Phill Di Censo
Let's Get Froyo:
My Summer of Online Dating
Phill Di Censo
I remember when online dating was as taboo as divorce. It was for lazy people and social hermits. Anyone who had nothing to hide just went out and found someone at the bar or, better yet, planned on a star-aligning, spontaneous, love-at-first-sight experience while going about their normal day. But when you can’t seem to make meaningful connections and need a little help aligning stars, could online dating be as promising as real-life first time interaction? Dating sites have infiltrated television, airing advertisements with “real testimonials” of success story couples with smiling faces and happy, traditional looking households. Apart from the minor detail of how they met, they are as happy and “normal” of a couple as their parents could have been. But for every beautiful, televised couple, how many failed attempts at love have come from these sites? How many sweet and genuine soulmate searchers have been matched up with loose-moraled free spirits only looking for a hookup?
And what about the experience and thrill of meeting somebody in real life, going out of your comfort zone and approaching that jaw-dropping individual across the room or the supermarket. Traditional dating techniques provide a story from the beginning. Is it worth giving up the excitement and novelty of a whimsical, everyday encounter for a “shooting fish in a barrel” type of community that promises a better chance of meeting a potential lover without the fear of making an awkward fool of oneself in a spontaneous real-life meeting?
Enter: Me
I’m a presentable young college student, and an outgoing one. I am a member of a fraternity and a couple other clubs on campus. Opportunities to meet women are all around me. I’m not ignorant to that fact. But what if these young women, the ones that’d go for me, just don’t have what I’m looking for? I’ve been single for about a year now, since getting out of a pretty long-term relationship. No matter how hard I try I can’t seem to get over that long-term love of mine. We met just a few weeks after we started our Freshman year here at U of M. Everything was going wonderfully and I thought this girl was the one. This was, of course, before she decided she couldn’t be with me for the rest of her college career. So, like a hurricane of four letter words and tears, she ended our relationship.
I’ve gotten myself out there and gone on dates, introduced myself to girls in class, and told the prettiest girl at the party that she’s the prettiest girl at the party. My comfort zone is easily left. But no matter how hard I try, the results of these relationships, or lack thereof, all seem reminiscent of each of the other failed tries. I can’t seem to make them last more than a couple of weeks. Whether it’s been more of a mutual lust that brought us together for drunk “booty-calls” and steamy makeout sessions after class or a girl that I really, genuinely liked for a while and messed up by saying something stupid or just not being enough for her, my attempts at dating over the past year have been, for the most part, less than sharable with my mother. In a desire to find something real, and to get over my ex-girlfriend, I picked up my phone and downloaded this dating app all my friends had been using, and bragging about, for months.
Enter: Tinder
Born in September of 2012, Tinder is a hugely popular dating app based on a simple “Yes” or “No” format for judging the photos of potential matches. Mutual “Yes” votes result in private messages and the possibility of meet-ups and ultimately, a connection. It seems like everybody on campus has tried Tinder, drawn in by the ease of use and thrill of physical attraction. Looks are the main selling point of Tinder matchmaking. While this is undoubtedly a shallow way to go, there’s nothing requiring users to meet if they don’t connect on a personal level through their private messages. It’s all about the user, I thought, and I maybe I could turn this into something good. Tinder would allow me to try my luck with girls all around campus, from the convenience of my palm.
After my months of failed connections in “real life” I turned to my smartphone and got to Tinder-ing. I spent much of my summer on this app. It’s been about a year since I started this adventure. These are my stories.
April, 2014
“Marcella”
My first connection came late in my Sophomore year while I was living at the fraternity house. A foreign exchange student from Brazil, Marcella knew almost no one on campus outside of a couple of other Brazilians she met somehow. The first time we met was late at night when I offered to drive her home from some sketchy bar. I was apprehensive yet excited, she seemed totally normal and totally good looking. I pulled up to the bar as the flood of people poured out of the doors but somehow my eyes found her right away. You couldn’t have missed her. Her silky brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin screamed “I’m not from here”, and it was hot. A fifteen minute car ride led to an hour long talk in my car. We talked about everything. School, back home, boys, girls, everything was fair game. It felt like I had known this girl for a long time and it felt good.
