Tinder Experiment 1. Subject Ian, 40

I decided to do an experiment. Men do it all the time. Cast the net WIDE. I closed my eyes and swiped right to every single profile.
Boom the matches popped up one after another.
So now it was time to see what happens next. Could any of them actually have potential? Who would message me first?
Subject #1: Joe, 38. I decided to tell him that I do not have sex on the first date. He agreed it would be strange to have sex on the first date. Then promptly deleted me. Okay whatever.
Subject #2: Ian, 40. How come he's 11,000 kms away now? We get to chatting. This goes on for days and days.
Turns out he was in town on a layover then back home to The British Virgin Islands where his family owns a resort!! Invite graciously accepted and my single girlfriends are welcome too.
I excitedly tell my friends to pack their bags. Ian is not exactly my type, he's a little heavy but in a cute teddy bear sort of way. One of my friends says "you know you have to take one for the team, right?"
No!! He's a nice man. He won't expect anything...will he??
The daily chats get a little desperate, a little too much. He finally sends me a current photo.
His profile said he was 40. By the looks of it, I am not sure if 40 was 10 years ago or older! Let's just say he looked like Santa on holiday 😔
It took me 10 minutes of 'take care, okay bye, thanks, you too, best of luck, bye" to get rid of him on whatsapp. I didn't plan on blocking him. But his last message to me was "I will miss you". BLOCK

#DearTinderDiary it took me a while to shake the thought of taking one for the team with Bahama Santa. Blegh. No more experiments!

xo,
mh

Chaddly, Miles, Kurt - (dis)honorable mentions

#DearTinderDiary:
I don't think these three deserve their own separate posts.
First: I matched with them, but we didn't meet.

Second: I have all their phone numbers and chatted a lot, but we didn't meet.

Third: My friend met two of them on other dating apps. She reports that they are not much to write home about. So I definitely didn't want to meet them now.

But just a brief description of each of them from what I remember:

Chaddly ghosted me after I asked whether he'd be interested in meeting.
Who in their 40s refers to himself as 'Chaddly' anyway?

Miles: told me all about where he works and his whole life story and part way through my trip to NY last Fall, he stopped messaging. I see him on Tinder still. I should just swipe right to stop seeing his profile pop up. Same with Chaddly.

Kurt: apparently is really only into Asian women and when my friend met him she knew it. (She's not Asian). What a douche.

So I would like to take this opportunity to thank Chaddly, Miles and Kurt for being pussies, flakes and/or douches and NOT pursuing me further. And my apologies to my friend. She took one for the team and meet a guy with an Asian fetish when she's not Asian. 😞

Still alive after Darryl and dodging bullets one swipe at a time!

xx,
mh

Darryl, 41

#DearTinderDiary
Okay maybe it's time to meet someone my own age. My batting average, points on net, shots on goal or whatever you call it isn't very good with younger men so far.

Let's try a different approach. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is the sign of insanity.

Coffee meet during lunch. No phone numbers exchanged. Guy will come to me. He's actually older than me! Here goes nothing.

You know how some people can be completely different when you meet them in person? Meet Darryl.

He could easily have been a serial killing psychopath, or grew up in a cult, or was locked in a cage with no socialization as a child. Hard to tell.

Very strange man. I tried my best to make conversation but he kind of freaked me out. So I politely said goodbye to him and promptly deleted our match. Good fucking thing we didn't exchange numbers.

Well, that didn't work. But as the saying goes "if your Tinder date doesn't kill you, it just makes you stronger", right? Right?!

xx,
mh

Tom, 29

#DearTinderDiary:
Tom is Irish and new in town. I am such a cliche since any Irish, Scottish, English accent will most likely make my panties drop.  Panties. What a gross word. I digress.
All I remember about Tom was that he mumbled every word and being terribly North American I couldn't understand a word he said.  Underpants still ended up coming off. I probably misunderstood.
Oh well.
He was nice enough but there wasn't really much chemistry probably since I didn't really understand a word he said.

