Tinder turns ten this year. The star spoke to people about their experiences with online dating. This is the story of Julia, 36, who started a new chapter in her life on Tinder:
I was married. In March 2017 my husband left me very surprisingly, just before the third wedding anniversary. He cheated on me. I hadn’t suspected anything, I was naive, I would never have thought it. I was pretty bad. And that for quite a long time. I didn’t want anything to do with men anymore. Then, eleven months later, it kind of flipped and I signed up for Tinder.
At the time I thought: You’re single, you’re young, now you’re making the best of it. A friend helped me to create my profile. I found it all pretty exciting. It was a really nice girls’ night and we picked out nice photos: one drinking a little wine, one on the beach, one grimacing in the football stadium. I didn’t have any information in my profile. I’m a teacher and I definitely didn’t want students to discover me.
We created the profile on Sunday evening. When I woke up Monday I had 500 likes. That was a massive self-confidence boost. It helped me tremendously to polish my self-esteem. It was the beginning of a really good time. For a year I partyed a lot, did a lot of sports and dated a lot. I haven’t been able to get into a relationship yet. I didn’t have the confidence for that at all. That’s why I made it clear on the first date at the latest that I didn’t want a relationship, sometimes even before that when I was writing.
I like sex, but I hate one night stands. I have to know the men for the sex to be good. So I met her several times. We’re on dates, we cooked together. The only problem was that most of them eventually fell in love with me. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I can understand that. When we saw each other, I was always in a good mood and wanted to have sex. It was like a relationship but had nothing to do with everyday life in a relationship at all.
Luckily I didn’t find my students on Tinder, but I did find an acquaintance who was in a relationship with a pregnant woman at the time. And of course, you can also fly really nasty on your face with Tinder. I learned quite early: You have to listen to your gut feeling. And I’ve set rules: no men who show themselves topless in pictures, and no one who takes pictures of themselves with their cars. It’s just not my thing.
I met a guy, it was still early days, on a walk. He wanted to go home straight away. That was far too dangerous for me and I should have gone by then. But then we went to a bakery near him, got a coffee and sat down on a bench. He kept trying to touch my hair and eventually started circling the bench. That was really creepy. As I left, I pretended to run to another car so he wouldn’t remember my license plate number.
Yeah, and then after a year on Tinder I was on a date drinking cocktails and that’s when it happened. I immediately wrote to a friend after the meeting: “Damn”. Her answer: “You fell in love.” My first question was whether I should stop right away. But I got into it. Yes, and now we are building a house together. We’ve been together for three years. Corona accelerated the whole thing, we moved in together quickly. We already tell friends that we met on Tinder. Only my father still doesn’t think that’s normal at all, although he thinks my boyfriend is great. This year on Tinder got me out of a real low and I’m particularly happy with the end.
Recorded by Katharina Brenner-Meyer
Anton was less happy with the outcome of his Tinder dates. He hit it off with the woman right away. But then they suddenly realized that they were on the wrong date. Here is the story.
