At 31, I ended the relationship that was meant to be the one I would spend the rest of my life in.
There was something lacking and it hadn’t been there from day one. That something is fundamental for love but we can’t quite work out what it actually is, so we call it chemistry.
The break-up happened very fast and shook my world. The future we’d planned together for over a year vanished overnight. But I felt optimistic; I now knew what I wanted, it was just a case of finding it, so I joined various dating apps.
Apps are a great tool to bring new people into your life, which is especially useful if, like me, the majority of your friends are married and you have a bad habit of recycling past lovers.
The last time I was single, just over a year ago, I had a good experience using apps. Most dates turned out to be pleasant enough experiences. Some so pleasant that they led to a little heartache when things didn’t work out.
This time was different, though. I wasn’t getting as many matches as before and I wondered if it was because my age was 31, not 29. My matches would send me weird or negative messages. One guy frightened me by following and messaging me across multiple social channels and then sent me an incoherent but nonetheless threatening text message after he’d seen I’d blocked him. I asked my other single friends what they thought of the apps; everyone universally agreed that they suck.
Recent studies show that endless scrolling can make us lonely and depressed. As I swiped through endless profiles of guys who say they’re looking for “someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously” or that they want to “debate the topic of pineapple on pizza”, I thought, Surely there’s another way?
Then the inevitable happened. I came across my ex on Bumble. It was time to take this offline – would a matchmaking agency be able to cure my dating app fatigue?
……. Eventually, I found Mutual Attraction. Their website had a younger feel to it and a quote from their founder spoke to me: “We’re kind of like the dating agency for people who don’t use dating agencies!”
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