Moral of the story - I am not really sure since I barely understood a word he said!

xx,
mh

Chris, 27? Ah who cares

Chris a very cute blonde with blue eyes. Mining engineer or something. He's from out of town, visiting his sister, bored of sitting on the couch, staring at her and her husband. So we meet late at a bar in his sister's neighbourhood.
I don't really remember what happened but he ended up at my place and had to do the walk of shame in the morning. Across a bridge in a town he's not familiar with. Meh, I wasn't gonna drive him home. He kept wanted to breathe in my mouth, it was fucking annoying.
#DearTinderDiary: I think for guys sex is like pizza. For me, quit breathing in my fucking mouth bye.

xx,
mh

Joseph 29, now 30

Dear Tinder Diary:
Joe is bored on a Saturday night when we matched. I guess I was bored too. I basically had 2hrs of sexting with someone I just matched with. I am glad I start messaging right away now. Haha.

He just moved back home a week ago from work/school abroad. He's back at his parents' and doesn't have a car. I double check that he's 29 and not 16. Shit, I really don't want to go to jail.

Fast forward to weeks of random messaging. I finally meet him on his 30th birthday. Cute in person for certain, shame he's terribly boring. I gave him a handy for his birthday just to see what I would be getting myself into.

I heard from him from time to time but I wasn't dying to see him again like I have been with other guys.
Fast forward (there's been a lot of that lately) to New Year's Eve 2015. I was with neighbours celebrating and we were well into the Veuve by now. Good ol' Joe messages me. I slept with him despite the fact he was still boring as ever but the champagne made him extra cute. He lasted about as long as the countdown 😕.

#DearTinderDiary: My one New Year's Resolution - don't have sex with boring guys no matter how cute. Lesson learned, sexting is easier to be good at than the real thing.

xx,
mh

Seth and Summer are on a break

It was a completely unplanned night at The Senate with Pippa. I am usually the one who wants to go, and she's the voice of reason that tells me to make the boys wait!
Tonight Pippa's buzz was gone early and SHE suggested we go. It was quiet, not a lot of patrons. I scan the room as we take our seats at the bar. Of all the bars in town, of all the random nights, who do I see on a DATE with someone else?

Adam! What is MY Seth Cohen doing with a different Summer Roberts! (Google The OC).
It was super awkward even though we aren't in any sort of relationship. He never saw me, but Pippa and I spied on  the whole date. 😟 It was surreal.

I randomly messaged him during the night.  He did tell me that he was in my 'hood, but out 'with friends'. Hmm...I shouldn't even care. But of course I did, just a little.

I never brought it up. We still see each other from time to time actually. It was our 1 year anniversary from the day we met recently, haha. He'll always be my Seth Cohen 😊.

#DearTinderDiary, I have learned to not hate the player but hate the game. Besides, I would be a hypocrite if I made it a big deal.

xx,
mh

Rob, 42

Finally a man closer to my age! Full head of hair, looks younger than his age, never married, no kids. We're both Cancers! Birthdays are only 1 day apart.

I broke my rule about going to a date's apartment upon first meeting. It never seems safe. He assured me he wasn't going to kill me, just wanted to listen to 80s music together. And that's all we did, continued our drinks, chatted lots and listened to whatever we could think of on YouTube. He walked me out, got me a cab and paid for it. It was a really nice date and we didn't even...

He's fun, we have lots to talk about, he's new in town having just relocated for his job. As we continue to see each other, I broke another rule - don't introduce Tinder dates to friends and/or mix the two worlds. But I did and he seemed to get along great with everyone. By this time we still had not slept together which was perfectly fine (I still have Walker Wednesdays 😉).
This is the anti-Tinder via Tinder! Of course eventually we find ourselves there...he stops, says we shouldn't do this and maybe we should wait. Aw how sweet! 😍 I have a list of questions I usually ask when I first match and message someone. It generally gives me all I need to know to decide if I want to still meet this person. I guess I had forgotten one question before now being in bed together, P almost in the V...
Me: When was the last time you were in a long term relationship? He hesitated, looked at me as though he was hoping I would never ask. Rob: Well I kind of still am. Me: Are you fuckin MARRIED? I asked if you were single before we met!

