I'll set the scene: it was October of my first year of college and as great as my classes and new friends were, I was a little lonely and figured I'd try my luck with foreign Tinder. I made an account and filled out my profile, writing and rewriting descriptions, making sure to use the "right" photos - in other words, photos that showed me having fun with friends but also photos of me by myself, because one of my pet peeves was when you can never tell who you're talking to because they have all group photos with the same friends on their profile and none by themselves - and to present myself as easygoing and fun. In her TED talk, Amy Webb mentioned the discrepancy between how she presented herself and how, as she eventually figured out, she "should" be presenting herself in order to get more matches; at first, I was confused by this, since I know that I personally had a pretty solid knowledge, even as an 18-year-old, of how to construct a theoretically-successful profile. The fact that she presented her talk in 2013 and had conducted her research in the mid-2000s gave me a little more background on her experience: since online dating (which later evolved to app/"swipe" dating) was less common than it is now, there was less of a guideline of expectations. I also had to remind myself that the difference in age groups was probably a factor, with people our age valuing our appearance (both in pictures and in the details we disclose about ourselves) more, just as our culture tells us we should, whereas people in Webb's age group probably value accomplishments more. Also, I think appearance matters much more in swipe dating, where people can judge you based on just a few pictures - or maybe just one picture, which is why this is at the forefront of our generation's minds as we swipe left and right and change our own profiles based on what we see and like and think is acceptable from others' profiles.
The first meetup wasn't quite Webb's "disaster" date, but we were both incredibly and painfully awkward. I was red the whole time, he kept nervously asking if I was okay, and I was honestly a little relieved when the date was over. It wasn't that I didn't like him, it was more that we were playing off each other's nervousness. He still wanted to kiss me at the end of it, and because it was my first time dating anyone ever, I thought that wasn't quite the protocol and told him only on the cheek (everything I'd read had said that no one ever kissed on the first date). By the next few dates, we had gotten much less awkward with each other, although on the second date he wouldn't stop staring at my eyes and told me he really liked them - which continued throughout the whole relationship. Is an eye kink a thing?
Of course, he was a really nice guy and treated me well; he even met my dad, and I ended up meeting his whole family when I went home with him one weekend. Even so, thinking back on it I don't think I was quite ready. Between that and the fact that by early January, I had decided to leave Dublin and come here, I decided that I needed to break up with him. I think I was annoyed with him even over winter break, but since it was around the holidays, I didn't want to ruin his experience by breaking up with him by text or even by phone. The 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover reading only backed up my feelings about not breaking up this way: I didn't want to be "someone who texts this kind of information, and thus in [the other person's] mind behaves badly" (p. 21). I feel like anyone who has any kind of concern for the emotional state of others won't text this kind of information, or even say it over the phone unless distance proves it to be absolutely necessary.
So I waited. Not only did I wait until after Christmas and New Year's, but even after I got back, I waited until after his birthday (which is the same day as my dad's, so it was easy to remember). I waited until the week after his birthday - I did give him a birthday present, but I didn't text or talk to him much that week, and then asked him (admittedly over text) if we could go get coffee and talk. I explained to him that I planned to come back to the U.S. and that I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue our relationship and take it to long-distance. He was very understanding about it, and we parted on good terms. I still have a picture of him on my Facebook (I forget if it was ever on Instagram, but I have him tagged in photos that I didn't delete), and we're still friends on Snapchat. We haven't really stayed in touch, but we haven't cut the other out of our lives, and I hope at least some part of this amicability was due to me being a decent breaker-upper.
