Dating : I Attended a Workshop by My Tinder Match

We recognized each other. Neither of us said “hi.”

Coming out of a relationship that lasted almost a decade, I was wasn’t used to, or even ready for, the world of dating apps. I felt it was my obligation as a newly single person, however, to at least download Tinder and set up a bare-bones profile.

Yes, I’m that girl who couldn’t be bothered to write a bio.

My favorite profile picture shows 2/3 of my face covered by my DSLR camera. The image is very meta: me taking a picture of the person who’s taking my picture. I considered keeping it up as my one and only profile picture, the undeniable evidence that I was getting in the game, but only half-heartedly.

Two more pictures were added to prove I kind of cared about giving the opposite sex an opportunity to see what I look like, and I was ready to swipe.

The initial oddness of the activity faded as I got used to judging men — or I should say, used to rejecting them, based on something as superficial as what they looked like.

It took me a while to swipe right, but eventually, I got a match. Then a second, a third, a fourth.

One of them was cute, with a beard and round glasses. I could see he was from out of town, probably only around for a few days only. He didn’t message me after we matched, and neither did I.

The next day, I was invited to attend a two-day training in social media marketing with my then business partner. We had already missed the first day’s morning session, and walked in a bit late, finding whatever seats were left in the room in a hurry.

As I sat down and looked up at the speaker, there he was.

Beard, round glasses, kind of cute. My Tinder match.

And he also recognized me. If not the first time he saw me, then when I raised my hand to ask my first question. Purely to expand on my technical knowledge, of course.

The glimmer of recognition in someone’s eye is unmistakable. People try to cover it up, keep it cool, pretend — it’s always no bueno. Useless.

I knew he knew who I was, and he knew I knew who he was. From Tinder. Where we had matched, but didn’t attempt to have a conversation.

The workshop gave us the opportunity to not only recognize each other, but to learn each other’s names in a formal setting (as if we didn’t already know), and even engage in casual, internet marketing-related chat during the obligatory post-workshop mingling moment.

We were all twenty-or-so of us networking, but only two of us were pretending to not have come across one another while looking for either eternal love, or an easy hookup on a dating app. Only two of us were pretending not to have judged one another by their profile pictures, and found the other attractive enough to maybe ask out on a date sometime.

The unspoken semi-acquittance was made worse by the attraction factor. In real life, I discovered I wasn’t half as attracted to him as I had (kinda) been to his profile picture. Yet, he had the evidence that I had swiped right. As far as he knew, I was into him.

And there we were, pretending to have just met.

There were moments when I wanted to come up to him and say, “I think we matched on Tinder last night,” but despite being new to the online dating game, something told me that wasn’t proper etiquette.

Perhaps the right attitude would have been to message him on the app: is that you, standing in front of me right now?

At least I found out why he was in town — and I didn’t blame him for using Tinder to maybe find some company for a night.

Between eternal love and an easy hookup, my guess is he would have settled for not having to grab dinner by himself. I can sympathize with that. Too bad he didn’t even message me “hello.”

And of course, he didn’t ask for my number in person either.