I Finally Had a Great Bumble Date — And You Can Too

Go with Your Gut Reaction

Sometimes, when I am on Bumble, I swipe rather quickly. The rules say go with your gut reaction. I don’t always scroll down and read the rest of someone’s profile. And I almost did that with my match. See, his first picture was a selfie of him on a hiking trail. The camera was close to his face and he was wearing an unattractive pair of wrap-around sunglasses. If I were paying less attention, I probably would have swiped left. (For those of you unfamiliar with the app, you swipe right if you are interested and left if you’re not.)

But a voice in the back of my head chastised me for being harsh, so I scrolled down. The rest of his photos were much better. And he had filled out his prompts with complete sentences. Yeah, maybe the bar is set too low. Anyhow, I found a picture that made my stomach flip. He is cute, I thought.

iStockphoto

Honestly, sometimes Bumble just feels like a soul-sucking waste of time. Swipe, match, message each other (often leading to bland conversations), meet for coffee and generally feel lukewarm about the whole thing, lose interest (on either end) and stop messaging. Rinse and repeat.

I never am lucky enough to have a stomach-flip-level reaction, so I swiped right. And it was a match! Oh, crap. Now I actually have to talk to him. Tired of the general lukewarmness of online dating, I put in extra effort to start an interesting conversation in hopes that he would reply.

And yeah, he did.

Don’t Message For Too Long

I had heard somewhere that you shouldn’t message your match endlessly without plans to meet up. Ideally, you should message a bit, get to know each other, and then quickly make plans to meet up and suss out the connection IRL.

Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free

Nope.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

We messaged back and forth on Bumble for a few weeks. We had become what has been negatively coined ‘pen pals.’ But to be honest, taking that extra time to get to know each other past the superficial stuff created more interest on my side. So, I asked if he wanted to exchange numbers and make plans to meet, which reminds me…

Don’t Exchange Numbers

I’m not quite sure why this is a rule, but I don’t care much for it. I have no problem exchanging numbers with someone I’ve been messaging for a bit if we’re hitting it off.

Photo by Meghan Schiereck on Unsplash

We continued messaging over text. I opened the conversation for making plans to meet. I kind of wondered if he was really interested because usually, my matches are the ones that prompt phone number exchanges and meetups. But part of the reason I liked talking to my match was because he is never too forward. So, we made our plans to meet up the following week.

About a month after matching.

Don’t Let the Date Linger

Dating advice often includes meeting for a quick coffee — not to let the date go on past an hour. Another rule broken.

We met for dinner, which I now recommend instead of coffee. Coffee dates always feel like we both have one foot out the door and it doesn’t set a good precedent about any potential future.

iStockphoto

We ordered and sat outside. We ate and talked and everything flowed rather naturally — for which I partially credit taking that extra time getting to know each other. Eventually, he looked at the time and pointed out that it had gotten late. We had been there for roughly three hours. Yikes. We both fumbled a bit with goodbyes and loosely made plans to see each other again before going our separate ways.

…

Of course, after typing it all out, I can see why the above advice exists. In the dating world, why waste a month for what can turn out to be a flop? But, for two introverted people who aren’t serial daters, breaking the rules and taking things slowly brought me to a place where I felt excited about moving forward — not out of obligatory next steps and rules — but out of interest.

Who knows what will happen next. All I know is that I’ve learned that sometimes slowing down, ignoring the rules, and going with what feels comfortable for me can lead to a more favorable dating life.

So, what do you think about breaking the rules and dating apps in general? Let me know if the comments!

…

Hi there, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this content, feel free to check out the rest of my work here. If you want to be notified when I publish new content, you can subscribe to my email list here. If you are not yet a member of Medium, you can sign up for unlimited access to everything Medium has to offer! Consider using my referral link here. (I receive a portion of your membership fee at no additional charge to you.) Coffee is my main source of writing fuel. Kindly consider dropping by my Ko-Fi page 🙂 Till next time!

— Breanna

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

***