‘We messaged day and night. Seven years on we couldn’t be happier’
Nurse Sarah Paterson, 37, and husband Ross, 38, from Uddingston, tied the knot last year after meeting on Tinder in 2015. Here, Sarah shares their story.
Working in a female-dominated area, there were no potential dates for me at work so I decided to try Tinder.
I’d been on and off the app for a year. After rejoining for the third time it wasn’t long before I found Ross, I think just a few days.
I swiped right for him because we had similar tastes in music and holiday destinations. In his pictures he looked like he was good fun and he appeared to have a good social life.
I was also surprised that I hadn’t seen him out as we seemed to go to the same places. And, of course, I thought he was very handsome.
We messaged literally day to night, long and lengthy messages for about a month before we met. Looking back, I think this is a great way of getting to know someone before investing time going on a date that might be a waste of time.
When we did meet,
I felt like I really had a good grasp of the type of person Ross was in terms of his sense of humour, hobbies, interests, lifestyle, everything.
We had loads in common so chatting was really easy and he made me laugh a lot.
We’ve been together seven years, got engaged after being together four years and celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary in July. We also have a dog, Winston, and couldn’t be happier.
movement, when ordinary women were encouraged to describe their abuse at the hands of male attackers.
What is also highly significant now is the number of video clips appearing showing resistance to oppression.
“They are hundreds of videos,” said Samira. “That is the reason people across the country are questioning the regime and also why good people around the world are focused on injustices here.” However, the brutal reality of lethal state thuggery is being challenged at a terrible price.
Images are also appearing of people killed in connection with the demonstrations that followed Amini’s death.
Even the heavily controlled state media has conceded that some 83 people have died in demonstrations up until September 28, with more than 2,000 arrested.
Among those allegedly murdered was Hadis Najafi, a 20-year-old shot six times in the head and chest during an organised rally in Tehran.
A video posted on social media shows Najafi tying up her hair before joining the protest at which she was killed. Iran has an extremely youthful population – some 60% of its 80 million citizens are under the age of 30.
This has much to do with the leaders of the Islamic regime that took over from the Shah in 1979 focusing on the tenet of the Quran that encourages early marriages and large families.
And an attack by armed separatists on a police station in south-eastern Iran on Friday killed 19 people,
including three members of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the staterun IRNA news agency has reported. It was not clear if the attack is related to the Amini protests, as the area has previously seen attacks on security forces by ethnic Baluchi separatists.
So where is this all going? Will Iran see a repeat of 1979 as popular protest finally topples an unpopular regime? The regime is ruthless. More than 300 people including 20 children died when police crushed the last major protests in 2019, against rising fuel prices. A 2020 report by the UN highlighted the “extensive, vague and arbitrary grounds in Iran for imposing the death sentence, which quickly can turn this punishment into a political tool”.
On Friday reports emerged from Iran of morality police patrols disappearing from the streets, in an apparent sign of the regime seeking to calm the situation. But president Ebrahim Raisi has pledged to “deal decisively” with the protests. The government has been shutting down the internet, with human rights monitors reporting “the most severe internet restrictions” since 2019, including clampdowns on popular platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter.
Mahsa Alimardani, of the Iranian free speech group Article 19, said: “There are definitely a lot shutdowns happening”. All the while there are reports of Revolutionary Guards surrounding schools and universities to intensify the repression.