Did I mention that she lived with her mom? Yeah, her mom was here too getting her PhD. Our heart-to-heart was abruptly shorted by a knock on my window from an angry Brazilian woman at 3 in the morning.
Over the next couple of weeks we’d spend time almost everyday together. We had dinners, fraternity date parties, and hours of nighttime Netflix. It had all the makings of a relationship and more.
Until things changed.
It started with calls a couple times a day asking me what I was doing. Not just how my day was going but exactly what I was doing, with whom, and until when. She wanted all the details, but I could put up with that for the most part.
In this way she reminded me of my ex-girlfriend. The never-ceasing desire for control I knew for a year and a half had begun to feel comfortable. I guess it was sort of nice knowing that somebody was thinking about me and cared what I was up to. The daily calls and check-ins, irrational meltdowns when I felt like spending one weekend night with the guys, and the complete explorations of my cellphone astounded my friends and family who told me I needed to get out of the relationship. But I couldn’t quite see the forest from the trees, as they say.
Whether the over-protective nature came from her culture or being hurt by boyfriends in the past, Marcella proved to be too attached to me and all too familiar. Through this experience I learned that a relationship, in college or in the real world, should not be about being controlled by the other person. I reminded myself that I am my own individual and need not be tethered to a girl and give up my freedom. A relationship needs trust, the kind of trust where multiple daily check-ins aren’t the norm and spending a night apart doesn’t trigger chaotic episodes of jealousy and obsessive possessiveness.
This first attempt at online soul mate searching seemed so promising at first, but ended up being too much to handle. No relationship came out of this experience but I really learned something about myself.
Anyway, back to Tinder.
Result: Failure
Duration: 1 month
After my first glimpse of a relationship from online dating left a sour, unsatisfied taste in my mouth, I insisted that my experiences could only get better. I had to get one bad one out of the way before I could strike gold, right?
May 2014
“Kentucky Derby Karly”
I remember the day clearly. It was Friday, May second. This of course meant the next day would be the first Saturday in May, or as it’s also known, the racing of the Kentucky Derby. I was sitting in my room of my fraternity house eagerly waiting for my buddy to call me to tell me that he was ready to embark on the five hour car ride to my brother’s apartment in Louisville, where we would spend the boys’ weekend we had been anticipating all year, smoking cigars and drinking mint juleps. I was all packed up and ready to go. We cleared our schedules months in advance for this. Cameron had called off of work and I made no hopeful attempts at Tinder dates for the weekend, even though this beautiful brunette Karly had been blowing up my phone all day.
Her bio said that she was at least a foot shorter than me, liked pizza, and loved crossfit. I hate crossfit. But I love short, athletic brunettes girls. I’m a sucker for them. My ex-girlfriend was one, even though she died it blonde before college. But that’s beside the point.
After chit chatting for a while on Tinder about school, hopes, dreams, and crossfit, she insisted that we go out and get something to eat. She went to Eastern Michigan so the 5 minute drive over to Ann Arbor was no big deal for her.
“I can’t today,” I reluctantly replied, “I’m waiting for my friend to get here so we can go to the Kentucky Derby”.
An hour or so later, with still no affirmative response from my buddy, she asked again, and my reply was something along the lines of:
“I can’t today,” and “I’m waiting for my friend to get here so we can go to the Kentucky Derby”.
This girl was persistent. After a few more attempts at begging me to make a little time for her I became part annoyed and part flattered. I hadn’t had a girl pine that hard to see me in a while. Alas, things started going her way when I get a call from Cameron telling me that he couldn’t get off of work for the weekend. He had sworn he told his boss a month in advance about this weekend but I had a feeling he completely forgot. That was just who Cameron was. Right before I sent a text message to my brother saying that I wouldn’t be coming after all and to thank him for the offer, I got another Tinder message from Karly. She was still hopeful and still asking the same thing she had been bugging me about all day.
“Alright, let’s hang out,” I said, “But bring a dress because we’re going to the Kentucky Derby.”.
In one of the wildest moves of my young life, I had just invited a girl I had never met before to accompany me to a five hour car ride, a very drunken weekend in Kentucky, and another five hour car ride back on which I anticipated reflecting on the poor decisions I made. In an equally wild move, she said yes.
