If This Is You, And You’re Still On Tinder, I Feel Sorry For You
Women. And men
I hate bandages. I have this 16cm/160mm/6 inch long scar that runs just under the calf of my right leg.
The scar is a remnant of my childhood escapades that involved illegally riding old roadmaster bicycles that were almost my height from when I was something like 7.
These were tall, and heavy roadmaster bicycles from the 80s. Not the current shrunk versions that crumble under a 350-pound load.
Therefore if you are wondering how a seven-year-old rode that thing, you need to visit a Ugandan village once in your lifetime.
Anyway, when that scar was a fresh wound, it was deep. So deep it got close to the bone. I don’t remember ever getting stitches for it. But I remember the bandages I got for it.
We had to change them all the time. An experience that was terribly painful. It didn’t matter whether it was a gauze bandage or those cotton softs.
They all got stuck in my wound which made it horrible to pull them out at each bandage change.
It kept hurting me and reopening the wound. It was after several months that I got scared that my leg would rot. Only then did I stop using bandages/ bandaids for that wound. I refused to wear them and this is what helped me recover.
When it comes to relationships, most people are band-aiding their relationship wounds of fear, trauma, and insecurity.
Someone said that men shouldn’t invite women to go hiking on the first date.
That's fair and I want to say obvious but I am not there yet.
She gave the obvious reasons, one of which was the concern of being sexually assaulted or murdered.
She then said that if a woman refuses your invitation to hike on the first date, don’t take it personally. She is not accusing you of anything. She is just making her due diligence to remain safe. So you should consider her feelings and safety and save that for a later date.
Why refusing an invitation is always taken personally
The reason why people get sexually assaulted or murdered when they put themselves in situations such as hikes on the first date is not that they didn’t do their due diligence. At the very least, we can say they ignored the red flags.
Strange things happen when we are excited about someone. Blind trust is one of those.
What you actually think is due diligence to remain safe is not really about that. It is an implicit evaluation that changes from person to person.
For most straight women, in this case, if several men were to ask you to go on a hike as a first date, the answer will not always be no. For some, it will be a yes.
This is because the woman rejecting or accepting the offer has gone through their belief systems, biases, and profiles and managed to weigh the benefits or costs of going to that hike with the particular person.
Things such as how attractive the man is to her, or how harmless she perceives him to be, and so many other things are at play here.
When a woman rejects the proposal for “safety” reasons, it simply means she finds going to that hike not worth the risk. If she accepts it, she is metaphorically closing her eyes and going like, “fuck it, let's do it.”
This is a person-to-person decision. It is personal. It always is. If it were an algorithm, then something like this would have been the decision-making process.
if(date){
if((date.history ==0) && (user == user.man)){printf(“Rejected”);
}
}That would be a preset command, that may be nested in with some else-if statements but the criteria would be the same for all men regardless of how attractive or non-threatening. This would not be personal.
Human beings don’t follow hard-coded rules. It is personal. It always is.
You are asking someone to consider your feelings but not theirs
Assault and murder are horrible and unfortunate things to experience.
Therefore I totally understand when you say that you are looking out for yourself first and ask the other person to consider your feelings.
Continuing from the first part of taking things personally, if you can’t find comfort in being with someone alone on the first date, if that thought scares you to your core, you have no business being with that person at all. Not ever.
If your initial feelings about someone are spiky, you must not even consider talking to them on any other type of date.
It goes back to the implicit evaluation I wrote about earlier. Even though it's personal, it is your way of navigating the world and that’s ok.
People are exceptionally great judges of character. You’d be surprised. We don’t need to meet people first before we know whether we like them or not.
It is the time when we feel like we want things to work out that we fail to listen to this judgment. We fall into making compromises instead of listening to our internal guidance systems.
When you engage with someone and give them prospects of being in a relationship with you, their feelings get involved too. It's a natural part of connection otherwise they’d feel nothing for you.
Feelings are soft and meaning channels them. If you insinuate that someone might assault or murder you, even if it isn’t what you meant, their feelings are hurt, so do other aspects of their identity such as self-esteem.
Now, what happens after that may be that the person totally understands where you are coming from. This is rare.
For most people, that will manifest into varying degrees of aggression.
On the extremes, to some you won’t notice it, others you’ll literary see the manifestation of evil.
You must understand that whatever your intentions are, that is not up to you as to what meaning they are given by the receiver. It is much the same way as the decisions that lead you into rejecting the person’s proposal.
Your feelings matter, but when you are interacting with another person, it is not your feelings alone that are at play.
I have seen people do the stupidest shit for strangers they care about. It is not about protecting your feelings. It is about how you perceive the other person.
I am saying if that perception makes you uncomfortable, stay away from them before you even say Hi.
The assault and murder defense
I think we underestimate how common these issues are and how likely they are to happen from those people we think we know.
When it comes to sexual assault and murder, those things are mostly committed by people that know the victims.
I’d argue that the odds of being murdered on your third date are just as bad or worse than on your first date.
People are trained to be very cautious of strangers which is a very good thing. But the very little emphasis is directed towards people we know/people we think we know.
People can do the most horrible things. Save for the rare cases where someone would hurt you within a few hours of meeting you, for most people, it doesn’t happen until the relationship is past random dates that have you all high on lust hormones.
It happens when the spark of initial excitement has faded and y’all are starting to see each other’s flaws. This is the time when true love is tested.
It is easy to treat someone well when you “love” them. But what about when that feeling fades? Can you still find it or at least make an effort to?
If you think that someone could potentially hurt you on your hike as a first date, treat all your dates with them that way.
This means they could just as likely hurt you at any of the future dates and/or hikes that you will be going to with them. Stay away from them!!!
Bandaiding relationships wounds
People are desperate to get into relationships it's pathetic. Why make a tinder profile if you are going to have your spidey senses triggered at every swipe?
If you are talking about exercising caution and doing your due diligence, having a tinder profile is a horrible display of your “awareness”.
If you want to make a profile to hurt people’s feelings, that’s fine. There is always room for sociopathy.
But if you are concerned about your wellbeing, and that of other people, profiles that are tailored to arouse your interest are the last thing you need in your life.
Leave tinder alone.
If you still make the profile, you are just using these men, or women, as bandaids to cover your relationship insecurities, traumas, and fears.
Like bandaids did to my 160 mm leg wound, these people will hurt you with each interaction they have with you.
