at pre-school and I hid for hours among a pile of stuffed animals. I have been pretending I am not that person for the last 25 years, but tonight confirms that my survival instincts are exactly the same.
To make matters worse, there are two other couples taking the introductory class with us, and both have done archery before. One of the only rules of this class is that no one can retrieve their arrows from their target until everyone in the class has finished shooting. So not only am I the worst one in the class, I am also the person everyone is waiting on after each round.
At one point the instructor comes over and points out all the things I’m doing wrong. You need to spread your legs wider. You can’t close your eyes every time you release the arrow. “Why are you so nervous” he asks as I feel the eyes of my date and the two other couples on me.
Despite my lack of grace, or ability or humor (because oh by the way, I have forgotten how to make jokes or laugh), my date remains buoyant. He is encouraging, but not overly so. (An important anecdote about me is that in high school I quit the track team because the constant chirp of “you got this” as I absolutely did not got this, made me want to punch my teammates.) He asks very gently if I would like some tips. When I get an arrow in the bullseye, he beams in my direction. At one point, I catch him out of the corner of my eye, taking a photo of me, like a proud dad.
When the date is finally over, I feel this warm buzzy feeling that is unfamiliar. It’s not quite relief, but maybe the feeling of being protected? Taken care of when I was most vulnerable?
Almost everything about this date was bad. I was a version of myself I would never date. The activity was awkward at best. And yet, I had to admit I had a decent time. The only outstanding variable was him - a variable beyond my control.
To illustrate hauntingly mysterious, I offer this horror story. You meet someone exciting. You have what you think is a magical night. You make plans to see each other again. You choose a time and a place. You text them day of: “Still on for 7pm tonight?” They never respond.
My mother doesn’t think so. When I let her read an earlier draft of this newsletter she told me to cut this whole paragraph. In her view, it’s like what Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Which is to say, she thinks it’s the good dates that follow predictable patterns; bad dates, not so. To this, I am willing to concede that for long-term relationships, she may be right. But when it comes to first dates, I am still waiting to hear of a terrible one that defies my categorization.
❤️ to #3. Using this as the prime criterion for a first date would improve things a lot
That looks sort of fun. The archery. The bow itself is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I think there is no better way to accumulate a lot of funny stories than to go on a bunch of dates with people you don't know.