What if I just increase the distance to 40 miles? Yeah, I’m willing to drive 40 miles….
I had been on Tinder for about a month when I settled on this thought to increase the distance settings for potential matches.
Since joining tinder, I went on dates, I had boring conversations, I had been ghosted, I had small-talk conversations, I got excited about getting to know someone several times. Basically, I was in the midst of the let-down experience of Tinder. It’s a common Tinder experience after all, right? Either way, I was aware of this dead-end Tinder experience, so I decided I needed to increase the distance filter to at least counter this experience as much as I could, and honestly, I really didn’t care how far someone lived. If I liked them and they liked me, I was willing. I was truly on Tinder for something serious, for commitment, so 40 miles, if that were the case, would be no big deal to me.
Low and behold, my match was 43 miles away in Loma Linda!
Gisell was the first to direct message me after a few days of changing the distance filter, and when she did, she was the first, in my Tinder experience, to put substance in her conversation. To tell you the truth, I think the substance came out of her genuine excitement to talk to me as well as mine to talk to her.
Our short Tinder biographies, of course, didn’t outline everything that we liked or who we were. Comparing our “bios”, we probably looked like we would’ve not had much in common. She was from Maryland studying at medical school; she loves dogs, and she was still a Seventh Day Adventist. Being a native of California, my knowledge of Maryland was limited to Hairspray. I knew close to nothing about medical school or medical students. I’m also a cat person, and I have no interests in religion other than from a literary standpoint. Still, I could sense her personality through her messages, which naturally meshed with mine, and once we first started talking, we never stopped. We wanted to get to know each other beyond those markers that made us different.
It was about two weeks of talking before we planned our first date, and she was actually more nervous than me on the first date! Me, standing at my prime height of 4’8, intimidating someone?
I know that my height wasn’t the reason as to why that surprised me, but either way, it was the genuine, sweet type of nervousness I got from her. Funny thing is that though Gisell did live 43 miles away, she didn’t actually drive, so in reality, I did prove that I did not care about the distance since I was the one driving to her for our first few dates and at the start of our official relationship.
I would venture to say I had to drive these 43 miles almost every week, had it not been for the pandemic. We had been together for 7 months when the quarantine hit and because Gisell was basically alone in her Loma Linda dorm, I suggested to her that she stay with me and my family for the mere 2 week quarantine. Then, the 2 week quarantine turned into a year and so Gisell’s stay complemented that, and I gained my girlfriend as my unofficial-official roommate ever since.
This all occurred naturally though. It wasn’t some forced stay. She wasn’t forced to stay, and by the same token, I didn’t feel forced to let her stay. I’m actually fortunate to have had this experience with her because we were able to strengthen the foundation of our relationship in this unique way. I could go into detail as to how she has made me a better person and more of that cheesy stuff that I am a sucker for, but I’d like to leave that in secrecy.
At this point, Gisell and I have been in a committed relationship for 2 years and 3 months and I can vouch for the tough experiences that happen while looking for serious relationships on Tinder. It was a tough experience, but it wasn’t a dead-end experience after all.
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