The right swipe

My foray into the world of dating apps began 3 1/2 years after I got married. It was a Thursday morning and the workday was just ramping up when Lisa Bonos, my friend and podmate, described her dating fatigue.

“I need to take a break, but ...” she said.

“You don’t feel like you can,” I replied.

I’d felt the same way as a single woman in my early 30s. Online dating was slowly draining my will to live, but how could I sign off? There was no time! That murky pond of inappropriate matches and unsavoury characters was my surest bet to find lasting love. At least that’s how it seemed.

As The Washington Post’s weddings reporter, I’d become convinced about online dating after interviewing dozens of happy couples who’d met on the web. And at least I could tell the universe I was doing my part.

“So let me date for you,” I offered.

I think it took her 0.01 seconds to say, “OK!”

I met my husband (offline, at a party) just before dating apps supplanted traditional online dating sites. The thought of exploring this world and doing it with some emotional distance seemed kind of awesome. Online dating for myself — a drag. Online dating for someone else — so fun!

DAY 1

It was trickier than either of us expected to transfer Lisa’s dating profiles to my phone. We decided that I would just do two, Tinder and JSwipe.

I’ll never forget the thrill of seeing those little cartoon figures dance the Hora when I made my first JSwipe match. Thank you, animators, for perfectly illustrating that little flare of excitement that lights up when someone likes you back. Sitting on the couch studying Tinder profiles that night, my husband took the phone saying, “You’re doing this wrong,” and began swiping left and right like a windshield wiper.

“Stop!” I screamed in panic. “You’re not even reading their intros.”

“You’re not supposed to,” he said, with all the conviction of a man who also left the dating pool before apps took over. Anyway, Lisa, the love of your life was almost certainly among those half-dozen guys he passed over before I could grab the phone back. I’m sorry.

DAY 2

Back to studying profiles. Wow, there are a lot of weirdos out there.

Like, more than I remember. Or maybe they just feel more free to be weird now that they don’t have to fill out a 100-question personality survey or describe their body type. Just throw up a few selfies and come right out and say you’re a married swinger looking for noncommittal fun. Good! At least you’re up front about it.

I feel none of the self-consciousness I would if I’d been dating for myself. I swipe right on every vaguely appropriate match and write introductory notes without any concern that they might not write back.

DAY 3

Sapiosexual. That was a new one. We definitely didn’t have those back in my day, kids. A guy Lisa had already traded messages with wrote saying he was coming to town for the weekend. Even though it wasn’t my original match, I loved carrying on their banter and sorting out the details of the date. Urban Dictionary told me sapiosexual means: “One who finds the contents of someone else’s mind to be their most attractive attribute.” I think it means “pretentious.”

DAY 5

This stuff is incessant. Oldschool online dating was so much more contained. It happened on a laptop. Since I wasn’t pulling up eHarmony.com at work, it happened at home, mostly in the evenings.

And that kept it confined to a certain portion of existence. Now my phone is buzzing continuously! This requires so much attention! And three days a week I’m home with my two small kids who also seem to think they deserve some of my attention. #entitled

DAY 6

I think we’ve got a live one! He’s cute, Jewish, professional and proactive enough to ask for a drink on a Saturday night. And his messaging game is decent. Some humour, at least. Lisa is alluringly unavailable for the lastminute drink, but he follows up to make an actual date for late next week.

DAY 8

Thank God for Google. On Tinder, when someone says they are looking for NSA, they are not in the market for a cryptologist. Or maybe they are. But whoever shows up, they better come with “No Strings Attached.” The more you know.

DAY 14

Date night! I am so excited for us. I mean Lisa! What if I am a ghost-dating savant and can just retire to someplace tropical where I just spend my days swiping for the sake of others? I can’t wait to hear everything.

DAY 15

OK. So I set her up with a racist Islamophobe whose politics she abhors. Not quite how I saw this going.

DAY 18

When Tinder prompts me to “Send a message or keep swiping?,” it seems like an existential choice. One option offers the chance to have an actual human interaction with someone Lisa likes who likes her back. But the other is ... easy. So easy. Swipe, swipe, swipe. To send a message requires brain power and creativity, and those capacities feel diminished with every second I spend swiping. Swipe.

DAY 20

Tomorrow I’ll delete Lisa’s apps and hand full control of her dating life back to her. Mostly what I’m left thinking after this experiment is that dating is really hard. Maybe harder than ever.

Which seems ironic because the convenience of dating apps should make it easier than ever. And yet ... that convenience and those quantities seem to have somehow eroded the likelihood of actually meeting. Does anyone go out to bars and randomly hook up anymore?

DAY 21

So long, swiping. I wish I’d had better results. But presumably that’s how everyone feels after a few weeks (or months or years) on the apps. It’s a lot of work. It’s also weird and exciting. Even though I’m disappointed I didn’t deliver Lisa the man of her dreams, I hope I at least delivered her a decent break.