Turns out he's been engaged for years, they own a house together back home, he relocates for work, but she has no intentions of following him. WTF.
I break another rule of mine - I continue to see him despite technically not being single.

It's Halloween 2015 by now, we hadn't seen each other in a month. but were both dying to. I go over to his place for drinks. He doesn't live in the best neighbourhood but it's one of up and coming places with nice apartments but not so nice at night.
He's had this fascination with knowing my last name. Another rule of mine, I don't reveal my last name to Tinder dates. The one rule I didn't break with him. He said tell me what your last name is or get out. So I got dressed and left. He didn't walk me to the door, didn't get me a cab. I could barely utter a bye when I left. I had to WALK home because it was so late and no cabs in sight. Never heard from him afterwards. I thought perhaps it was the booze talking and I would at least get a text the next day.

Fast-forward to January 2016. Random text from Rob, to get my attention. I was slightly enraged, more intrigued. I lasted a day without replying. I asked him what he wanted, reminded him how he KICKED ME OUT never to be heard from again. He apologized, I told him it was too little too late.

I made a new rule - not to get sucked back in by bad experiences and giving them a second chance. I deserve better that. #DearTinderDiary: I broke some rules, I made some new ones.

xx,
mh

Walker, 28

Dear Tinder Diary: This is a first for me. Match, chat, meet all on the same day.
We were quite clear of our intentions before we met so it seemed pretty natural to meet in person and just figure out if there was actual chemistry. He was very fresh out of a long term relationship and was looking to rebalance his life. He was interested in 'parallel readjustment' and I couldn't have agreed more.
I had said that if we met and things worked out well, he could walk me home after drinks.
This was last July and it was nice out so we met on a patio. I have to say I wasn't sure at first. Our conversation wasn't as dynamic or exciting as I had hoped. By now I think I had met enough guys to sort of gauge very quickly which direction things would go.
But then we started talking food and when he said loved Dave Chang, that was the game changer. Then we both got really excited and couldn't stop talking.
He walked me home.
After he left, I casually suggested we make this a regular thing. He messaged me the next day to set a day. Walker Wednesdays was so much fun for weeks. I messaged when I returned from a trip NY in September. I brought back a treat from our beloved Dave Chang's Milk Bar. He gently broke it to me that he had met another girl and there would be no more Walker Wednesdays.
Admittedly I was slightly heartbroken and turned Tinder off immediately. Okay I may have burst into tears in the office. I am such a sap. Thinking that a Tinder date/weekly rendezvous would become anything more than a few Wednesdays. I decided to take a break from meeting new men and if any current ones were interested, then I would see if I felt like it. It was a good time to slow down.

#DearTinderDiary: I admit I am a hopeless romantic sometimes. AND it's all fun and games until maybe you have to see the doctor about your lady business. #dontask 😞

xx (with a clean bill of health),
mh

James, 30

Dear Tinder Diary: That stupid 50 Shades of Grey has changed the game completely. Probably even before the book and the movie. I realize I have vanilla sex. Pippa told me I have vanilla sex.  There is a new sex generation that surprises me.
Case in point, I match with James. I was very drunk when I initially matched with him and opened with 'Is that an umbrella or are you just happy to see me?'
Terrible at best. But it worked.
He gave me his number almost instantly. He texted admitting he was looking for casual fun. Noted. He asked me to send him sexy photos of myself. No. He asked if I like rough sex and was trying to convince me that cum on my face is good for the skin. Hot damn. This is not the flirting I am used to. Admittedly it didn't offend, I was enjoying it.
I wonder how successful these men are though. I messaged him the next day never to hear from again. Fucking guy - you really think you're that good that I would just sleep with someone after a few text exchanges? Please. I bet it was just an umbrella in his pocket.

xx,
mh

Adam 27, now 28

Dear Tinder Diary: Does anyone remember The OC? I wish there was a real life Seth Cohen. I ❤ Adam Brody.

