Cori Bradshaw: Where Dating Apps Fall Short

January 26, 2021

1. The Absolute Anarchy of the Average Profile

Every time I log onto Tinder, I spend about two minutes to swipe left consecutively, then exit the app in a disappointed, frustrated, and vaguely disgusted fashion. This happens within the span of two minutes because of the sheer amount of profiles that include two or more of the following dating profile missteps:

no bio
a bio exclusively of emojis
a bio that already demands something from me, including but not limited to:
a photo with someone who might, potentially, probably be their ex
a photo that is just of their dog
a photo that is just of their car

Other offenses, for me personally: selfies taken at the Man Angle (i.e. the front camera either held much too low or much too high in relation to the face—both angles make me feel like I’m Facetiming my grandma who doesn’t quite understand where the camera is on her phone); a series of photos in which they are always wearing a hat (Hatfish: a man who wears a hat at all times, but looks drastically different without a hat). If men can make superficial dating app rules about SnapChat filters and makeup, then I can make my own rules about angles and hats.

2. Super Likes Are Creepy

They just are. Please just swipe right and continue about your day. If I like you, we’ll match. I’m put off by your impatience.

Super Likes give off a peculiar energy; you literally know nothing about me, other than several purposefully flattering photos and a bio of 500 characters max. What expectations did you just project onto those tactful photos and three-hundred-some characters that made you so enthusiastic to match with me?

Perhaps this is my own issue with past people making me into their “manic pixie dream girl” (hence my satirical manicpixiememequeen), but whenever someone shows too much interest in me prematurely, I feel like it’s not just an innocent, genuine interest in getting to know me, but an already established belief that I can assist with their own character development while they ignore my lack of true personhood.

Then I swipe left.

3. The Commitment Conundrum

Specifically on Bumble, you can note what you’re looking for: something serious, something casual, or “I’m not sure.” You can also note your attitude about kids: have kids, don’t have kids, want kids, or “I’m not sure.” I deleted Bumble because of the number of men who “don’t know what they’re looking for” but simultaneously “want kids.”

Counterintuitively, many men will be wary of commitment, but be 100% sound in their desire to be a father. So you want a child, but you’re confused as to whether or not you’re ready for a relationship?

Google sperm donation. It’ll be the hands-off experience you’re looking for.

4. The Breath Test

Long story short: bad breath is a showstopper.

When you meet someone in real life (okay, maybe not so much anymore because six feet and masks have kept other peoples’ foul breath to themselves), you can tell when they need an Altoid. Online, you can’t tell if the person you matched with needs an Altoid—or worse, a Listerine strip!—and that gives me anxiety.

Can Tinder add a “breath test” function?

5. Untranslatable Chemistry

One time I met someone at a silly Halloween party. Upon first glance, he wasn’t really my type, but once we started talking with each other, laughing, and jokingly queueing songs, I had this immediate attraction to him. Maybe it was his confidence and humor and our bizarrely comfortable witty banter—regardless of the (truly inexplicable) reason, we had undoubted chemistry.

On a separate occasion, I met an incredibly compassionate man who was very much my type. I sat at dinner with great conversation over a bottle of Chianti and perfectly al dente pasta, and I wondered why I wasn’t feeing attracted to him. He was courteous, he was smart, he was genuine, he was considerate, and he did everything right.

If you asked me via a dating profile who I would have rather gone out with, I would likely have picked the guy who was my type physically, but attraction doesn’t necessarily translate into chemistry.

Physical chemistry isn’t just based on how attractive someone is—sometimes it just happens. We swipe left; we swipe right. Sometimes you experience chemistry with someone and it is absolutely untranslatable to online dating.

As much as we want to believe that we understand attraction and how to be attractive—attraction is sort of this bizarre, magical thing.

In that magical, butterfly effect sort of way, my parents met in happenstance when my father was picking up his friend and teammate (my mom’s coworker) to go to their club soccer game; my dad saw my mom walk out of the Toys“R”Us office building and into the parking lot. He asked his friend who she was. His friend set them up in June 1994; by January 1996, they were married, and by June 1996, I was born. They celebrated their 25th anniversary earlier this month.