I spent the next hour simply trying not to think. I tried not to think about the stupidly dangerous choice I just made, what my mom would say, or the possibility that this girl wasn’t at all what she seemed to be online. In about an hour, bags packed and all, Karly pulled up in my driveway. When she stepped out of the car I was prepared to be less-than-impressed. She had seemed too good to be true: short, brunette, and as adventurous as I am. So if she lied a little bit about her weight on Tinder I’d understand, because whether or not this girl and I hit it off, I would have a pretty damn good story to tell later.
But this definitely wasn’t a “catfish” situation. She stepped out of the car and she looked even better than in any of her pictures. I stood in awe as this little, smiley brunette girl giddily walked up to my porch to give me a hug. Anyway, we grabbed a bite to eat in town so we could get to know each other and settle our nerves about the whole crazy situation. Then we were off.
The car ride went surprisingly well. Small talk smoothly transitioned into slightly surface-scratching conversation about dreams, food, and of course, crossfit. Everything was going just fine and we got to my brother’s apartment without having any regrets myself. The next day was the Derby, and despite the fact that I might have been more drunk than I should have been off of rum and mint juleps, I remember having a great time with Karly. We walked around, held hands, and drunkenly challenged another couple or two to a fist fight. This girl seemed pretty wonderful while we were intoxicated and too preoccupied to really get to know each other very well.
On the car ride home, without the buzz of alcohol or allure of a horse race, we were back to five hours of one-on-one conversation. Did I mention that this girl liked crossfit? Every other sentence for the next week was about crossfit. Whether it was her workout routine or her most recent personal record, Karly provided the most one-dimensional conversations I had ever been a part of. Her dialogue and her life revolved around this sport and the vanity of her body image seemed to be the only thing she enjoyed in the whole world
In this way she reminded me of my ex-girlfriend. I had never realized that half of the dates we went on were to the gym or that we could hardly ever go out to eat because she only ate the healthy foods she found in the hottest exercise magazines. She was incredibly self-conscious and cared more about her body image than she did making our relationship work. This time away from her has helped me realize this and the danger of vanity. When we get obsessed with how we look we neglect everything else around us, and I saw first hand how it schisms relationships. I enjoy lifting and the progress I have made, but sometimes it’s important to take a step back and keep myself well rounded as an individual. I need a girl who values the same idea. I am a multifaceted person with dreams and ideas, and the girl for me is also multifaceted. College is a time for me to explore my options, both in my own life and in my relationships.
Result: Failure
Duration: Less than 1 month
With one more in the books, I found myself back on Tinder. My generally optimistic outlook on life kept me hopeful at this point in the experience. Whether or not I ended up falling in love through Tinder I had made some stories to share with my friends about and I’d gained valuable lessons to remember, as well as general relationship practice. With this in mind, I kept to my mission, stayed hopeful, and got right back to it.
July, 2014
“Elana: The One That Got Away”
After living at school for the first portion of the summer it was time for my internship to begin. The reason I bring this up is that this meant I would be moving back home for the remainder of the summer. Using Tinder at home was different than using it in Ann Arbor at school. I couldn’t use it for hookups at my parents’ home and I definitely couldn’t bring a girl home and tell my mom we met on Tinder. The only option was to find sincere, sober dating opportunities on the app. This felt promising; the idea that parties and the hookup culture of a college campus couldn’t cloud my judgment here. This brings me to Elana, and the best week of my entire summer.
She was a tall, athletic, brown-haired philanthropist with living at home for the summer like me. She was religious, loved animals, and she could have gone to the Olympics for figure skating if it weren’t for a pesky recurring ankle injury. This was the sweetest woman I had ever had an online interaction with. Oh yeah, and she goes to Dartmouth. This girl had it all, including rich doctor parents. I’m not saying her family’s wealth influenced my attraction to her, but it didn’t hurt. We chatted on Tinder for a couple weeks and had numerous attempts at a dinner date shot down by her volunteering in inner-city Detroit or her internship at the hospital.
When the stars finally aligned we decided to meet for frozen yogurt. Froyo has always been my go-to first date choice. The drive over was nerve-wracking. I mean, the other dates had made me nervous, but never this nervous. I felt like a little kid again, a little kid scared to death of the prettiest girl in the class. Anyway, the froyo went great. She wore a sundress, one of my weaknesses. Her smile was mesmerizing and her scent is something I can still smell today if I think hard enough.
