Swiping Right — Innocent Sexual Fun or Badly Bruised Hearts?
Here’s an admission — I have never used Tinder. Mind you, I am 70 and happily married so why would I?
In my past dating days, usually between marriages, I’d been known to date women who’d posted ads in the personal column of my local newspaper (north of England) but enjoyed most success with online dating sites such as Soulmates and match.com. These experiences were so interesting they prompted me to write a book on ‘Love, Sex and Relationships’ back in 2003 and went on to inform my ‘Relationship Manifesto’ book in 2012. In short, I am not without experience in affairs of the heart, and have five marriages as evidence.
But I am becoming very aware of just how outdated I now am.
A female relative of mine (single, aged 25), recently visited my home in Chiang Mai, Thailand. On the third night she informed me she was “off into town”. No problem, she does her own thing, so off she trotted at 8pm. I woke at 5am the next morning and her bedroom was empty. No sign of life. Now Chiang Mai is a lively town in the far north of Thailand where I’ve lived for 12 years (I know all the haunts. Well, I did — nowadays I am in bed by 9pm), but even I was a little surprised at the speed with which this young lady got ‘hooked up’.
I shouldn’t have been. It was all down to Tinder.
Apparently, all you need to do is ‘swipe right’ and off you go. This young lady (doing postgrad study at a UK university) uses Tinder all the time. All her female friends do. This is how they meet blokes nowadays. No boring getting to know you down at the pub, smooching over a pint of Guinness and lager and lime. In the world of Tinder you can be on the pull 24/7.
And sure enough, there just happened to be a young guy (from Canada, apparently) also in Chiang Mai for a few nights and also looking for company. A couple of Tinder swipes on her smartphone and hey presto, the night suddenly promises to be a very bouncy one.
As a sociologist who has long specialised in gender identity, I find this new youth relationship culture fascinating. Yes, I admit to being a little peeved that I’m too old for it, though no doubt there are 70-year-olds reading this who are avid Tinder users. Go for it you oldies, before the wheelchair gets you!
But it is not just the speed at which people can meet, ostensibly for drinks-though really hoping for much more fun than that - it is the globalisation of it all. British girl connects with Canadian guy via a smartphone app, all within a few hours and hook up in one of the lesser known parts of South East Asia. Amazing.
If you are into Tinder and finding your mates online, then you too are part of the ‘swipe generation’. Dating apps like Tinder, Badoo, Wechat, Michat, Bigo are dramatically changing the sexual and relationship landscape. Significantly, this global culture shift is not just being driven by sex-hungry males. Women too like sex. Hey, there’s a thing! I wish I’d known that back in the 1960s.
Not surprisingly, these dating apps are now very aware of the global market they are in. Tinder even has a dedicated feature called “Tinder passport”, allowing any traveler to conveniently search for potential dates in their upcoming holiday destination long before they even arrive in the country.
What we have here is a ‘fast and furious’ approach to dating which is killing traditional sexual and gender stereotypes. And for that I am very glad. I just hope the younger generation are ready for what they’re getting immersed in. It may be driven by sexual desire, it may be driven by a search for ‘The One’, or it may be simply a way to meet new friends. But nothing comes free.
I found online dating somewhat addictive. And that was before Tinder and smartphones. I can only imagine just how addictive these dating apps can be. When a new ‘body’ is just a swipe away, why bother hanging in there, patiently waiting for your current relationship to ‘work’? When you return to your condo from a stressful day at the office and you’ve only your cat for company, how tempting just to swipe right. After that nasty argument with your lover how much better you’re going to feel when you match up with some tasty hunk who looks ever so perfect. In a strange city for a business meeting, and a couple of hours to kill? Swipe right. Lover gone on holiday with her friends, leaving you to feed the dog? Swipe right. Just divorced? Swipe right, and continue doing so until you are satiated and inoculated from the pain.
Except swiping right won’t inoculate you from the pain which always comes with sex, love, romance and relationships. No matter how fleeting our sexual encounter might be, we inevitably make connections. Even if we don’t want it to, our heart can open up. And once that happens, swiping right won’t resolve it, more likely it will make it worse.
A decade ago I did research into online dating and, not surprisingly, found that both men and women quickly fall in love with online messages. They think they are in love with the person behind the message, but in reality, they are in love with the words being written. Nowadays, I don’t doubt there are young men and women out there who are falling in love with emojis, with WeChat romantic videos, and with the brief but encouraging words of someone they had a Tinder date with a few weeks back.
Be careful. Tinder may have arrived, but the human heart has not changed in 200,000 years.
