Not only tinder: Girls about where they are looking for partners
It seems that with the advent of dating applications we began to look for partners exclusively with their help - and in public places today only the heroes of romantic comedies and melodramas get to know each other. We decided to find out if today there is no alternative to the conditional tinder, and talked with several heroines about where they find new people.
Interview: Alina Kolenchenko
Pauline
I met the first guy when I was eighteen, and it was like in the movies: at the gala event we mixed up the chairs. It was a passionate love at first sight - we spent the evening and night together, and the next morning we were making joint plans for the next few years. It seemed to me that I met my fate, but a year later we broke up.
It was very scary to be alone, so I immediately rushed to look for new relationships. I firmly decided that I would not use tinder and other online dating services, considering that everything should happen like the first time: a random spark, chemistry, mutual attraction. It seemed silly and unnatural to choose candidates by photo and biography in the profile. I believed that it was necessary only to help fate a little: to leave the house more often and always be on alert. Therefore, I even went to the store with a full parade - and what if fate decides to push me with the “same” at the shelf with vegetables? Mom laughed and said that I was behaving like the heroine Muravyova from the movie “Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears,” but I thought I was doing the right thing.
Every day, regardless of the weather, I put on a dress and heels and went hunting. I alone went to concerts, performances and exhibitions, to any events, and when I walked down the street I tried to smile at every nice man passing by. At first it was a gamble - how many men today will come to meet me? There were really a lot of them, and I gave a number to each more or less credible one - what if something happens? But, to be honest, most were eliminated after a couple of SMS or the first conversation on the phone. The image of the former guy was firmly sitting in his head - not one of the new acquaintances could stand the comparison.
After a couple of years of fruitless attempts, I began to get tired and frustrated: I, it seems, met a hundred men, I went on dates with three dozen, but my heart never faltered. Attempts to find love have become even more desperate, I felt infinitely lonely and because of this I lost all caution: I could get into a car to a stranger, go to a man’s home half an hour after dating. I was ready to fall in love with the first comer, who will show at least a drop of affection and care. Twice I miraculously escaped rape, and the third time the guy actually forced me to have sex. Surprisingly, this did not dampen my ardor.
Every day I left the institute and specifically went to a distant bus stop, because there was a traffic light, where many cars slowed down. It sounds silly, but I hoped that the casual driver would notice me, so beautiful and lonely, out of the window - and fall in love. Several times the men really stopped to meet, but somehow one of them took me for a sex worker. It made me think. What is worth tying, I finally understood after another incident. In the fall, I walked down the street, it began to rain heavily, there was nowhere to hide, but I had not recovered from pneumonia and panicked. I went to the only car on the street (a huge Cadillac, in which an elderly man was sitting) and asked to give me a lift to the subway. He agreed and silently drove me to the Frunze, and then asked for a number. I dictated - I do not know why, just out of habit. And then he suddenly began to say that I was probably “abnormal” if I jumped into the car to an unfamiliar man three times older than me and give him a number, and that such behavior will not bring me to good, because there are so many “perverts and concerns” around.
Strange, but his words affected me, it was after them that I stopped. I realized that the search for a relationship turned into an obsession, I behaved unreasonably, in vain spent a lot of time and effort trying to please random men. I decided to let go of the situation and direct the energy to study and work. And as soon as I stopped searching, stopped seeing a potential partner in each counter and lived my life, I met a wonderful person and really fell in love. It happened by chance, as I dreamed.
Maria
For several years I tried to find a relationship using dating sites, but this was not successful. Somehow a girlfriend dragged me to speed-dating - this is a mini-party in a cafe where you can get a chance to meet a dozen men for money. The scheme is this: you sit down at a table, glue a piece of paper on the chest with a number, a person sits down next to you, and you talk for a few minutes. Then the organizer rings the bell, he leaves, and the next one sits opposite you. If you like one of the participants, you put a plus sign in front of his number on a piece of paper. At the end of the evening, the sheets are collected, and if it turns out that the sympathies are the same, the next day you will receive each other's phone numbers in the mail, and you can continue to communicate.
