The 5 Stages Of Online Dating Everybody Goes Through

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1. You keep a special folder on your phone with all the apps in it!

You’ve signed up for Tinder or Grindr and you’re excited to have so many different kinds of people right at your fingertips! You keep a special folder on your phone with all the apps in there so your business isn’t all the way out there: OkCupid, Grindr, Tinder, Scruff, whatever you use. You open the apps on a boring bus ride home and swipe left or right and get excited when you have a new match, when one of your matches writes you or when a hot guy on Grindr who is not a bot bombards you with like 27 dick pics from every angle and lighting situation. #Winning!

2. You’re “whatspping” now

There’s a moment when you go from messaging people to logging on to message with one or two specific people to giving out your number and messaging people on WhatsApp. When your friends ask you if you’re seeing anybody new you say, “I met this guy on Tinder. We’re WhatsApping now,” the assumption being you haven’t actually met in person.

3. You meet them IN REAL LIFE

But then you meet them in real life! They morph from a picture and a screen name to a phone number to a notification bar in WhatsApp to a real life in the flesh human being! Meeting someone on a date for the first time is always crazy because you never know what you’re going to get. They could be shorter than you thought or older in real life than their pictures presumed or they could just be a total asshole.

4. You either continue messaging OR get ghosted

Once you leave the first date you wonder whether you should reach out and tell him it was nice to meet him, that you’d like to see him again, or you wait for him to message you. You struggle for a few hours after the date and when your friends ask you how it went you ask them if you should message or wait ON a message. At this stage one of two things happens: you continue messaging and see them again or you get ghosted.

5. You wonder if you should tell people you met online or not

And if it all goes well you continue seeing this person for a bit longer before you become “official.” The first time someone asks “How did you two meet?” at a party you’re kind of like, “Uh…lol” because you haven’t concocted a response, so you lie and say “at Whole Foods” which everybody knows is code for Grindr anyway. But online dating is so chill. Everybody does it, and there’s no need to be embarrassed about meeting your boyfriend or girlfriend on the internet!