If I wound up at an addiction support group, my intro would go a little something like this:
Hi, I’m Becky, and I’m recovering Hinge banter addict.
I used to tell myself that the maniacal essay exchanges with strangers was just a vetting strategy, a way to gauge compatibility. But my guilty pleasure has led me astray many a-times, wasting weeks of my precious writing talent only to find that my romanticized suitor is neither 5’11 nor within my geographic proximity. So after years of playing the Internet Boyfriend game, I recently cast aside this bad habit and have instead opted for a ‘wait and see’ strategy, agreeing to dates without so much as a LinkedIn stalk (Nobel Peace Prize worthy-restraint, coming from me). Nevertheless, I fear I may have overcorrected the pattern as I recently found myself scanning the Venmo of a dating app match as I darted away from the table just as our waiter set down our entrees. After my friend saved me from the misfortune of having to watch my date shovel his pasta with a fisted fork for the remainder of my evening, I began to think about how I found myself here in the first place. “You were due for a bad date,” my best friend told me, hours after I retold the tale via Voice Memo and lay awake processing the experience.
Ever solutions-oriented and perfection-obsessed, I made the executive decision that I would no longer stand to find myself in the unfortunate company of a bad first date. Screening my match for mutual Instagram followers, shared music taste, or overlapping camp friends would no longer cut it. I would have to draft something more extensive.
Thus, I present to you: The Vetting Questionnaire.
Long gone are the important questions: Where did he go to college? Is he Jewish? Does he have a weekend house in the Hamptons (think bigger people, Cape Cod is the obvious choice for summer 2022). I will now be disseminating the following survey via Google Forms.
Are you still living with your fraternity brothers at 28?
Do you write the cue cards at SNL?
Do you own any small pets (gerbils, hamsters, hedgehogs)?
Will you voluntarily disclose your SSRI prescription 30 minutes into the date?
Do you know how to pronounce cacio e pepe?
Do you do stand-up comedy (and think you’re good?)
Does your family go on an all-inclusive Passover trip to Cancun with 700 Jewish families once a year?
Are you going to send me screenshots of your Hinge matches unprompted and give me unsolicited feedback on my profile?
Will you tell the waiter we’re on a ‘dry date’ when I say I’m fine with water (I’m on an antibiotic and it’s a Monday, jeez cut me some slack)?
Will you show the Israeli businessmen seated next to us the prototype for the mobile hamster home you’re building?
Honestly at this point, my kind of happy ending is the famed and sought after Mutual Ghost. No disrespect, just a dry inbox and an unsaved number. With a quick swipe on the iMessage thread, all evidence is deleted (unless of course, one of your friends keeps the 3 minute and 48 second Voice Memo you sent to your group chat).
I had never left a date in the middle before this one, and it got me thinking about what merits the behavior in the first place. When is a date bad enough to ghost? To leave the table? Or worse… to voluntarily split the bill (out of sympathy, of course). Where do we draw the line on pity and self-inflicting guilt, and realize that time is our only finite resource?
No seriously these aren’t rhetorical questions … send me an email with your thoughts. Maybe I’ll feature the highlights in the next post.