It’s 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night, you’ve opened your second, somewhat stale bag of Hot Cheetos and it’s time to get wild. You check the bomb selfie you posted on Insta a few hours ago (over 200 likes already, obvi), and time to Bumble. You come across your future husband, let’s call him Cole, on the first swipe. It almost seems meant to be.
So, naturally, you message all your best friends telling them you have a new boyfriend. I mean his primary picture (him holding a baby pug wearing a tiny, blue sweater) stole your breath away faster than the time your sister convinced you running a 5k together would be fun. You and your roommate craft the holy grail of first messages.
After half an hour of writing, second-guessing, deleting, and rewriting, you feel confident in your message: “Hi! Cute pug :) What’s his name?” You hit send. And then you wait. The next day moves by too quickly, and as the clock on Cole’s 24 hour response time ticks down, your heart sinks with each passing hour. What could possibly be going on?
1. “He probably hasn’t seen it yet.”
This is a classic. He’s a guy. Who knows how much time he spends on his phone? There’s a good chance that he mostly uses it to check on how well his fantasy league is doing. So maybe he hasn’t seen it yet...maybe?
2. “Maybe his pug chewed on his phone and broke it.”
Pets mess up their owners’ stuff all the time. That’s why you can find so many compilations of pet antics on the internet these days. But this is like the “dog ate my homework” excuse — it’s only so believable.
3. “The pug chewed off his fingers.”
Uhh, OK, I guess we can’t rule out that his pug is vicious. Maybe he wants to respond, but he physically can’t. Maybe he was lying in a hospital bed, sadly looking at your message and willing his response to form on its own. Or maybe this one’s a long shot.
4. “He got offended that you referred to his dog as a “he” when you didn’t know for sure.”
In your message to him, you referred to his dog as a boy when you asked for its name. Maybe it’s not a male dog, and he got annoyed that you assumed his dog’s gender based off its blue sweater. Maybe he’s above the “outdated” social norm of blue for boys and pink for girls and got offended.
5. “He was so happy you responded, he dropped his phone into the beautiful truffle lobster bisque he had expertly prepared, and it’s currently in a bag of rice.”
His fourth picture on Bumble is of him in an apron next to a plate of pancakes he had made, so he must make three star meals all the time. There’s a chance his phone happened to slip from his grasp when he was garnishing one of his amazing creations or when he was trying to find the right lighting to post a picture of his dish on Instagram.
6. “Or… he went hiking and it fell out of his pocket without him noticing.”
As his third picture of him facing a stunning view of Yosemite National Park suggests, he could have dropped his phone on one of his hiking excursions. He may have hit the trails this week and dropped it watching it plunge into the abyss. Maybe a bear is out there somewhere reading your message and crying for the romance that never was.
7. “Maybe he just wasn’t that interested.”
Everyone whips around to face this one friend in disbelief. Did she actually just say that? The rest of your friends respond with cries of “No! Of course that’s not it!” and “You’re way hotter than him!” Eventually, you all agree that it was just a bout of bad luck, and accept the “vicious pug chewed off his fingers” theory. Hey, you have to tell your mom something when she questions you about that guy you told her about.
And then something miraculous happens, at 8:30 a.m. you awake to your phone going off. Text from Mom, too many emails, and what is this — message from Cole? “Hey, sorry fell asleep early. How was your night?”
And sometimes ladies, it’s that simple. They just fell asleep.
Bumble is a female empowering dating, friend finding, and networking app that takes the pressure off of guys and puts the women in charge.
