Swipe Right

I’m not sure Ryan has ever been on a dating app. Which is kind of charming. But also makes my job exhausting.

He’s not ready to start dating again, which is very reasonable, but I’ve made it clear he is allowed to see other people whenever he decides he is. He doesn’t need my permission, although I would like to be informed. 

In the meantime I’ve taken it upon myself to look for a more compatible woman for him. I understand not wanting to put the emotional effort into finding someone, but maybe if I just set them up on a date and they hit it off he could appreciate the company? To be clear, this isn’t something I’ve put a ton of effort into, but when I swipe on women I’ve opened my swipes up to women for him rather than just for me. She’s not my type but she’s great in other ways and open to non-monogamy, maybe she’s open to my proposal.

I have not presented this proposal to any women so far. I haven’t gotten far enough with any of them. I pretty quickly determine most of the women I’m talking to aren’t good enough for him anyway. But the bigger problem is he doesn’t think these women are good enough, which is killing my momentum.

I love him, I think he’s great, but I do think he’s trying to punch above his weight class looks-wise. I show him perfectly cute women, not necessarily stunners, but definitely not unattractive women… and he is less than enthused. He was sitting next to me as we swiped together. I was trying to get him dialed into the level of attractiveness he could expect from someone that’d actually respond to him. For anyone that wasn’t obviously unattractive I would wait for him to tell me which way to swipe (and ignore what he said based off my own feelings). I almost got into an argument with him over this. I’m fairly certain he didn’t realize how frustrated I was but I was actually extremely annoyed. Again, I know people have different types, but to me he was saying no to women that I’d definitely rank more attractive than his wife of 8 years.

Now, I’ve said a lot of unkind (but true) things about this woman. However, I’ve never called her ugly. Because it’s not true, she’s not ugly. To me she is a perfectly average, slightly chubby white lady. So average that I have literally seen three other women I couldn’t differentiate from her if I tried. One of which was named Sara.

Oh my god this is getting off topic but I need to share this. A couple times I saw this woman named Sara on Tinder. And I would second guess whether it was The Sara. The age was close, but I was pretty sure a year too young. In her chubbiest pictures she was too large to be The Sara but in her smaller ones it seemed about right. I scrolled through this woman’s photos so many times before realizing she had a half sleeve and unless The Sara got one since I last saw her and Ryan hadn’t mentioned it (he mentioned the tattoo she got around the same time I got mine) this definitely couldn’t be the same lady.

Anyway. In Sara’s defense I didn’t hang out with her that much and haven’t seen her face really at all in over a year so she probably doesn’t actually look like every average looking white lady. But to me she does. And to me, I was showing Ryan sevens when he’s been with a five his whole life.

Now, I could forgive a man for wanting a hypothetical woman he might sleep with but there’s no imminent actuality of to be insanely hot. I get it. Men are sluts. He's a slut. If an extremely plain looking woman was right there undressing him he would help her get his clothes off immediately, but if we’re imagining anyway, might as well imagine a super hot woman. But he would reject the hot women as well!

I would pause on a woman that I personally found to be quite hot and he’d still hesitate. I was like how are you possibly hesitating right now? Look at her. And he would point out something on her profile. No! You don’t read Tinder bios. At least not until you match. You swipe, and if you actually start talking to someone then you read their bio. He was limiting his options way too much from the jump considering dating apps are algorithmically biased against men. At this rate he’d get literally zero matches.

I was going to explain to him that he should probably settle for an average-ish looking woman if he was looking for an actual companion. If he wanted to hook up with a super hot chick, go for it! But she's probably not going to check all of his boxes compatibility-wise. He was just aiming too high. As I looked for the words to phrase this delicately I realized the words would be coming from me. That was the problem. He had me. My body is admittedly not as good as when I was breastfeeding but it's still something literally any straight man could appreciate. I'm not stunning but my face is cute. I'm smart, accomplished, wealthy, funny, and extremely humble. I was the standard he wanted, my flaw being that I'm already married. He probably wasn't going to find an unmarried me on these apps.

Admittedly, I already told him I didn’t want him on dating apps anyway. I had joined one of the infamous Are We Dating The Same Guy Facebook groups because I was pretty sure a man I matched with was cheating on the mother of his child. I joined just to let any of them know to reach out if they were suspicious this was their guy. Well, the posts I saw after joining… These women are all insane. Holy fuck. They’d match with a guy and not even have exchanged any messages before posting him asking if anyone had tea. Girl. You shouldn’t be using dating apps then if this is your approach.

So I absolutely do not want him on dating apps if he’s going to get posted like that. He needs to meet a lady in real life. Will his standards be more reasonable in that situation? When it’s a real person and not just filtered pictures and the same overused blurbs? Maybe. But he’s also informed me he is completely oblivious to flirting and would never approach a woman first.

So at this rate maybe I’ll get to keep him all to myself for a while. I don’t mind.