Sometimes I Feel Sad About The Vibrator My Tinder Date Bought That We Never Used

Nothing says “untapped potential” like a sex toy that remains unopened.

When I opened my marriage briefly in 2020 and started dating other men, I met quite a cast of characters with the help of Tinder and Bumble.

But this is not an article about those men, and it’s not an article about my open marriage.

This is an article about a vibrator and its unknown future.

This vibrator was gifted to me by a Tinder date named Martín. Well, it wasn’t quite “gifted” because it never came into my full possession. But I still think about it often, and it sometimes makes me sad to think about what became of this vibrator.

Martín made a brief appearance in one of my first essays about my open marriage. He was a true Colombian Rico Suave, a ladies’ man who knew the right things to say to a woman in need of some male attention.

Martín pulled out all the stops, including a fancy dinner reservation, after-dinner salsa dancing, and excessive compliments that were even a little over the top for a sex-starved mom whose dying wish was to be called sexy and have her butt grabbed.

But he didn’t quite read the room correctly, because I definitely wasn’t in this for the long haul.

Sure, before our first date Martín and I had struck up a pretty lengthy conversation over text about our relationship histories and our life as parents (he was a single dad to two teenage boys). He seemed intrigued by my situation, and he expressed shock that I could have gone without sex this long in my marriage.

He would never let a woman go that unsatisfied for so long, he told me.

Cue the part about him being a smooth operator who knew exactly what to say at every moment.

But I had only just opened my marriage, and I wasn’t about to start planning a future with Martín.

I surely would not have invested $59.99 in our future together.

Yet I must have charmed the tight jeans right off of Martín through those initial texts, because Martín definitely did invest $59.99 in our future before we even planned a first date.

At the end of our salsa dancing marathon that night, we were both sweaty and a little tipsy (him from his drink of choice, Jack and Diet Coke, which would honestly have been enough of a reason not to pursue a long-term relationship with him even if I wasn’t married).

But Martín was hot, and that was all that mattered in the moment. We were making out passionately against the side of his car in an empty parking garage. I could have allowed this make-out session to escalate to a more advanced sexual situation inside his SUV, but it was already one in the morning and I felt guilty staying out this late without explaining to my husband where I was.

So I cut the session short, as difficult as it was to pry my body away from his.

“Before you go… I have something I got for you that might get you excited about our next date,” he said.

He reached in his car and pulled out a black box wrapped in a tasteful gold bow. It was clear from the image on the box that this was a classy, battery-operated wand vibrator with several settings. It was black silicone and sleek, with gold colored embellishments.

“I’ll have this ready for you for next time,” he whispered to me as I hugged him goodbye.

Unfortunately, as you may have already guessed, there was no next time.

I don’t remember the exact chain of events that followed, except that I met a divorced dad named Nathan with future political ambitions who had zero foreplay skills and I chose to sleep with that guy instead.

I delayed our next date long enough that Martín finally got the hint, and we never saw each other again.

Though I still occasionally think about how Martín is doing, I think more often about the vibrator in that black box.

What does a guy do when he buys a vibrator for a woman that you never end up using together?

Was he smart enough to return it and get his money back?

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic began just a few weeks after our first and only date. I doubt he had enough time to figure out we weren’t going to sleep together, print out a return label, and drop it off at FedEx before the world shut down for several months.

Another possibility is that this little vibrator-that-could is still in that exact box, the bow still on, shoved in the back of a closet that smells like Cool Water cologne.

Its batteries have long since lost their charge, and it has likely given up hope that it will ever reach its full potential as a giver of orgasms to a sexy mom like me.

That is the sad version of this tale.

The happier version, of course, is that this gift has since been re-gifted to a worthy woman who is reaping all of the benefits of that $59.99 purchase. Perhaps they are in love, and they are planning out their salsa dancing future together.

If this is the case, I hope she never finds out the vibrator was purchased for me. She deserves not to know.

And yes, even as I’m typing this now I’m realizing that the story might not end there. There is a fourth version of this story.

The fourth story ending props Martín up as the true hero of this tale.

Perhaps all along this vibrator was already being regifted to me. Perhaps this vibrator is nothing less than Martín’s sexy first date prop that joins him on every Tinder adventure.

Perhaps this very vibrator is sitting naughtily on Martín’s entryway table right now, wrapped perfectly in that bow, just waiting to charm the pants off his next Tinder date.

And if that is the case, I say hat’s off to you Martín.

Perhaps I should no longer feel sad about what became of this vibrator. Perhaps the vibrator should feel sad about what became of me.

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