Act One: Hope

1. Download the Bumble app.
2. Let your friend with 10 years of post-divorce dating experience help you write your bio.
3. Launch your profile on Jan. 2 when hundreds (thousands?) of hopeful romantics across Colorado do the same.
4. Feel a surge of hope when you receive 52 likes the first day.
5. Think, Surely the love of my life is one of those 52 likes!
6. Feel your heart drop when your friend says, “You can’t see who likes you unless you pay.”
7. Accidentally swipe right on a co-worker’s blonde, blue-eyed ex-husband. He liked you! It’s a match!
8. Text your friend in a panic. Read her response: “You can’t undo it unless you pay.”
9. Message the co-worker’s ex-husband and explain your mistake. “Your bio is great…but I know your kids’ mom.”
10. Read his swift and kind reply: “I guess that’s what happens when you date in a small city. LOL. Good luck!”
11. Accidentally swipe left on a potential love of your life, a man in Berthoud.
12. Your friend replies to your text: “You can’t undo it unless you pay.”
13. Feel a surge of disappointment as you quickly pay for one month, then realize it’s too late. You can’t find Berthoud Man.

Act Two: Debate

14. Go on a coffee date with a creepy dentist sporting three days of stubble.
15. Scroll through posts in the private social media group where women warn each other about liars, predators, and criminals.
16. Read 33 comments about the creepy dentist.
17. Freak out.
18. Call your friend in a panic. Text the dentist: it’s not a match and you wish him well.
19. Get stood up for a video call.
20. Swipe left on the entire inventory of liberal, college-educated men in Fort Collins.
21. Wait for new people.
22. Download the Our Time app. Pay for one month.
23. Skim through dozens of likes from men 10 to 20 years out of your preferred age range who live in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and other conservative states.
24. Read underwhelming messages from men who don’t mention anything from your bio and don’t ask you questions: “So sexy.” “Hi.” “You look like an attractive woman.” “Cute.”
25. You don’t miss the ex-boyfriend but you wish one of these bozos were interested in hiking, museums, and theater.
26. Skim through the entire inventory of potential matches in Fort Collins. And Greeley. And Denver. And Boulder. And Longmont. And Colorado Springs.
27. Remember the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine says, “So what you are saying is that 90 to 95 percent of the population is undateable?” and Jerry replies, “Undateable!”
28. Close the accounts. Delete the apps. You’ll take your chances IRL.

Act Three: Liberation

29. Decide you enjoy the company of your friends best.
30. Open your calendar and schedule coffees, lunches, walks, hikes, movies, art museums, field trips to Cheese Importers in Longmont, immersive theater in Boulder and Denver, and vacations.
31. Fly to Orlando with friends. Drink butterbeer. Wear the Sorting Hat. Visit a galaxy far, far away. Imagine building your own lightsaber.
32. Have the time of your fucking life.

Kat Valdez has no plans to engage with the dating apps again despite other people’s tales of success. But she could be convinced to participate in the Date My Friend trend that is sweeping the nation. (Brush up on your PowerPoint skills, friends!) In the meantime, she continues to enjoy writing at the intersection of pop culture and racial equity.

TheDefiantCurtsy.com: Pop culture through an equity and inclusion lens

Read the rest of the story: “How to Stop Dating in FoCo, Part II“
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