I Deleted the App Three Times. The Pattern Was Never the App. | Modern Dating

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I deleted the app for the third time on a Sunday in January, standing in the checkout line at a grocery store.

I remember the exact moment. I was holding a carton of eggs and a bag of oranges. I was scrolling out of habit through a stack of faces, and I stopped on a man with a golden retriever, a mountain in the background, and a bio that said, looking for something real. And I felt nothing, not even a flicker, a kind of flat, tired static.

I held down the icon until it shook. I pressed delete. I said out loud to nobody, that is it. The woman ahead of me turned around and said, are you okay? I said, I am fine. I just quit something. She smiled. She said, good for you. Let me tell you about the first time I deleted it. It was the previous spring after Bastion. He was the first man I met on the app, and he was extraordinary for about six weeks.

He wrote beautiful messages. He called me his favorite person. He planned a weekend away. And then quite suddenly, on a Wednesday, he went quiet. Three days of nothing. Then a text that said, I think I have been moving too fast. I need space. I did not hear from him again. I deleted the app that night in tears, and I told my sister, I am done with this. I told her it was the app's fault. I said it is designed to make us treat people like products. I believed that. I want to be fair to the argument, because I think there is something to it. Dating apps can make it easier to disappear, to swipe past, to keep looking for a better option. A lot of people feel worn out by them. It is a real thing, but I want to tell you what I did next. Two months later, I downloaded it again, I made a new profile, and I met Colin. Colin was warm, funny, and incredibly attentive. He texted me every morning. He sent me a song. He said, I have never met anyone like you, and I felt once again the dizzy joy of being chosen. We had four dates in two weeks. And then on the fifth, he mentioned that his ex was still in the picture.

In a complicated way, he said he did not want to rush. He said he needed time. He said, I like you so much. That is why I want to do this properly.

I waited patiently for three months. I was patient. I was understanding.

I told myself that a man who is careful with his feelings is a good sign. Then I saw her on his social media, not an ex, a current girlfriend. In a photo from the weekend, he had told me he was working.

I deleted the app that night again. I told my friend Odile, it is so toxic.

All these men are the same. Odile, who has the dry honesty of a person who has been through it, looked at me over her glass of wine and said, are they? I said, what do you mean? She said, I am not asking if the app is toxic. I am asking if Bastian and Colin are the same. I said, what do you mean? She said, they both said they had never met anyone like you. They both disappeared. They both made you wait. She said, and so did the one before them.

Remember Theo?

I did remember Theo. He had been a very charming man who had been, as it turned out, married. I put down my glass. I said, that is a coincidence.

She said, maybe. Or maybe it is a pattern. And the pattern is not the app. I want to tell you what that week was like, because I think the anger was the most honest thing about me.

I was angry at Odile. Of course I was.

I had spent two years telling a story in which I was a hopeful, unlucky person. And in one sentence, she had turned the story over. I went home and I lay on the couch and I thought of all the reasons she was wrong. She did not know what it was like. She was in a stable marriage. She had never had to go through this. She was being judgmental.

By the fourth day, I had run out of reasons. I lay there with the television on, not watching it. And a very small voice at the back of my head said, but what if she is right? It was a frightening thought because it meant I had a part in the pattern. If the problem was the app, then I was a victim. If the problem was the men, then I was unlucky. But if the problem was something I did, then it was something I could change. And that meant I had been choosing in some way all along. A person who lies to you is responsible for lying, but a pattern in your own choices is yours to look at. And it is the only part of the story you can edit. On the sixth day, I called Odile. I said, I need to tell you something. I said you were right, and I hate it. She laughed. She said, I know. I have been waiting by the phone. We talked for two hours.