The first thing that surprised me at this event was that almost all men did not come here for the first time, many went to these parties every week, as if to work. This immediately led to doubt the effectiveness of the event. At the first speed-deating, nobody was interested in me, but I was bored and I decided to try again. And then again. So gradually I became a regular participant. Sometimes it was ridiculous: a couple of times it turned out that almost all the guests of the evening I had already met on another speed-dating.
Not all men behave calmly, many do something strange. Typically, the acquaintance is given three to five minutes; Sometimes the organizer offers to speak on a particular topic, but more often people just talk about themselves. Some have full presentations in verse or even songs. There are men who come to complain about life and in three minutes have time to pour soulful mud at you. Some literally hate women, and why they go there is not clear. In general, those who are really interesting to you, usually one or two people per evening. It happens that someone from the participants immediately asks for a phone number - this is against the rules, but no one bothers to get out of the cafe and continue the evening together, in this, after all, the goal of speed dating. Strange as it may seem, at such events it is often the lack of girls - men sometimes complain that the organizers hire hate ones. It seems to me that they simply refuse to believe that no girl has given them a plus sign.
For all the time hobbies fast dates, I continued dating after a party with only two men. We stopped communicating with the first one after the first date, and began to live with the second one only a couple of weeks after we met. I could not even imagine that thanks to this seemingly absurd thing, the meeting of the main person in my life.
Dasha
I often had to travel in long-distance trains, either to relatives or to work. On another trip, I talked to the guy on the next shelf - we chatted all night until he got off at his station. After that, I thought that in the train it is better to pay attention to random fellow travelers more often. I began to drive only in compartment cars: firstly, the coupe has some intimacy, and secondly, it seemed to me that more “respectable” people were driving there.
Getting to know the trains is easy: the cramped space brings people closer together, almost every first person considers it his duty to help the girl throw a suitcase or get a mattress from the top shelf. Several times on the trains I met men who were really interesting to me, we even dined in the dining car, exchanged phone numbers, but this did not end with anything. The problem is that most often you live in different cities, and I do not know how to maintain relationships at a distance, especially when they did not really have time to start.
Once I was waiting for the train, and on the platform, my attention was attracted by a tall guy with a beard. For some reason I really wanted us to go in the same compartment - and indeed, it turned out that we were neighbors on the shelves. There were two of us, we immediately started talking, he took out a bottle of wine from his backpack. Travel time flew by unnoticed, and the next evening we saw each other again, in Moscow, because we had time to get bored. It was funny, but then it turned out that he also met the previous girl on the train.
Alla
Once, a marriage agent wrote to me on the social network: he sent several male questionnaires and offered to meet with one of them. "If I want to find a relationship, I need to at least somehow move," I thought, so I decided to get involved in this adventure. I had an appointment at a marriage agency - it was an inconspicuous office without a signboard, where I had to bend down so as not to touch the ceiling with my head. The office consisted of a large room, there were several tables enclosed with screens, and for each agent “processed” the client.
When my turn came, the female manager, looking at me, said that with my external data you should not "trade out" for the men they offered me first, because I can claim at least a millionaire. She strongly focused on the financial side of the issue: she promised that you can find a very wealthy husband in their agency, backing this up with happy Cinderella stories. When I said that in principle I was not interested in the money of a potential partner, she, after a pause, replied: "I see that you are a surprisingly adequate woman." “If I were so“ adequate, ”I would hardly have come here,” flashed through my mind.
The manager offered to conclude an agreement with the agency for forty thousand rubles - for this amount they promised to arrange my fate. It was difficult for me to part with such money, but in the end I still paid five thousand - I was promised to be brought into the base and organized three meetings with men. When I filled out the questionnaire, the manager advised to lower the age by ten years and, instead of a real city, to specify Moscow - this allowed us to assess the accuracy of information about potential candidates. A week later, they called me and made an appointment with a man in their office - I didn’t see his photo, I didn’t even know the name. I thought that they would hardly offer me someone interesting on the first date, because they need to pull money to the last. Already on the doorstep of the agency suddenly became aware of how absurd everything is happening - I turned around and went home. After that, for a few more months, they overwhelmed me with phone calls.
