I had no intention of watching a documentary on online dating apps, but that’s what happened while I folded the laundry, because what else do you do when you fold the laundry but watch mindless television?
I’m pretty sure I mixed up the piles of underwear and socks, which will surely generate some awkward moments for my family later, but I found myself absorbed in the horrifying realities of today’s dating culture.
Here’s what I learned: the Carpenter and I would never have gotten together if it had been up to a dating app that judged us solely on appearance and the ability to swipe left or right through a catalogue of pouty-lipped, muscle-flexing hotties.
Fate would have taken one look at us – two gangly, skinny, baby-faced fools in our 20s – thrown her hands up in the air, unplugged our internet and walked away in disgust. Hopeless.
Mind you, we got together in the age when mobile phones were still a luxury item. Kids, that’s back in the day when we did crazy things like meet people face-to-face and, you know, talk to them in real-time, awkwardly flirting and being judged for our first impressions, not our Photoshopped realities.
The Carpenter and I met in the age of dial-up modems; to even flirt online would take five minutes for the computer connection to work, after listening to cyber noises that sounded like E.T. trying to phone home from your kitchen. It was a sexy time to be alive.
I know there is nothing my husband likes better than being interrupted in his yard work by me explaining every single detail about the movie I just watched while folding laundry, so I had to stop him to ask him his opinion about online dating apps.
“Can you imagine sending me texts of your scrawny body back in the 90s?” I asked.
“What would I take a naughty photo of?” I asked staring straight down at my super-sexy over-stretched sweatshirt. “I’m not sure how this is possible, but I had even less cleavage then. If I could roll up my belly right now, I could maybe jump up a letter in the bra alphabet. Hold on, let me get my phone and snap a shot of that.”
His face spoke before he did. “Please never do that.”
If only there was an emoji for that moment, but marriage has no room for virtual truths. Sure technology has created some interference in our relationship, but the Carpenter and I don’t mess around behind each other’s backs; we’re downright open about it.
He is deeply attracted to his mistress (the iPad) and I adore my boy toy (the iPhone) and we are happily married (read: iMarried). We aren’t ignoring each other, technically. We are coexisting. Also, grocery shopping is much easier when you text your dinner demands.
It’s a scary virtual world out there to navigate and I am grateful not to be a part of that online dating scene. I hope my kids refrain, but this is their world. This is the new normal. Sad, but true.
It’s a good thing they can look up to leaders like Doug Ford, who will ensure kids learn about this stuff the hard way too, because sexting? Even the Carpenter and I can figure that out.