The third meeting with a match from Tinder was, by far, the most difficult but the best. I have had some difficulty in writing about it and I still won’t be able to go into detail, but since I wrote about the first two, it didn’t seem right to leave the third out.
The first person to talk to me on Tinder two months ago with whom I struck up any kind of real conversation was this person, and I was completely blindsided by him, actually. I didn’t join Tinder to get interested in anybody and I didn’t even join it to make friends, so I think my guard was down. He was immediately interesting, thoughtful, and articulate. We talked about a lot of things, and often. It doesn’t take me long to know how I’ll get along with people and I just felt something with him. These days when I think back about how it was at that time, part of me hugely regrets re-joining Tinder at all. I became irreversibly emotionally invested in whatever it was I had with him and interested in him and even after it became clear to me that he was interested in friendship rather than anything else, I couldn’t make myself quite feel that way. But I was / am happy to have a friendship with him though it’s different from my feelings.
It took us a long time to meet. I was going through interviews during the time that we thought it might originally work, but then someone made an interview with me during the exact time slot I thought it might work to meet, so we had to push it back. He started a new job with an unpredictable schedule, but was persistent in planning something.
When we met it was at a park closer to me than to him. He had his guitar and wrote a few songs. I was supposed to have helped but I didn’t turn out to be help at all. I was so shy and stupid but I still enjoyed the time. I don’t really know how he felt about it; I think he had a nice time, but I’m not entirely confident about it. At the time he had mentioned meeting again, and of course I wanted to and want to. We had originally talked about doing something, maybe going to a poetry reading or things like that.
Meeting him made me realize some things: that objectively, he’s wildly better-looking, like, to a silly degree we’re lopsided in that; that I’m less able to control my shyness than I knew; that being friends with him is something that meets a need in me that hasn’t been met in a while—contact with creative people and creative output is something I haven’t had since I was involved in the creative writing emphasis at UCI. I loved it and I felt most myself at that time; meeting him and corresponding with him was good for me, for that, beyond everything that I think is cool about him.
After meeting—three weeks ago, now—conversation spread out; he’s busy with work, and to be honest the clip at which we exchanged texts up until then was pretty impressive; I don’t even have that kind of social energy normally, but with him it was different. Today it’s been a little while since I heard from him at all. I know, given my situation, that it is selfish of me to want anything at all. But I’d like to see him again before I leave, I’d like to keep in touch. We’ll have to see what happens.
Sometimes I regret re-joining Tinder, for thinking that it would last three days and I’d write my blog posts and be on my way, unaffected and unchanged. But this person is also one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met and I’m glad I did meet him. The timing of everything, the fact that I couldn’t control my emotions and got attached and admiring, that’s all on me. In any case, I really enjoyed my third meeting and I enjoy this person. He’s the first person who’s made me even a little bit sorry that I’m leaving so soon—but I’m only half of whatever’s between us, and I understand that. Whatever’s going on with him, whether what he wants has changed or his schedule or whatever, I respect it.
Overall—using Tinder this time around has proven to be so so so much more emotional and embroiling than I had ever imagined. I’ve learned a lot about myself, I’ve even felt some things that I never felt before. It’s been quite difficult, really draining; I never intended any of this. And who would have thought? So when I start to get hard on myself for doing this, for joining so close to when I planned to leave, for wanting to start things which have no time to grow, I remind myself that I couldn’t have foreseen this, that it’s so absurdly different from my first experience with Tinder, and that living this way, feeling what I feel and wanting what I want, is just the only way I know how to live. I don’t want to feel bad for that anymore.
But part of me still wonders if I’m the only one who’s gotten anything out of what I’ve had with this guy and if I should have not responded to that first message, if I should have stuck to the plan and said hey this has been nice but I have to delete my account now on the third day… I’ve thought about explaining myself a hundred times, saying I didn’t plan for this, and I don’t really know how you feel about this but if it’s annoying, I’m sorry for this… But since I don’t know, I hoard my memories greedily, knowing that at least I can take them with me wherever.