Adam was really awkward when we first met. Should I see this guy again? What's with me and these young boys? Not all of them are created equal. (He's not as 'mature' Tyler.) I'm waiting for him to admit he's not actually 27, but 17 and I will go to jail or get a call from his mother soon.
He's like a puppy, lunging at my face with no warning. Get off! But in that way you can't just push a puppy off you without laughing and wanting more 😊
He listens to The Smiths and Arctic Monkeys. Kings of Leon's first album was their best... They should have remained famous in the UK only. *sigh* He's my Death Cab for Cutie song 'Summer Skin' in real life. I like the freckles on his shoulders. His floppy brown hair. His ever changing dark hazel eyes that look into mine with silent comfort. His lanky 6'1" frame that can't seem to get enough of me.

We don't talk much when we're together even though it's quite frequent. I like him for his awkwardness and melancholy.
I asked him to spend the night a few Fridays ago. He said he wasn't ready. I said it didn't mean he had be my boyfriend. It's just convenient for morning sex.

kisses,
mh

Brad, 23?

Dear Tinder Diary: Has a woman of a certain age entered official cougar-dom if she meets someone who is below her Half + 7 rule? Asking for a friend.
I had initial intentions of exchanging numbers with my favourite bartender at The Senate. Rewind back to the first time there and Pippa reminded us to focus on grown ass men our own age.
Obviously we can change our own rules.

Besides, grown ass men my age are not much different from guys 10+years younger. Younger men are just so much cuter and eager...I digress.

So I decided to just throw it out there with my fav bartender. He wasn't biting (which in hindsight is a good thing).
Cue the two guys who sit down next to Pippa and I. We had never seen them before even though they said they were regulars. Fast forward to musical chairs at the bar after a bathroom break, lots of rounds, chatting, and a kiss at the door on our way out.  Whaat just happened?!

I think his name is Brad.  Or is it Chad? Hmm. He was cute. Nice voice (I am a sucker for Clooney toned men.) 6'3" and all lean muscle. Totally not my usual type. He was a total hipster! There may have been some man-bun!, nose and lip piercings!, super cool tee and sweats and matching bicycle that cost way too much! I think numbers were exchanged, perhaps selfies taken?!

It always seems like a good idea to take a drunk guy home when you're just as drunk. But I always forget alcohol affects dudes a little differently - figuratively and, er, literally. He said he'd call on his way out. I knew he never would.

My time now is for fun and excitement. I've been reading into things too many times, desperately trying to forecast some type of relationship weather that I will never be able to predict. So why not just go with it? I confess I am not easy going at the best of times, and realize that this stress case should chill the fuck out and just do things for the moment. And so I did.
I would like to thank Brad for a random night. No regrets and makes for perfect writing material. Pippa and I saw his friend a couple weeks later. Brad wasn't with him thankfully, but I told him that I say hi.

xx,
mh

Oh Steven-Peter

It's obvious that Tinder is incredibly shallow and vain. There is no pretending this is about swiping right because you like the look of their soul. Please.
My friends have been around when I start the swiping game.  They think some of the reasons I swipe left are hilarous. What? I don't actually look at their face sometimes! I am looking at their clothes, the friends they are with, where they vacation, if they are a Jays fan... (btw I don't care about sports.) 
My shallowness includes names. Sorry Steven-Peter, not gonna be screaming that out in bed with you. Swiped Left.
Oh c'mon you wouldn't either!

kiss-kiss,
mh

Half plus seven

#DearTinderDiary: I have a confession.  Well more like a revelation. Observation? Oh nevermind. Here it is:
I may or may not have a tendency to be attracted to younger men.  *gasp* don't give me that look! I had no idea I was doing it on purpose! I just thought it was a coincidence...
Can you blame me, really? Younger guys are so cute, stylish, fun, relevant, interesting.  And it's a bonus if they are dim AND cute. Mmm those are the best ones...
And not all 27 year olds are created equal! And not all 40 year olds are created equal either (so I've been told since I have MANY more years til I am there...ha)  Nevermind that part. I have been very blessed with looking younger than I actually am. Merci mama et papa. 
So that helps too. Hey we're not talking about some old botoxed mutton in sheep's clothing mmmkay? I work out! I moisturize!
However, having said that a girl has to have a cut off. Thus applying the old rule -half my age plus seven years is the absolute youngest I can go (except that one time he said he was 23 but was really mature and the tequila kept reassuring me of that. But that's a whole other post...)
So as to not give away my real age so easily, my number is +/- the 24-27 range.
And god bless them for being eager and fun and they are everywhere 😘

