It’s one of the most popular dating apps out there, but can Tinder really help you find love? In my case, the answer is a resounding no. All it gave me was tonsillitis, regrets, and a whole load of great dating stories. Here are nine examples of old Tinder flames I wish I’d never matched with.
- The One Who Gave Me Tonsillitis Brad and I had a great first date; he bought me brunch, we went for a walk through the beautiful parks in my city, and I even got a brief kiss at the end. We arranged a second date at his place, which I was super excited for. What started off as a film night pretty quickly turned into a makeout session. Afterwards, he turned to me and said “Oh, by the way, I’m sick. I think I’ve got tonsillitis or something.” Thanks for sharing that information with me AFTER WE’D EXCHANGED SALIVA, BRAD. I spent the next two weeks in bed with swollen tonsils, feeling like utter death. I didn’t see Brad again.
- The One Whose Ghosting Came Back To Haunt Him This guy seemed super promising when we first starting talking. We got on really well, he made me laugh (a dealbreaker for me), and he was super cute to boot. But one night, after messaging me saying he was going to the pub with his friends, he dropped off the face of the earth. I never heard from him after that… At least, not in a personal context. His ghosting ways came back to haunt him when he turned up as a client at my workplace and I was assigned his case. In the end, I passed him on to a colleague out of professionalism. However, it’s still a lesson for anyone who’s ever resorted to ghosting. You never know when your ex-flame is going to pop up in your life again!
- The One Who Forgot He Already Knew Me This guy was an acquaintance of mine. I always bumped into him at parties and other social events and we got on well. When he popped up on my Tinder, I thought it would be funny to ‘like’ him and see what happened. We matched, but just as I was typing out a funny “fancy seeing you here” message, he opened with “how come I’ve never seen your pretty face around campus before?” As the conversation continued, I discovered that he genuinely didn’t remember me at all despite meeting me dozens of times. This got especially awkward when I later drunkenly announced at a mutual friend’s party that he’d sent me an unsolicited pic of his junk. Oops.
- The One Who Wasn’t As Single As He’d Claimed I’m pretty sure I’m not the first girl to be in this situation and I sure as hell won’t be the last. It’s a tale as old as time: guy shows interest in girl, girl social media stalks guy and finds no evidence that he isn’t single, they date. It didn’t work out with this guy for various reasons, but I dealt with it and moved on. A few months later, I found out that he’d had a secret girlfriend the whole damn time we dated. He’d told her that he didn’t want to put any evidence of their relationship online for privacy reasons. In reality, he’d wanted to extensively cheat on her while she was away at college. I felt awful and pissed as hell. He’d better hope we never cross paths again…
- The One Who Dropped the L-Bomb Way Too Soon Is there really a right or wrong time to say the ‘L’ word? In this case, yes. There was definitely a wrong time, and that time was 10 days after I’d first met this guy. Sure, we’d been on a couple of really sweet dates. Sure, the sex was great. But 10 days? TEN DAYS? The guy barely knew me. I think he may have mistaken ‘getting on well with someone’ with ‘I love this person and want to marry them/have many beautiful children with them.’ It was a red flag the size of Brazil, and I ended things pretty sharpish after that.
- The One Who Couldn’t Let Go Just as I don’t kick up a fuss if a Tinder match loses interest, I expect guys to be fairly polite when I end things—or at least accept my decision. However, one ex-fling didn’t understand the concept of letting go. At the time of the dumping, he tried for hours and hours to convince me that I was making the wrong choice and that we really WERE compatible after all (spoiler alert: we weren’t). Once we were past this initial period, he still persisted to message me asking for another chance. I’d block him on one profile, and he’d make another. It was insane. The final straw was when he broke into a ticketed event I was attending. Security threw him out and I told him to back off once and for all. He kindly obliged.
- The One Who Just Wanted Hugs Paul seemed like such a nice guy at first: he was quick to reply to messages, asked lots of attentive questions, and looked like a big sweet teddy-bear in his photos. Then, after a few days, the weirdness started. He’d send me a lot of messages that just said “* hugs *”, and talk about wanting to cuddle. It was when this progressed into “I want to hold and squish you ’til you’re inside me” that the ‘block’ feature was hastily engaged. He then somehow found my Facebook and proceeded to message me “hugs” every few minutes until I blocked him there too. Tinder is such a great place to find people who are crazy.
- The One Who Made Me Into His Therapist When you’re in a relationship with someone, I’m all about supporting them no matter what and listening to their troubles and worries. However, once you start offloading all of your life issues onto a Tinder match you’ve been talking to for three days, you’re probably taking it too far. I once spoke to a guy who did just that. Our chats started off normally enough, but it became clear that he was trying to use me as a free therapist rather than actually date me. I’m in no way qualified to do that, and anyway, I barely knew the guy! I wasn’t the right person to help him through his issues.
- The One Who REALLY Wanted A Relationship. I used Tinder quite a lot before all of these experiences put me off it. In the course of my dating adventures, I learned that not everyone uses the app just to get sex. Many people genuinely want relationships, and some even find them. However, one match of mine was so desperate to have a girlfriend that he assigned me that label after one date. I didn’t get any say in it, of course. I just had to stand there concealing my horror when we bumped into his friends and I got introduced as “my girlfriend.” Our ‘relationship’ ended the next day.