Lockdown Swiping – My Dating App Time In Lockdown
Lockdown swiping was one way for me to get through the early stages of lockdown. Over on Twitter I made no secret that I’d done relatively well in terms of matches. These matches led to good chats. I think the count when I discussed it was 90.
From the end of March to the middle of April I got 90 decent chats with people. I’d never known such a thing. I was buzzing with it, I was hoping lockdown would soon be over so I could get out on some dates.
I spoke in detail to a good number of them. In terms of meeting up, potential relationships and other things, just to clarify though not sexting, I know where your minds were going. OK I lie, a few of them involved sexting but thats not what this blog is for.
Today as I sit and type this I talk to none of them. Not a single one. I’d love to say I know why, but I don’t. It wasn’t a ghosting from either party things just fizzled out.
Lockdown was hard, for everyone. We were all isolated from friends and family. But, this isn’t an excuse. We probably interacted more electronically than we have ever before. The apps and Twitter helped me massively through lockdown. Ive made some great friends on Twitter that I would love to meet up with and have a drink when all this is over.
From the dating apps though, my phone would be going mad. Whats App, Tinder, Hinge Bumble and POF notifications all coming through. It felt great. People were finding me attractive and wanting to chat with me. While I wasn’t able to go out and meet people, I was sat talking to more people electronically than I had done for a long time.
We’d promised dates, good times and we looked forward to things. Plans were made as to where we would go when lockdown was over. Sometimes I killed off the conversation and others they would kill them off. Sometimes a message that was replied to the day before wouldn’t get reply the next day.
I’d flirt and chat with all these women. Compliments exchanged. Time invested in to each other.
Does this make me and these 90 people bad people? No I don’t think so. We looked for ways to pass time, we had an attraction to each other at one point to swipe and match. Is there any harm in flirting and having a good time? No. Why should there be? Would people judge my actions and the fact I had conversations with so many people? Yes I imagine they will. Does it change me or who I am? No it doesn’t.
I was, and still am, a single man dating, or trying to date in uncertain times like lockdown. If you’re flirting and conversing with someone and they are reciprocating then enjoy. If the person isn’t interested then don’t force it. Don’t be that guy or girl!
However, this means an average of 1.8 people a day. This means chats overlapped, multiple dates discussed with various people. Again I’ve never been shy in saying I will date multiple people at a time. But looking at this 90 people in the space of 50 days is a lot. Or at least it is in my eyes.
Some never got to the discussion of dates though. Some were just conversations to pass time by. I knew that, but I don’t know if they knew that. Yes the attraction was there, but, I knew it wouldn’t lead to anything. Even if lockdown ended the next day.
Things have changed, lockdown rules are easing, my swiping habits have changed, for the better I would say. I don’t spend days on end on the apps swiping. It didn’t sit right with me upon reflection. And sometimes we need to reflect on what we’ve done to realise our behaviour.
I’ve updated my profiles to show that I’m not looking for a relationship right now, they show I’m just looking for something casual. Thats where I’m at right now in my own mind.
I’d like to think people didn’t get hurt by the things that were discussed. I don’t think anyone was totally all in on anything that we discussed. We had a flirt, we discussed dates and we were looking for a good time, just not knowing when the time would come.
I get some decent matches still. I do alright for numbers and for chats. But these days I’m keeping the numbers a lot lower. I’d hate to think any of the chats I had from lockdown swiping led to people being hurt. If it did and they are reading this somehow then I apologise.
I had chats with people that I really grew to like, that I really wanted to go somewhere but they didn’t. I wasn’t hurt by that, I put it down to the times we were in. But just because I didn’t feel hurt doesn’t mean others didn’t.
Lockdown swiping was in overdrive for me. It’s not something I’d be doing again even though I’m still single. Things change and people change. We all have a past, we all have history and thats something that we can’t change. However, we can change our own behaviours and we can learn from our past.
Thanks for reading,
Paddy