We sat and we talked for a while and the day was still young. We shared a lot of similarities, we discovered, including a knack for ukulele and a love for writing. We went to the mall for an hour or so and I swear I fell madly in love with this woman before we got back to the car. She was perfect. Well, perfect for me at least. You could ask me exactly how or why I fell in love in such a short date but it’s just something I can’t explain. You just feel it.
On the way back we stopped at my elementary school. Why I chose there I couldn’t tell you. I just didn’t want the date to end. We laid in the grass for a while as the sun went down and as we got up to leave she planted one on me. This kiss led to the single sappiest, corniest, most romantic sounding moment of my life so far. We stood there in that very spot just kissing and looking at each other for hours. HOURS. It was at least two and a half. It was as if we were frozen there, in the most important moment of my entire Tinder career. Putting the online dating seal on this one feels wrong. It was so much more than that. Anyway, we could have stayed there all night if she didn’t have plans with her mom that night. I drove her back to the frozen yogurt store where she left her car and I spent the rest of the night thinking about what had just happened.
The next day the first thing on both of our minds was seeing each other again. I invited her over to my house and, of course, lied to my parents about how we met. My mom loved her right off the bat, like I knew she would. Anyway, the evening was spent in my basement half-watching Nacho Libre and half sharing another whole-heartedly, helplessly romantic experience on my brown leather couch.
She left and I was positive I had found a girl that really meant something. Obviously I wasn’t saying this girl was automatically “the one” for me, but in the moment I felt that I had proved to myself that I could find a replacement for that heartbreak I had been feeling. This optimism was short-lived, however. A few days later Elana told me she couldn’t come over for dinner like we had planned because of some sort of family drama going on.
That was the last I ever heard from Elana. I wish I could say I was lying or that in the next few weeks she came running back to me for an hour-long kiss and an apology for dropping off the face of the earth. But that’s not how it happened. Whether she actually had a family dilemma that needed her attention, was just playing me the whole time, or she ended things to protect herself from heartbreak reminiscent of some she had experienced in the past, it was over. In fact, I like to believe that last possibility. Maybe I’m just being naïve or ignorant but telling myself that she cut ties with me to save herself from inevitable heartbreak when the school year started is the most comforting reasoning for me to believe. I couldn’t be angry at her for having feelings for me.
In this way she reminded me of myself. In thinking back on all of the girls I had met out at parties or wherever it happened to be, I realize I had kept myself in this shell of protection. I never allowed myself to open up and give any of the relationships a chance in fear of reliving the damage that was done last year. Maybe because of this I am to blame for the many failed relationship opportunities since the big breakup. I will never forget Elana and I will never stop wondering what happened. But, I now realize places in which I could improve my own life.
Result: Failure
Duration: One Week
Today
After my experience with Elana left me confused and discouraged, I took a little hiatus from dating. Not just from Tinder but from dating in general. I had put far too much focus on replacing something I felt needed replacing and not enough focus on being myself and living my own life for me. I had spent so long trying to fix a heartbreak in all the wrong ways. Though my experiences in this timeframe are classified as “failures” in most people’s definitions of a relationship, I truly believe that, as a whole, I came out of it a better person. I learned a lot about myself through these young women. A failed relationship doesn’t need to mean the time spent in it was a complete waste. While the dates I’ve described all had their ups and downs I really learned a lot about myself, about what I desire both in a relationship and in my own personal character, and that there’s really no point in harping on things in the past. My ex-girlfriend and the time we spent was a part of my life, but not my whole life. While I had set out to find someone new and to get over her, I left the experience with a new mindset. I didn’t quite find a new, lasting relationship and that’s just fine by me. There’s more to life than investing yourself in someone else and relying on them for your happiness and completeness. Today I am happy and I have since deleted Tinder. The way, at least for me, to find the right person is going to be simply to let it come to me. An app like Tinder provides the quantity of possible connections, but the act of meeting these people and sorting through them is exhausting and seems to make people forget what’s important to them. When something and someone right for me comes along, I’ll be waiting. Right here in real life.