I met the love of my life at a bookstore, as I browsed the poetry section in a flattering floral printed, just-the-right amount-of-elusive dress. As I was reaching towards a copy of Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar — a stranger with the slightest curl in their hair, pronounced dimples, and green eyes, carrying a copy of a tattered Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara — made devastatingly deep eye contact with me. And the rest was history.

Who am I kidding? This absolutely never happened.

Dating Pre-Tinder

The greatest time in my dating life was the four years I was sans relationship, before the invention of Tinder, and without any semblance of a meet-cute in sight. There was something distinctly wonderful about getting to know myself after being in a very serious relationship for four formative years of my life. When I did start dating, I very hesitantly dipped my feet into a pool that seemed to have been purified with a new type of chlorine.

My first relationship started when I was 16. I had nothing to compare it to as it was my first of everything, and my boyfriend went on to also become my best friend. By the time I was in my early twenties, in a new state, and single, I was too busy studying and trying to figure out my identity apart from this entwined relationship to care much about when the next one would come around. When I did start to even think about dating, and eventually tried it, I realized how much the way we met potential dates had changed.

The Dating App Age

I stayed away from dating apps for many years. I would watch some friends in awe as they swiped through photos of nearby strangers. They had so much power in their fingertips — the power to eliminate someone within moments because they didn’t like their haircut, or their body, or their face. It seemed like a new game that I did not want any part of. Still, I watched as if this was another technological trend that would eventually disappear, kind of like Vine.

Alas, Tinder birthed their rebellious, creative counterparts: Bumble, Hinge, OkCupid, Christian Mingle, J Date… the list goes on. You can find a dating app for any preference nowadays. And not only that — dating apps are the main way millennials (and Gen Z and Gen Xers) find possible mates. It’s how we find dates, doms, poly entanglements, long-term relationships, sex, and sometimes friends. It’s exhilarating and exhausting. If you ask me, it’s empty.

Succumbing to Dating Apps

I started playing with what I referred to as my “Tinder Machine” in 2014, after a particularly difficult breakup. I had met this person in real life if you can believe it. The way it culminated sounded like a meeting you’d only hear in stories, except that it didn’t work out in the end.

I am a poet, so I take my wallowing very seriously. During this wallowing period in which my delusions shielded me like a cloak, I downloaded Tinder and inflated my ego as big as it could go until it popped. I felt like a tyrannical ruler, a dater like I had never been before — calling the shots, having multiple dates a week, having sex with whomever I wanted with the ease of a swipe and a setting of schedules.

I connected with some people, others less so, and I met the worst boyfriend I have ever had. This isn’t Tinder’s fault, but I did commit to a person because I started to feel like a piece of meat that had been set out too long. My game high dwindled. However good I was at the behind-the-scenes beginning, I felt the emptiness in swiping, meeting, f*cking, and circling round again. It felt like settle or keep swiping. So I settled.

The Struggle is Real

Since then, I took myself off apps until moving abroad, when the world was once again my oyster. This time it was a little different. I’d started to come out of the bisexual closet. I met some people who were sweet and interesting, but most importantly, I learned what I would and wouldn’t stand for. I had another dream-like meet cute, and I fell in love. It didn’t work out in the end. I deleted it again.

When I moved to New York, I was vehemently against dating. I didn’t want to meet anyone in real life or otherwise. I had heard New York was the worst place to date, so I figured I wouldn’t be so tempted. It seemed like everyone had met their significant others and dates on dating apps. Still, everyone had a dating app story worse than the previous one. Dating seemed scary in this age of detachment and plethora of options.

The Problem With Dating Apps

This is the most significant problem I’ve found in dating apps: we’re looking for the perfect formula of cool, comfortable, hot and aloof. We look for perfection in other human beings that does not exist. We look for partners that don’t exist. So we keep swiping into the void. Hinge’s new tagline is “Designed to be deleted.” What if we never get to that point where we feel safe enough in our new relationship to do so? What if there’s something better out there?

And like our phones, these dating apps are addicting and seemingly unavoidable in the current culture. Every time we’re ready to date again, we download them, hoping for a different result. We start the whole tango over again — choosing the perfect photos that make us seem like real people, and answers to Hinge questions that are both self-deprecating but don’t reveal too much.

Like sheep in a herd, we follow. We swipe so we don’t have to be vulnerable, because vulnerability means we can’t just pick up our phone again and find the next person. And quitting the apps means opening up in person, the scariest part of all.