Counterpart

Like every meeting, lecture, party, and flight, I planned the right time to fall in love.

Like every meeting, lecture, party, and flight, I planned the right time to fall in love. I made a promise to myself when I began college that if I hadn’t dated someone by my senior year, I would resort to a dating app. I talked down on the mindless swiping and gamification of dating. In fact, love is something that I hoped would find me without trying. After all, I was nineteen in Los Angeles—the options should have been endless. I silently looked at every new connection wondering if this was the one. Was this the friend that turns into a lover? Love at first sight? Or maybe, my ‘invisible string’?

On February 13th, it rained, and I watched Saving Face over a bowl of hot ramen. I found myself thinking about lovelessness again. I tried not to let the fact that I had never been pursued bother me, but I also felt that, at my age, girls were supposed to be the ones with options. Girls were supposed to be able to pick and choose what, and who, they wanted. I wondered if my choice to ‘plan’ love for later years may have just been a deflection of my inability to attract it.

Maybe I mistook the absence of physical warmth for the absence of social warmth, or maybe I used spontaneity to push back at my sophomore slump. But, in a sudden burst, I scrapped my four-year plan to find love. It was stupid to believe it would ever find me if I didn’t even try to look for it first. I took this idea to one of my close friends, someone who embraces risk and rejects embarrassment in a way I can only envy. He, of course, encouraged me to do it.

So, to hell with the plan, and watch out world! I downloaded Hinge.

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My first match was with a boy who had a family of raccoons in his backyard. He wished me happy Valentine’s day (as it was, then, the 14th) after we had shared a total of four texts, and I got icked out. One of my matches felt more like a carbon copy than a counterpart of mine. One unsuccessfully tried to convince me he was a Mormon, and as stupid as it was, it really did make me laugh. People complimented me, and for once in my life, I felt pursued.

After a week or two, the likes plateaued. I checked Hinge as much as my other social media accounts, seeking the instant but meaningless gratification of a like. It was scary how quickly the app took control of my attention. Every fear I had about Hinge and its users was true: I became the one mindlessly swiping. I became a player in the dating game, knowing that there was only one winner—the company. I knew the app prioritized money-making over matchmaking, but this awareness couldn’t change how plainly horrible it made me feel. Every like I didn’t get made me more self-critical. I have faith in my intelligence and kindness, so as the interest I received on the app dwindled to near-zero, I scrambled to figure out what it was that could be wrong with me. Every question led me to only one answer: my appearance. 

Within weeks of downloading Hinge, doubt crept into every moment where I felt beautiful. Maybe I felt pretty, but surely I wasn’t actually pretty. And if I wasn’t actually pretty, then it doesn’t make sense to artificially feel that I was. I second-guessed every picture I took, every compliment I got, and every look in the mirror. I felt permanently, unfixably ugly. 

I was miserable, and I was also keenly aware of how stupid my misery was. I knew my experience was nothing personal. I knew that it might be different in a different city, at a different age, or in a different month of the year. Yet, despite everything I knew, the fact of the matter was that a single app had dragged my self-esteem down to the worst it had ever been. 

The truth is, I didn’t actually mind how many Hinge likes I had as much as how many I was supposed to have. My female friends on Hinge talk about all the weird messages they receive, the ugly guys that like them, and reaching the match limit. Women online talk about how the gender ratio on dating apps, heterosexually, favors women over men. Women attract, and men chase. Women get to pick, and men have to be picked. That is what I was taught, what I expected, and selfishly, what I wanted.

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A dating app ruined my self-image, but I was already fragilely confident, risk-averse, and sensitive. I was the perfect person for Hinge to hurt. I know some, thicker-skinned than me, who can stay on, and some, luckier than me, who meet their matches instantly. I also know some, smarter than me, who know better than to download it in the first place.

Three months have passed since I first downloaded Hinge, and despite every way that it hurts me, I am still on it. It has made a space for itself in the group of apps I check daily, and my self-esteem still shifts as a function of my success on the app. I take pictures of myself and see them through a lens of desirability and attractiveness. It’s embarrassing, really: me, a self-proclaimed opponent of online dating, joining an app and getting hurt. It’s like jumping off a cliff and feigning surprise when you drop, like crashing on the ground and ignoring the blood— like healing, then jumping again.

There is one month until my senior year of college. Like every meeting, lecture, party, and flight, I planned the right time to fall in love. What I wasn’t able to plan for was the fallout.

Night Harbor, Milton Avery (1957)

I wrote this in May for my dear friend Alex’s literary magazine and just now got around to sharing it here. My thoughts and feelings on the subject have shifted slightly in the past two months, but I have not edited the essay since then in order to honor the complexity and extremity of my feelings at the time. I have gone back and forth many times on whether to post this as it feels like putting the most insecure part of myself online for show. So, if you have any thoughts or impressions, please comment them to make this feel less isolating and lost-to-the-void :) 

This summer, I’ve been occupied with doing research, cooking, battling East Coast humidity, dwelling on the fact that I graduate in eleven months, and watching the new season of Love Island USA (which does not at all help with the longing). I’ve also added some of my recent rotations to the playlist.

I hope everyone is doing well, and thank you for reading!

Love,
Aarushi