I’ve Deleted the Apps. Why Does Dating Still Make Me Feel So Disposable?

Jul 16, 2023

By Annie Lord

I told myself not to look over again, but then I did and he caught me, a smile spilling out of the sides of his mouth. I snapped my eyes away and then looked purposefully in the other direction for a bit so that he would think I was just scanning the room for a friend.

Later, I was at the bar and I noticed him a few paces behind me, waiting for something. He didn’t need a drink because there was one in his hand. It would be so easy to say to him, “Sorry, are you waiting?” and then move out of the way so he could order a drink. It would give him an “in” to talk to me if that’s what he wanted, without really having to put myself out there. There was plausible deniability. An escape clause. I told myself to do it, once, twice. But 10 or so minutes passed, and his friend came over from their table, patted him on the shoulder, and the two of them ducked out of the door. I was annoyed at myself then; I’d let the opportunity slip through my fingers, and I don’t tend to let that happen much anymore.

When I stopped using apps a few years ago, I started to notice men again. I saw men I liked on the bus, on the street, at festivals. It felt like when I got fired from this really awful job I did in my early 20s. They’d been overworking us, bribing us with delivery if we stayed past 10 p.m. on Tuesdays, and then I was let go, and I was unemployed. For a while, I woke up late, walked slower, and gradually the world flickered back into color. I saw the shadows of leaves mottling over the grass, stepped on an icy puddle and felt it groan and hiss under my heel. Everything looked like a dream sequence in a film.

When I still used apps, I’d never notice romantic opportunities. I’d go to parties, and in the morning I’d wake up and remember that there were hot men there—I just didn’t appreciate them because I was too busy running around with my friend, asking people what animal they’d be if they had to pick. Romantic time was parceled away from socializing time—it took place beneath my thumbs, against my phone screen. It was pushed into small pockets, when I was waiting for the kettle to boil or the bus to arrive. When I did notice men, I would find a way to dismiss them somehow, for being too small, for liking Spiderman, for having a posh voice, for offering to meet me on a Friday night (where are your friends?).

The End of Love, the book by Eva Illouz I mentioned in my last column, talks a lot about this, about how apps make us evaluate people in a very clinical manner. “The abundance of potential partners afforded by the technology makes evaluation take on a formal character, akin to an ‘interview’ that must efficiently sort out suitable from unsuitable candidates,” she writes.

She’s right: it’s so easy to dismiss people you meet on apps. Everyone takes on a disposable quality, and even when you connect with someone and it starts to feel as though you could—might—like them, you come across another opportunity, and this one has a really cute gap in their teeth and a photo of themselves snoozing on a camp chair at a festival you go to every year. And so you move on. And on.

Time off apps has meant I’ve been able to deprogram myself from this perspective. I meet someone, and he’s different to me, has characteristics I might have dismissed before. He’s a bit more laddish than I’d usually go for; looks as though he is a little too committed to the gym. He captioned his last Instagram post “Ibiza nights”; there’s a picture of him and his boys squatting down, fingers pointing at the camera, in bucket hats and garish patterned shirts. But I don’t care that he isn’t my usual type because he makes me laugh loads. He tells me this story about when he was so drunk he fell asleep on a bench in Dalston and someone stole his phone, his wallet, his trainers, and even the cap he was wearing, and he had to walk, barefoot, into a café and announce, “I’ve been robbed.”

We text a lot after the night we meet. Go to the pub and drink enough that it doesn’t feel embarrassing when we make out at the bus stop. And then we get to this one Sunday when we’re meant to hang out, but he doesn’t text me the plan, and it’s already 12 p.m., so I message asking, “Still on for today?”—already knowing where this is going. He sounds really sorry, to be fair, explains that he was at an afters and genuinely can’t move. But then he doesn’t suggest another day. I give it a week. Of course, by now I’m completely in love with him. I tell my friends that I know what I’m about to say is really stupid, but that I need to say it out loud just to discount it from my mind: “Do you think the reason he might not have texted is because he’s scared that I’m really annoyed that he flaked?” They raise their eyebrows. “Okay, okay,” I say. “I’m sending the text.” And I tell him that we should probably leave it before he can.

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

By Hannah Coates

That’s the problem: People still treat you as though you’re disposable, whether you meet them on an app or off. It’s like we are walking algorithms. There are so many choices, each one matters less. The smallest thing can disqualify someone from being your someone.

I have my first relatively free week in a while. I want to go on a date, and since it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, I download Hinge again. I reply to the prompt “Together we can…” with “text each other saying we’re not in the place for anything serious right now,” and wait to see if anyone’s going to prove me wrong.