After what felt like forever, I finally liked someone’s dating profile with actual interest. His height, his eyes, his overall vibe—even his prompts worked for me. I wasn’t trying to convince myself there might be something there. I wanted to know more.
That felt unusual enough to be exciting. So much swiping had become a series of quick decisions, most of them no. Here was someone whose profile made me pause for a good reason.
Then he told me he had recently gotten out of a serious relationship and was only looking for something casual. Specifically, friends with benefits. He was also new to the city and wanted to meet more people.
There wasn’t much ambiguity to work through. He had told me what he wanted, and it wasn’t what I was looking for. I appreciated having the information, even if it took some of the fun out of finally finding a profile I liked.
I kept things light and wrapped up that part of the conversation with something along the lines of, “All the best finding like-minded people in this city.” A friendly enough way to acknowledge that we were looking for different things.
We had already exchanged numbers, though, and we texted about random, everyday things over the first four days. We never spoke on the phone. It was just that early exchange of little details with someone you barely know, when there’s no shared history and almost anything can become a topic.
Now it’s been three or four days since either of us has said anything. I wonder whether he lost interest in keeping in touch once it was clear I wasn’t interested in the arrangement he wanted. That would make sense, though I don’t actually know.
I’m not especially attached to him. We barely know each other. The thing that stays with me is how rarely a profile catches my attention in the first place.
For once, I liked the eyes, the height, the prompts, the whole presentation. Then we got to the fairly significant detail of what we were both doing there.