Can a digital landscape replicate synchronicity?

You simply cannot quantify or qualify chemistry in dating profiles. Dating profiles are a great option—especially during the pandemic—but personally, I still struggle with dating apps as the first and only option for people my age. What are we sacrificing for convenience? What are we sacrificing out of impatience? What are we sacrificing out of the fear that if we don’t digitally put ourselves out there, we’ll be alone forever?

Despite all of these qualms, I’m not saying that you can’t meet a significant other via dating apps; I actually know a few couples who dated and got married via Tinder. They have joyous relationships—some with adorable children—and I love that dating apps worked for them. But if dating apps aren’t serving you, don’t be afraid to branch out, or even just allow yourself to enjoy your own company for a while.

Romancing yourself is equally as important as romancing someone else. Buy yourself flowers. Buy yourself really indulgent, homemade chocolate. Watch your favorite movie. Make yourself a meal that reminds you of home. Pop a bottle of good champagne (or prosecco) for no reason at all. Woo yourself. Treat yourself as if you were dating you. Treat yourself as if you were in love with you.

But really, be in love with you.

Cori Bradshaw: Dating & Coming Out of the Mentally Ill Closet

February 21, 2020

Instagram user question: “How to bring up (your own) mental illness while dating?”

There comes a time in every relationship when I am presented the opportunity to let my romantic interest know that I am mentally ill. This moment is terrifying. It’s a weird moment that generally induces the anxiety shits while I’m at a restaurant that I don’t even want to be at because everything on the menu is causing an anorexia flare-up. My illnesses are hard to hide; they’re not easy to just brush off as “quirky” and have a cute Zooey Deschanel moment. I’m flipping through the menu like I’m trying to find a word in a dictionary and I’ve never used a dictionary before. My leg is tapping and shaking the table. I’m drinking too much wine because I am incapable of relaxing. I’m probably talking too much. My palms are clammy and I’m hoping my date is not a first-date hand-holder.

Thus, the opportunity arises for me to come out of the mentally ill closet. Simultaneously, amongst all of this internal chaos, I’m attempting to gauge my date’s reaction before I even say anything. I’m praying they won’t get scared and leave, but I’m also praying that they won’t be more into me because of it—which is equally as gross.

The waiter comes to the table and asks the dreaded question, “What would you like to order?”

My date orders quickly, like a functional human being.

“And you, miss?”

“Um, I’ll take the house salad with the dressing on the side. Dressing on the side, please. Please make sure that the dressing is on the side. On the side. Please. On the side. Thanks.”

I’m hyper-aware that my date notices that this is definitely not a cute Zooey Deschanel moment.

The waiter leaves. We sit at the table that wobbles from my incessantly tapping foot, and I’m left with two options: I either come out of the mentally ill closet now, or I pass up this opportunity and simply allow my date to ponder about why I took so long to order when all I ended up getting was a salad with the dressing on the side.

The food eventually comes, and I do not use the dressing that was set on the side at all.

“Why don’t you put dressing on your salad?”

Well, I have an eating disorder, so things like dressing send me into a body-dysmorphic thought-spiral that leads into a debilitating anxiety attack, which will leave both of us feeling weird and embarrassed, I want to reply.

“I just don’t care for dressing,” I say.

Usually, I pass up the opportunity (at least on the first date) to come out of the mentally ill closet. It ends up feeling like a confession forced by a bad cop. However, sometimes I’m left feeling guilty for withholding the information. Don’t I owe it to my date to let them know what they’re getting into?

No. Thinking that I’m inherently difficult to date and therefore worth a warning to a potential romantic partner is internalized ableism, and I’ve decided check that shit at the door.

Personally, I’ve gotten used to telling new love interests and friends about my struggles with mental health. Being manicpixiememequeen forces me to disclose certain information about my mental health. Most people know of my meme page, where I chronically overshare my issues with 150,000+ strangers on the Internet, so when I come out of the mentally ill closet, it just confirms what my date already knows.

