Ah, Tinder. The app in which every girl is secretly hopeful she’ll find Mr. Right and every guy is explicitly confident he’ll find his next FWB. Let’s just face the facts and accept that simply swiping left or right fuels a fire of emotions we may never have thought possible. Here are the seven stages of grief as told from a Tinder perspective so that you don’t feel as crazy when your only hope for love swipes left.
1. Shock and denial. You will probably react to the loss of your potential soul mate due to a harsh, one-sided swipe left with a feeling of numbness and disbelief. You will find any and every reason he may have done it by accident. Why wouldn’t he be interested in you? Are you not hot enough? Are your pictures too conservative? Is he turned off by your irrational obsession with puppies? No, if anything it’s his loss. That just reflects his taste. You refuse to accept that you may just not be his type.
2. Pain and guilt. As the shock wears off, it is replaced with the suffering of unbelievable pain. Although it seems almost unbearable that you can’t seem to get a match, it is important that you experience the agony fully. Try to accept that, well, he’s just not that into you.
3. Anger and bargaining. This is when you’ll tend to react to your newfound rejection with anger. You’ll start finding things wrong with him. For example, you’ll think things like “well most of his pictures are with a group of people so he’s probably not actually that attractive” or “two of his pictures are just of his 6.0 diesel Ford F250 pickup truck, so like, what are you compensating for?”
4. Reflection and loneliness. You replay over and over what you could have done different like changing your interests on Facebook to better fit his or changing your “about me” to a cheesy inspirational quote rather than actually telling about yourself. Eventually, you’ll feel like accepting the fact that you’re dying alone.
5. The upward turn. As you start to adjust to life without your could-have-been Tinder BF, your life becomes a little calmer and more organized. The (most likely) temporary deletion of the app has helped you realize that outside of Tinder, real life is still happening. You start to regain purpose.
6. Reconstruction and working through. As you salvage function in your life, you will start seeing things as they are. Basically, you won’t be relating anything and everything to something you have seen/posted on tinder. You start doing things you’ve never even thought of, like going out on actual dates with actual people.
7. Acceptance and hope. Eventually, you will be able to think about your minor setback in the dating world and see it as a learning experience. You learn to accept and deal with the reality that you are single… for now. But most importantly, you come to terms with the fact that you are a strong, independent woman that don’t need no man!