Getting advice about dating apps from people who met their soulmates before dating apps.
Gone are the days of meeting your significant other at the bar, a party, through mutual friends, in college, or even at work. It’s all about dating apps now. Dating apps are an entirely different playing field than when your pals linked up, with new rules, regulations, and red flags to keep in mind as you swipe. It’s honestly a new game altogether.
So when your well-intentioned (but extremely uninformed) coupled-up friends try and give you advice about how to navigate Hinge, you can’t help but feel irritated since they never had to use dating apps themselves and the words of encouragement or direction feel patronizing at best and out-of-touch at worst. It honestly makes you feel more alienated from them than you already do.
Hearing “Aw, you’ll find someone, don’t worry!” even though you weren’t worried until they said to not worry.
You understand that everyone’s timeline is different when it comes to love. While there are definitely times you wish you weren’t single, you don’t feel worried because you’d rather be alone than settle with the wrong person just to say you have someone.
But that’s apparently not how many others feel about your situation. You’ve heard more times than you can count about how you “shouldn’t worry” because you’ll “find someone one day!” And if you’re being honest, you never worry until someone says something along those lines. Then it sticks in your head for weeks as you feel simultaneously judged and pitied. It hurts.
People are less interested in your very legit accomplishments than they are in your relationship status.
For example, when you’re out with your coupled-up friends’ other coupled-up friends, they tend to breeze over professional and personal accomplishments in favor of discussing your relationship status, offering various (and unsolicited) theories about why you might be single.
“It’ll happen when you least expect it.”
Kindly fuck off!!!!!!
The fact you now need at least three months in advance to plan a Saturday morning brunch with your friends.
And creating four to six different group chats as pals eventually drop out one by one in their ability to participate. While you’re busy, too, it is harder to coordinate group plans since everyone got into serious relationships. Everyone has different priorities now, including you. It just sucks that those priorities no longer align in the same way they used to.
People trying to force you to give someone you’re not interested in a chance.
This is probably the worst thing that comes with being the last single friend. Not only is it insulting and disrespectful as hell, but it also dismisses the wonderful, full life you’ve built outside of a significant other. Being single is not an indictment against your worth, how attractive you are, or your happiness. It is simply a state of being.
For whatever reason you haven’t met someone, you know the truth and that’s all that matters. This is your story and no one else’s. You’ve had the courage to not settle for what you don’t want and this should be celebrated, not questioned.