Oddly enough, after that I once again tried to use the services of the agency. A man wrote to me on the social network, we started chatting, and a little later a stranger woman called herself as the manager of the “Family Home” telephoned, and said that if I want to continue communicating with this man, I should come to the agency where we will arrange a meeting. This time, in the luxurious office, I was immediately taken to the office of the general manager. Remembering previous experience, I said from the doorway: "I will not pay money." But the manager did not give up so easily and in an hour used a dozen two psychological techniques of varying degrees of severity, urging me to sign a contract. He pressed me so professionally that, even as a psychologist by training, in the end I could not resist him: without saying goodbye I flew out the door and remembered this experience for a long time as a terrible dream.
Daria
I am a lesbian, and I met the first girl in social networks when I was fourteen. Since then, all acquaintances took place absolutely naturally: through friends, at work, at the university - somehow it turned out that there were always such girls around me. It's funny, but for some reason it seems to many that gays and lesbians are looking for a couple exclusively on special forums and in thematic groups in social networks, and in everyday life they identify each other by some special signs. There are really quite a lot of LGBT public dating: any one of them can be joined by absolutely any user, there are more closed ones, only for their own. I think many people find it easier to get acquainted on the Internet, but I have always preferred to do it “in real life” and have not encountered any problems.
If I like the girl and I have a fighting mood, I can easily approach to meet her. Probably, everything happens so easily for me, because I am a very open person, and others easily open to me in response. When I was still in high school, I stopped hiding my orientation, and if there is a conversation about this, I mention it without any embarrassment, as something ordinary. At the same time, I have never encountered misunderstanding or rejection. Given the fact that I live in Russia, most likely, I was just damn lucky all this time.
Masha
A year and a half ago I divorced. I have a child, work, and besides, I am shy, so lately I actively used applications like Tinder and Pure - it saved time, and it was much easier to start a dialogue with a stranger than offline. But then I got bored: to meet someone who really likes it in a tinder, you have to kill a lot of time for searching and as many more for useless dates. I once wrote on Facebook: "Where do you find cool guys to go on cool dates?" Received a bunch of comments in the spirit of: "I do not know, the same problem." I realized that this is true for many women.
Later, I spoke with friends and told me that I had recently tried to get acquainted on Instagram or Facebook: I wrote to liked men and offered to talk, but I was surprised by the negative reaction that I met. The men ignored me or answered something like: “And what is the benefit to me of getting to know you?”, “I don’t add strangers to friends”, “I don’t care at all” - I think all this could be said more delicately. We had the idea to create an alternative to tinder, something like a closed group for friends of friends. Thus was born the project Ask me out - a pro-feminist, anti-discrimination, LGBT friends, and in general friends, except for the negative in any of its manifestations, a group for dating. We hoped to create a safe and friendly space where participants would speak freely about sympathies, and in case of a mismatch they would calmly accept the refusal and just as gently refuse others.
Now it is a platform where people can find friends and communicate, discuss relationship problems, share experiences. We carry the idea of respect for each other, and to create such an atmosphere, in my opinion, is possible only in a closed group. We ask potential participants to answer a few questions about what attracted them in the principles of the group, whether they share our values. Even in a group, people often talk about their experience, which is not always positive - we warn potential participants about it and ask if they are ready to empathize and treat everyone who shares stories with respect. If people submit an application, but do not answer questions, we do not add them, because it says that the person did not even read the description of the group.
I myself actively use the site and have already managed to meet new interesting people, however, I have not yet gone on dates: the child fell ill and had to cancel everything. But I see that other participants often make appointments and agree to go somewhere, and more recently we made a chat in the telegraph, and it is also very lively.
It seems to me that many, like me, are much easier to meet on the Internet. But recently, I set a goal to learn to approach people and say: "Hi, I'm Masha, let's be friends." I want to break this barrier, become bolder and do not hesitate to make acquaintance with the person you like.
Photo: doomu - stock.adobe.com, missty - stock.adobe.com, Alena Kovalenko - stock.adobe.com