Adventures in Dating 15: Bumble Bust.

Last year, when I was newly single and ready to mingle, I dived into a new (to me) dating app that I had heard about for a while - Bumble. If you’re unfamiliar, Bumble is like Tinder in where you swipe right for yes and left for no, however when you make a match, the woman makes the first move, and she has 24 hours to do so or the match will expire. In cases where two women match, it’s fair game on who makes the first move, but the time limit still applies.

I liked the concept of Bumble, because it forces you out of being complacent. You have to make your move or the match will be gone forever. And I had no qualms about making the first move, as when I used to be active on Tinder, I would send the first message half the time anyway. I did pretty well on Bumble, I wasn’t doing anything crazy like going on a date a week (yes I fully acknowledge me doing this experiment is completely mad) but I was doing pretty well and scoring some good dates.

This year, however, Bumble has been quite the struggle. I only downloaded it in March, as I had my hands full with Tinder and Hinge. But when I came to terms that Tinder was not working for me, I came to Bumble thinking that I would have more success. Not so much.

One criticism I’ve heard about Bumble over the years is that no one responds. You’ll match with someone and make that first move, only to be met with silence. I didn’t really have this problem when I downloaded it last year. Sure, there would be the occasional person who didn’t respond after matching, but that wasn’t unlike any other dating app.

This time round, however, I saw what people meant. I have been struggling SO MUCH with Bumble. Because not only am I having a difficult time actually getting matches (I was under the impression most men mass swipe to increase their chances of getting matches but maybe they’ve gotten pickier) but when I do match with someone, it expires because they don’t respond within 24 hours.

So Bumble was a very frustrating teething process for a while BUT I did eventually match and have a conversation with someone who didn’t fall off the face of the earth after a couple of messages. N was half Italian and stated in his profile that he loved tequila, which I also love. We bonded over our love for the spirit and he enlightened me of the existence of coffee-flavoured tequila.

“How have I not heard of this? Coffee AND tequila? My dream!”

“They sell it at most bars and pubs! Maybe we can go out for one sometime?”

A date was set and we arranged to meet one evening after work. Sticking to the tequila theme, I suggested that we go to a Mexican place where we could get our fill of burritos and margaritas, because who doesn’t love a themed date?

But despite being half-Italian, N was probably one of the blandest, most vanilla white men I had ever met. There was nothing wrong with him, but there wasn’t much of interest either. Much like M, I was kinda struggling to get the conversation going at times because N had absolutely nothing to offer. He literally had the two most interesting things on his Bumble profile and the rest was just dull white noise. I couldn’t tell you more about him other than he is doing a PhD in something science-y and likes rock climbing. Two things that, in theory, are interesting, but he didn’t do a great job of making them sound so.

But, at least I got to try some coffee-flavoured tequila (it's basically an Espresso Martini in a shot glass, how divine).

Going into this, I knew I wasn’t going to click with every person I went on a date with, and that not everybody will be a winner. But I underestimated how hard it would be coming up with something vaguely interesting to say in these incidences. Lucky for you, I have some much more interesting dates coming up, so watch this space!