Thank you to Hinge for sponsoring this letter! I love thinking and talking about the ways that we relate to other people, seek connection, and experiment with both intimacy and world-expansion. Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments. #HingePartner.
At the very beginning of a relationship, there is a dizzy amorphousness out of which anything can form or fizzle. Tomasz Jedrowski captures this anticipation in Too Good to Let Go, one of the real love stories in Hinge’s collection titled No Ordinary Love. Aissata and Juno almost never meet. They like each other on Hinge, but neither wants to be the one to put in more effort. At the start, small things snowball into astronomical significance. A “like” without a text is a surefire sign of disinterest. When Aissata accidentally sleeps through their first date, Juno thinks they’re being stood up. But instead of catastrophizing, they decide to find out the truth for themselves. Juno drives to Aissata’s house, and when they see them appear on the porch, somehow even more beautiful in real life, Juno knows they made the right call. The couple got married in March.
It isn’t surprising that Juno thought Aissata was avoidant before the two had even met. We often think we know a person if we’ve exchanged a few text messages, or sat next to them in a seminar, or heard stories about their past relationships. We are quick to write them off as dull or pretentious or avoidant before finding a new target to fixate on. Maybe these snap-judgments are modes of self-protection, but they only keep us isolated and endlessly searching. I love dating as an antidote to the compression of people into adjectives. It’s a practice of optimism and discovery—it’s difficult for someone to remain one-dimensional after spending a few hours with them. I don’t see going on a date as high-stakes as I once did. It’s one of the easiest ways to open up your world.
I know this from experience! My friends teasingly refer to September of senior year as a felicitous month in which I was “going on a date every single day.” I wasn’t, obviously, but something strange was happening. Maybe there was a communal frenzy to find a relationship before we graduated college, or there was a glitch in the universe, but I was being asked out at a cadence completely foreign to me.
At first, I was very nervous about all of the classic things to worry about: the greeting, the eye contact, the quality of the conversation, the awkwardness of the goodbye. Many of the dates resembled dining hall meals that I shared with potential friends at the beginning of freshman year. We didn’t know anything about each other, and suddenly we were placed in an intimate setting where we discussed our parents and our summers and the movies we had recently seen in the theaters. I appreciated my senior year dates for this platonic quality; it felt like a return to myself four years ago, wanting to meet and understand as many people as possible.
But the palpable mystery and anticipation and self-consciousness were new. I wore somewhat of a uniform to all of my first dates: dark-wash jeans, a black long sleeve, penny loafers, silver jewelry. I slowly figured out how I wanted to talk about myself, and what questions to ask back. At some point in September, the nerves dissipated, and a steady ease took its place. I no longer worried if my date would like me. I liked me! I just wanted to have a good time and learn something new.
I tell everyone that they should always go on a first date if there is even the tiniest bit of interest. Too often, we are so preoccupied with the fact that they're an inch shorter than we’d like, or they type in all lowercase, or they believe in horoscopes, that we forget that these are real people who might be thinking the same thing about us. You can text someone all you want, but you won’t know if you’ll actually get along until you meet. On the other side of a date you can find truth and enchantment.
So yes, dating is good practice for self-presentation and generous conversation and active curiosity. But I’m not a total cynic! I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that for this dating thing to work, there needs to be at least a sliver of hope that your two-hour get-to-know-you at a bar will turn into something more. Maybe you'll like them more than you thought you would. You’ll notice that his eyes match his shirt and appreciate the warm, perceptive way he describes his family and asks about yours. You might forget you’re in the field collecting data and fine-tuning your anecdotes because the experiment has turned into something else entirely. That’s when you can throw all the rules away and enjoy the greatest part.
Sponsored mention. All opinions are my own, and Ad Hoc is not affiliated with any of the other mentioned parties. Read the full anthology of No Ordinary Love stories here.
the first date uniform is so real
such a nice read! 🫶🏼 I wish more people adopted this approach to dating, it would make it so much more lighthearted and fun!