xx
mh

Tyler, 27

Hi I'm Tyler. Would you like to have a slice of pizza with me?
It wasn't supposed to happen at all. I was supposed to meet my  friend after work for dinner on the other side of town. She wasn't supposed to suddenly fall ill and cancel. I wasn't supposed to have any energy to go shopping before heading home.
But I did and he stopped me out of the blue on my way home, bargains in hand and belly grumbling.
'You scared shit out of me' was the first thing I said. Not the cute-meet line they write in the movies for Rachel McAdams.   It's not everyday you feel a tap on your arm while you're walking home on a busy downtown street. He looked nervous, it took a moment to figure out I did not know this person. But then he smiled and it suddenly felt like I did. I instantly liked what was happening.
He was incredibly charming, took charge of this random meeting, made me laugh out loud. I was thoroughly impressed after 20 mins. He left just as I was intrigued. Damn.
I didn't think our number exchange would result in anything more than that laugh and slice of pepperoni.
He texted days later and we met for drinks. Bright blue puppy dog eyes, lashes batted gave him whatever he wanted from me. Nice hands, soft deep voice, slow but even articulate words. He kissed me goodnight even though I felt shy and hesitant. It had been a while that a kiss made me tingly all over.
I brazenly texted too soon after asking for more.
I enjoyed weeks of incredible fun and had butterflies every time we were together. Then I got scared and ruined it all in one swift move. One very terribly timed comment ended it.
That was a year ago now. Our eyes locked on the street again months later. We just smiled and kept going. I still think about him which I know is silly. But I thought he was sweet. Even though I wasn't. *le sigh*

#DearTinderDiary: I have learned not to be brutally honest at the worst time possible. (Those of you that know the storyare probably still shaking your head. I know, I know who does that? I did 😕)

xx,
mh

#DearTinderDiary: ENOUGH with Machu Picchu!

Oh mon dieu.  Have you missed me?  I have certainly missed all of you.  Thanks for still hanging in there.  This girl is sometimes a hot mess.  Nothing tragic or traumatic.  Honestly just First World Problems that I dare not complain about.

But I'll admit that this blogging business is difficult!  It's hard to be cute and interesting and humorous and engaging and entertaining and committed....did I mention cute?  It's like dating. Which I am STILL doing.

Please give me this post to rant about Tinder profile photos, and I promise to post about ALL the men (and some boys) that I've dated or who are on retainer. *wink*

Seriously ENOUGH with the fucking profile photos with Machu Picchu in the background!!  (Pardon mon Anglais.)  Doesn't ANYONE go ANYWHERE else on fucking vacation?  How about an Eiffel Tower?  I'll take the cheesy staged Leaning Tower of Pisa.  How about Big Ben?  Golden Gate Bridge?  I'll even take a Brooklyn Bridge!  I can't stand it.  Does this say something about the type of men on Tinder?  (Okay it probably says more about me, but I digress.)

As we all know, I have rules about swiping right (like) or left (nope).  I am adding this one to my list:  If you post a photo of you with this in the background, I WILL NEVER MEET YOU.  Along with middle fingers, too many ballcaps and sunglasses, only blurry photos, ones with your WIFE...call me picky all you like.  Don't hate the player, hate the game.

#DearTinderDiary:  I think travelling is great, but how come men on Tinder only go to Peru?  Is that weird, should I be worried, is there something I don't know?  *le sigh*

By the way, I am shamelessly asking you to follow me on Twitter AND Instagram:  mimiharveytoo

Kisses,
mh