Tinder for the Quiet Lesbian

How I overcame my shyness and met my girlfriend

Back in the slightly earlier days of the internet, I developed a certain comfort level with personal ads or dating websites that didn’t require people to post photos upfront. I felt more at ease with the idea of someone getting to know me through words first.

Sure, I waded through a lot of wild, deceptive posts on Craigslist, but I could find interesting and creative women there who also wanted their words to make the first impression. In writing an ad, I could emphasize whatever aspects of myself that I wanted to talk about, without imagining someone seeing a photo of me and making an immediate judgement.

Though there are apps/websites such as Lex today that have text-based ads, the dating apps used by the largest numbers of people focus on photos. In other words, if I wanted to date again, I had to work up the courage not to mind if women swiped left on me.

I’m not naturally a glass-half-full kind of person, so I apologize if it sounds negative that I thought of the left swipes. I tried to adopt a more neutral approach and remember that, as the saying goes, what other people think of me is none of my business.

Likewise, I tried not to be discouraged by the fact that even in urban areas, the dating pool for lesbians isn’t like an Olympic-sized pool. It’s more like the tiny pool at your apartment complex where you’ve seen people around before even if you don’t know their names. But sometimes somebody new moves into the complex, or somebody brings a couple friends over, so you never know.

Despite the relatively small pool and the inevitable left-swipers, I knew that some women would swipe right. I could build my profile with the right-swipers in mind. Who did I want to swipe right? What did I want her to see?

As a kid I was a tomboy, but I stopped playing sports and wearing baseball caps before my teens. I used to describe myself as “bookish” in the text-based ads. For much of my 20s and 30s, I wore some combination of men’s Levi’s, t-shirts with video game characters or old movie posters on them, cardigan sweaters, and Converse.

Now in my 40s, I’ve realized that everybody can create, to some extent, the version of themselves that they want to present to the world without looking like a poser, a word and idea which somehow persisted from 1980s teen movies into my adult life.

I realized, too, that I had spent most of my life letting my words speak for me almost completely — not just letting them make the first impression, but letting them make the main impression, as though they were meant to coordinate with my oversized gray sweater designed to help me blend into the background.

Well, I didn’t want a makeover like in the 1980s teen movies, but I started to dress a little more like I wanted to feel, a little more grown up and confident in a black denim jacket and black vegan-leather boots. I gathered up this confidence and acknowledged to myself that it was OK to want women to look at me.

I’d taken so many philosophy courses in college and then spent so much time reading and writing that in some ways, 25+ years down the road, I still hadn’t left the idealized world of the mind. But that world hadn’t done so well for me. I always connected with women in deep emotional ways, but I lacked the clarity and boundaries to forge an equal partnership with someone from the start. Well, I’ve worked hard on this stuff in my 40s, too, but that’s another story.

What I learned about Tinder for the shy is that you can be yourself, and you also have to own the fact that you’re posting on Tinder. You don’t want to look hesitant or — worse — angry about it. Own it, and don’t type a long bio: just choose a few interesting things about yourself to share.

In some respects, I figured out what to do by looking at other profiles and seeing what I liked and didn’t like. Some stuff was extreme; for example, I didn’t like photos of women holding guns or giving the finger. Other stuff was more subtle yet equally frustrating, like women who wouldn’t show their face or used “artfully” blurry photos. C’mon.

I gave myself a little imaginary injection of self-esteem and set to work. I looked through my camera roll for photos that other people had taken of me where I was smiling or laughing. I took a close-up selfie where I looked happy. I included a photo taken from a distance. I wasn’t hiding.

I matched with several women and messaged with a few. I ended up making two friends — we still follow each other on social media and text back and forth. I only met one woman in person, and after dating for several months, our relationship continued evolving to the point where we became girlfriends.

My girlfriend had posted photos of herself on Tinder where she looked relaxed and happy. She’d posted a photo of her Westie (the dog had her own photo, standing alone in a grassy field). My girlfriend’s bio said she ran her own business, which I asked about in my first message, but more than anything, she sounded fun as well as kind.

It turns out that my girlfriend and I matched on the very first day she’d ever used Tinder, and she never bothered to talk with anyone else. We messaged for a week and then met up for a walk which extended into a late lunch.

She told me she swiped right because she liked my photos and thought I looked cute. I thought she was pretty — and I was right about her kindness and her fun-loving attitude. Her upbeat outlook has helped me recognize that I can turn on the tap and refill a glass if it’s looking half-empty.

These days she reads some but not all of my writing. More importantly, she doesn’t let me get away with telling myself old, damaging stories. She inspires me to look for the truth, whether or not I’m going to write about it — or even when I don’t have words for it at all.