Maybe It’s Just Me?
I am a stressy, anxious person. It’s just who I am and for me, there have certainly been times where Tinder was too much pressure. This post is more personal than matter of fact. People who are confident about their online presence and love social media may not feel this way, which is great. But for those bundles of anxiety like myself, this one’s for you.
I’ll start at the top.
Wondering If You’re Good Enough.
Now this may seem dramatic and perhaps it is but every time I would upload a new selfie, my heart would pound and my palms would sweat. I would worry for hours if I’d made the right selection from the 80+ selfies I took. Of course a lot of people suffer from this anxiety over various social networking sites but there was something about online dating (in my case Tinder) that made it so much worse. These people that see your pictures on Tinder are actually going to judge your appearance and whether or not you’re worthy of a swipe right. I mean, that’s the whole point of Tinder, right? So this opens you up to the very real possibility of rejection and I find that pretty daunting.
The Pressure to Connect Romantically.
Psychology Today explains how there’s a pressure on online and app dating to turn a connection into a romantic one quickly, rather than allowing romantic feelings to slowly develop. Online dating is incredibly rushed. People want to find out whether there’s an immediate romantic spark and if not, they want to move on. This means that both parties involved are trying to figure out if this spark exists and it’s actually a pretty uncomfortable conversation. If you’ve matched you most likely tick each others physical attraction boxes. Cool. Next, a numerous questions are thrown at you. What music do you like? Where do you live? What hobbies do you have? Where have you been on holiday? Then there’s pressure to answer these questions ‘correctly’ or the person you’re speaking to will either cut you off or it will result in an awkward conversation because you both have nothing in common.
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