In addition to being prominently mentally ill on the Internet, dating with agoraphobia and panic disorder has forced me to become more transparent about my mental health in relationships, even in the beginning stages. Dating for an agoraphobe is rough. I rely on online dating most of the time, because I hate leaving my house. I match with someone, really enjoy talking to them, and then when they ask me on a date, panic floods my brain. Is the location of this date outside of my safe radius? Can I get home quickly? How quickly? Google Maps says it is approximately thirty-two minutes away, which already is too far, and if I miss the train, I have to tack on another twenty minutes of waiting for the train while steeping in an inescapable sense of impending doom. What if the date’s in the city? What if something happens to the train while I’m in the tunnel underneath the Bay and we have to follow the emergency directions that I saved to my phone in 2015 (just in case)? Oh God, they asked me to a movie. The run-time is 137 minutes. I’m socially trapped in a movie theater for 137 minutes, and that doesn’t include getting there, or waiting in the concessions line, or even the previews.

After my thought spiral, I normally come out of the mentally ill closet via text and explain that I have panic disorder, which makes leaving my house extremely difficult. Being out for extended periods of time in an already anxiety-provoking situation (i.e. a first date), is close to impossible. Reactions range from empathetic to awkward to rude to completely ignoring what I said and just asking again if I want to go to a bar in the city this weekend.

The people who respect your boundaries are the people who are worth your time. If I tell a date that I have to meet them in a certain place that falls in my “safe space” category, I expect them to accommodate that boundary, especially because I trusted them enough for me to get vulnerable about my mental health. If they do not respect my boundaries in the beginning, it’s a clear sign that they won’t respect them in the future, and that’s not a healthy place to begin any sort of relationship–romantic, platonic, whatever.

Even though I personally tend to tell people about my struggles with mental illness, you are under no obligation to tell anyone anything, especially if it brings you extreme discomfort or you think that it could jeopardize your mental, emotional, or physical safety.

If you do choose to be open about your mental health, I find that the best way is to mention it casually at first (if can even happen over the phone or text) and then continually have small conversations about it—that way it doesn’t feel like you’re giving an intensive lecture and PowerPoint about your entire mental health history in the beginning stages of the relationship. As your relationship and the trust progresses, you can use those small conversations to slowly divulge more information and help promote a consistent dialogue about your health and its relationship to your romance and/or friendship. It also gives both parties plenty of opportunities to create boundaries and ask any questions that come up along the way.

Avoid having your coming out of the mentally ill closet moment come from a place of shame or embarrassment—like you’re lunging yourself out in a panic, making a confession. When you divulge information slowly, it avoids that grand moment—that moment that frequently makes us feel “crazy” or “abnormal” because we had to come out of the mentally ill closet in the first place, unlike neurotypical daters. Genuinely, there’s no right or wrong way to tell someone. It’s about prioritizing your comfort and boundaries. If they’re going to treat you differently upon finding out that you have a mental illness, then they weren’t worth your time in the first place, and therefore, you dodged a bullet. Congratulations on not wasting your time!

This post was prompted by a question submitted to me during a Q & A session on Instagram. If you have something you’d like me to write about/answer, feel free to ask me via the contact button below! (Questions will be answered publicly without the querent’s name attached).

Cori Bradshaw: Should I KonMari My Love Life?

February 3, 2019

Last week, I met with my best friend at a local park to take a walk, catch up, and mainly discuss topics that did not pass the Bechdel Test. After intensely attempting to decode a text littered with mixed messages from a guy who I had been out with the week prior, my friend posed a valid question.

“Why don’t you just go back on Tinder? Or Bumble. Either. Or both.”

I stared at her realizing that in my mind, I had completely eradicated these apps as viable options to meet people. I thought about her and her boyfriend, my brother and his girlfriend, my friend and his boyfriend, and all of the Match.com commercials with upbeat music in the background and women twirling in really nice skirts.

“I just don’t like them,” I explained. “The conversations feel robotic until the guy slips up and says something inappropriate because he’s growing impatient to get in your pants.”

“You’re matching with bad people.”

Then I realized that I matched with bad people in real life too. That wasn’t Tinder’s fault. It was mine.

“I guess I could download them,” I said.

“I mean, they’re free.”

