I Met My Boyfriend On A Dating App, And I Don't Feel Ashamed At All
Dating apps are the modern love story.
Yes, it's true. You can really meet the love of your life on a dating app, and I know that because I did almost four years ago.
After a toxic two-year relationship came to a crashing end, I was feeling lost, confused, and hurt. And like I had done many times before, to fix my broken and bewildered heart, I began the search for someone to fix it. Being only 16 at the time (too young to be searching for love anywhere, but definitely too young to be doing that on dating apps), I knew I didn't meet the age requirement to be on most dating apps, so onto the app store I went to hopefully find one that was made for people my age and to my surprise, I found one called 'MeetMe.'
This app, at the time, was targeted to people between 15-18, so I felt this was perfect and safe enough to explore, so I did. For weeks, I was glued to this app where the swipe rights and super likes and compliments just poured in. To say I was addicted to the attention would be an understatement (exactly why I was too young to be on a dating app in the first place).
But despite the hundreds of matches and flirty messages, I just wasn't happy. No amount of "you're cute"' or "hey beautiful"' messages were helping me fix the gaping hole in my self-esteem brought on by the end of my last relationship.
After many days of contemplating with myself whether or not this app was worth it, I had finally made the right (and mature) decision to delete the app. As I was doing my final stroll through my messages on the app, a message caught my eye (unfortunately, neither my boyfriend nor I can remember who messaged who first, but I think it was him) and luckily I opened it and replied.
It's been three years and nine months since that day, March 3, 2017, to be exact, and three years and eight months since we've been dating.
Eventually, after over a month of talking and FaceTiming (because I'm a fairly smart girl who didn't want to be catfished), we met in person and went on our first date, where I got to fall in love with him all over again, and the rest is history.
At first, I was always embarrassed to say that we met on a dating app. To me, that felt so desperate or old of us, but now, I am proud of our love story, to say the least (obviously or I wouldn't be writing an article about it). It's not easy finding interest in someone you know only through three pictures and the way they text, but we did, and I think that is one of my favorite qualities about us as a couple.
Neither of us went onto the app looking for a relationship, which makes me love our story so much more. We were both so attracted to the way the other spoke and the ideas and conversations we had that we opened our hearts and minds to something we weren't even initially searching for, and I am so glad we did.
Almost four years later, I couldn't be more thankful for the person that dating app brought me, even if some think that it's a little silly. Our love story is so much more than just swipe rights and the "hey cutie" texts that most think it is, and that's all that really matters to me.
