By Isaac Westhead and Isabella Poderico
Isaac:
As someone who fell in love with a person from a dating app, I can regrettably say that you’re probably not going to find the same. I know that’s completely contradictory, but love is such a rare thing to find online, especially nowadays, and even less so on dating apps. Apps like Tinder are for the most part used for random hook-ups, and the same can be said for Hinge, where I met Bella. This focus on casual sex can be fun, although meaningless. The constant swiping and superficiality of it leaves a lot to be desired when attempting to form a meaningful connection, something that seems much harder to do today than in the historic age before the internet. What we need is a move towards meaningful connection, and not even necessarily in a romantic sense; we need community. Despite apps branding themselves as being ‘designed to be deleted’, dating apps are developed in a way to keep you hooked, keep you swiping, and keep you single, else they stop making money. I fell in love from a dating app, but chances are, you aren’t going to.
However, if you’re going to use dating apps, whether you’re looking for something casual or something more, it’s important to understand how we can make everyone feel safe and respected. It’s important to remember that this person doesn’t know you, so whether you’re genuinely a great person or not, especially if you’re a man, they might be apprehensive. Therefore it’s important to respect their boundaries and create a relaxed environment in which you can both feel comfortable. One good way of doing this is by asking them questions about themselves. I’ve heard too many stories about men who go on dates and literally don’t ask the other person a single question, talking about themselves the whole time instead. Don’t be one of those men, and for the love of god, listen to their responses and reply meaningfully.
Isabella:
It took me multiple hinge dates to meet Isaac. On every date I went on, I shared my live location with my four housemates, who kept a keen eye on my whereabouts, as you can never be too safe. Our first date was at a quaint video game cafe underneath the Brighton boardwalk on a random Thursday evening in early March. Little did I realise that being underground and by the sea would make my phone GPS vanish for all of my friends, who would proceed to ring me several times each. Little did they know I was having far too much fun to pretend to go to the toilet so I could text them about my evening as I had done on my other dates. My friends then spent the next hour debating whether or not to drive down to the sea front just to check I hadn’t been kidnaped or murdered. This may sound a little crazy, but these genuine fears are valid and common for women who use dating apps. Casual dating does come with a risk for women – men are a threat, and staying safe on dating apps is often a top priority. Even casual university hookups can lead to danger, with studies showing 97% of women have experienced sexual assault at some point in their lives. Whilst I was completely fine with my now boyfriend, on our first date he was ultimately a stranger, and my friends’ concerns came from a place of care, community, and girlhood.
Now you’ve met someone and you want to move things forward, healthy communication surrounding your sexual preferences – whether it be to have sex or not, is the first step for setting boundaries and understanding one another. As cringe as it is to say, consent is always key and expressing your wants, needs, and upholding respect for one another will truly ensure that you and your partner constantly have positive sexual experiences (and orgasms). If you feel like you can create a safe and open space – discuss your insecurities. And if you can’t create that safe space – is that someone you want to have sex with? Suddenly, discussing what to do with your pubes, explaining how your favorite vibrator works, or worrying if your boobs are normal, doesn’t feel so scary if you are with someone who is consciously able to consider your feelings. Now, I am not in the slightest suggesting you should only sleep with people you love or are in a relationship with, because casual hook-ups can be fun too, but establishing mutual respect and understanding is healthy for any form of relationship – especially a sexual one. For women, feeling confident in your own skin can be difficult, and learning to love yourself is certainly a task when we are constantly bombarded with images of photoshopped perfection. But I believe normalising talking about sex with a partner is certainly the right step to explore your sexuality, feel good in your body, and make your body feel good.
Isaac:
It’s tacky to say, but communication is the key to any good relationship. Despite how obvious of a statement that is, that doesn’t mean that communication is always easy, or even that it’s something that comes naturally. Us men in particular, often due to how we are socialised, are taught not to express ourselves fully, instead to hold everything inside, which obviously causes issues when we try to communicate with those we love. To truly communicate how we feel, and to truly understand how others do, we must first examine what it is that’s holding us back from doing so. As a starting point, if you haven’t already, I would highly recommend reading ‘The Will to Change’ by bell hooks, which takes an empathetic approach to understanding men’s struggles to love and be loved under the patriarchy. Despite me understanding all of this, that is not to say that communication is something that comes easy for me, but Bella is always exceptionally patient and understanding, creating a space in which I can try my best to communicate to her how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking. Being in an environment that allows you to communicate is as important as the communication itself.
Bella, to me, is home. She is where I feel comfortable, accepted, and secure. This is something I struggle to feel with a lot of people, but with her it came almost instantly; on our first date I felt I could be myself from the jump, and by our second, I felt like I had somehow known her before. I thought I had experienced love before, but then Bella came along and showed me just how wrong I was. I am so lucky, and so grateful, to be able to experience her love each and every day. Whether I’m at my worst or best, she is always there for me, as I am for her, and I am so looking forward to our futures together. I truly hope that anyone reading this gets to, at some point in their lives, experience such a pure and meaningful love in their lifetimes.
Isabella:
Last night at 2am I texted Isaac on our one evening apart a week to tell him I loved him, before I shut my eyes to fall asleep and dream about him. I yearn for him when we are not side by side. I have truly never experienced such an immense and truly overwhelming feeling of love before, I feel crazed, I feel longing, and I feel acceptance. I have never experienced such encapsulating love. Hell, I had never experienced true love before I met Isaac, and the whole ‘when you know you know’ advice you might hear is genuinely true, you do. The first time we said ‘I love you’ we were in a hotel room away, and I just could not hold it in anymore. Not telling him how much I was completely and utterly in love with him felt like a lump in my throat; it was all I could think about. When I finally spluttered it out, we held each other and cried together. At this point we had loved each other for so long, being able to say it felt empowering, perfect and right. Isaac is genuinely the man of my dreams; I often joke about the fact I’ve finally got the hot feminist boyfriend I have always wanted, and if I’m completely honest I love to show him off, because I am proud of the man he is. He brings me flowers, he does the dishes, he writes me letters, he is my best friend, he is everything a partner should be and so much more. I can’t even sit here and write about how relationships can be up and down, and that they can be difficult to navigate etc etc, because through my experiences with Isaac, I have learnt that relationships can also just go up and up and up, seemingly exponentially. We have had some strange and uncomfortable talks about the ghosts of our past, but weirdly these things have only brought us closer, given us a good laugh, and made me certain that together we can do anything. Now a year on, we are looking at moving into a flat together which is just behind the same street we first met. Little did I know what a match on Hinge would lead too.
Being in your twenties is strange. Everyone is on different paths – I have a friend who is a mother of two, and I have a friend who is flying to Thailand to find herself once she graduates. Everyone’s journeys are different – and that is so beautiful. Whilst we may compare our lives to others, if every story we read was exactly the same, that would be so boring, right?