Consequently, I downloaded Tinder and Bumble. I’ve been widely absent from the online dating world for a while. When I did have dating apps, I would match with people and attempt to hold conversation with a complete stranger, and I’d quickly realize that the matches were never real matches at all, but just weird, forced digital interactions with the unspoken goal of an ultimately meaningless short-term fling.

In my life, I’ve only been on two online dates, one from Tinder and one from my Instagram direct messages (which honestly, I’m not even sure if it was a date), so I’m not very well-acquainted to the online dating scene. I’ve had brief moments in which I thought that dating apps were the answer: Wow! There are so many people around! It’s so easy to meet people! So many fish in the sea! which quickly turns into, Oh. This is actually dreadfully unnatural. Most of the fish are weird. And then I delete them.

Then, I keep counterintuitively coming back to them—downloading, deleting, and re-downloading, enjoying the immediate satisfaction of an instant match when I swipe right.

But then I think to myself, are dating apps the fast fashion of love and dating? Are these matches the quick and easy ($7.99) blouse that looked really good on me while I was in the dressing room at H&M, then I bought it, wore it once, it didn’t look quite the same in natural lighting, then I was disappointed, then I washed it, then the fabric got all weird, and I emotionlessly sent it away to Goodwill?

I picked up a book that I manically bought and then never touched since its purchase in 2015: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Ironically, I purchased it at a bookstore in Berkeley that looked like a hoarder’s home, which included a resident cat. However, the book itself looked spick-and-span—small, hardcover, tranquil color scheme, a font agreeable to the eye. Since its resurgence in popularity due to Netflix, I took it off of my bookshelf. I placed it on my dresser, directly next to my phone that contained those horribly untidy dating apps.

I opened Tinder and found several unread messages that I had no desire to reply to. The clutter in my inbox overwhelmed me but also bored me. I threw my phone aside, picked up Marie Kondo’s book (the poor thing untouched for years!), wrapped myself in my comforter, and sat in bed.

My closet, my junk drawer, and my pajama drawer need some attention, I thought to myself as I started the book. Okay, Maybe my shoes too.

I got to page forty-one where a sentence stared at me in bold.

“Take each item in one’s hand and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.”

Goddamnit, Marie Kondo! I thought. I got up out of the warmth of the comforter and walked to my closet. I stared at my shoes, some with a box, some without, some casual, some dressy. They were a mess. I kneeled down and examined every pair.

It was easy to say which of my shoes sparked joy. All of them. Literally every pair. They all had a specific purpose, a time and place to wear them, and I had broken all of them in to fit like a glove, and with multiple pairs of Doc Martens, that breaking-in process is painful. Those shoes are invaluable. They spark undoubted joy.

My phone buzzed. The notification did not spark joy. A week into this online dating madness and I was already exhausted with conversations that I really didn’t want to have.

Does he spark joy?

No, Marie Kondo, he doesn’t, but I don’t necessarily want to delete the match either.

I looked at all of my matches and insignificant conversations. Why don’t I want to delete them? Am I hoarding validation? Would Marie Kondo want me to delete my Tinder? Should I KonMari my love life?

I went back to my closet, looking at seasons old Forever 21 sweaters that I never will wear again, vintage coats that never fit me right to begin with, maxi-skirts that made me look like an elderly English literature professor—those were all easy to part with. I tossed them in a bag that I’d donate or bring to a fabric recycling center.

But with dating, it wasn’t so simple. Sometimes, you have to have things that don’t spark joy to know what does spark joy. Sometimes you have to experience bad things to recognize how good things are. The bad things never spark joy, but you gain something from it regardless. Then I remember my best friend and her boyfriend, my brother and his girlfriend, my friend and his boyfriend—they had all gone through many people who did not spark joy before finding a person who did, in fact, spark joy.

Whether or not I should Marie Kondo my love life is up for debate. I’m also the person who hasn’t tackled my junk drawer. However, maybe relationships (of all kinds, not just romantic, but platonic too) are a little too complex to hit with a singular basic question of, “Does it spark joy?” and act in response to that singular question. Relationships are dynamic and complicated. Even a text with mixed messages (like the one that sparked an entire walk around a park with my best friend) require more than just one followup question. If that’s the case, then why can’t we sit with the uncertainty and lack of joy that occasionally happens in the search for a romantic partner?