Tinder Date.

Tinder date brought me a flowerSo today I had my very first-ever Tinder-arranged date.

For those of you not in the know, Tinder, according to Wikipedia, is:

a phone app that is a location-based social discovery app that facilitates communication between mutually interested users. Using Facebook profiles, Tinder gathers users' basic information and analyzes users' social graphs to match potential candidates who are most likely to be compatible based on geographical location, number of mutual friends and common interests. Based on the results of potential candidates, the app allows the user to anonymously like ("swipe right") or pass them ("swipe left"). If two users like each other then it results in a "match" and Tinder introduces the two users and opens a chat.

So yeah. Basically, it's like a glorified version of "Hot or Not."

After spending the fall and winter doing some hard work on my own stuff - I was doing me, you guys. Just doin' me! - when spring rolled around, I started to feel like maaaaybe I was ready to start dating again. I tried online dating for, like, a week - and it totally, totally blew. Tinder wasn't even on my radar as a serious dating tool - Maybe it'd be cool if I still lived in Minneapolis, I told myself, where I could easily meet up with matches for a drink, but when most of the guys I was matching up with lived 70 miles away? Yawn. So mostly I just went on there when I was bored and wanted to look at cute guys.

But then, the more great matches I started to collect, the more I started to take it seriously. First, I'm just going to be honest and say that it was a super great ego boost...and as someone who's fought a hard battle with her appearance and self-esteem the past couple of years, I'm totally not embarrassed at all to admit that that was nice. The thing that makes it different from online dating is that there's a bit more instant gratification: Instead of seeing that a guy looked at your profile 15 times but still didn't message you, leaving you to wonder if he actually digs you or if he's just showing your profile to his friends so they can all laugh about it, you know right away if a guy you dig digs you back.

Then, I was kind of hit with some truth-telling that made me realize that...maybe I needed to open myself up more to different types of guys. It couldn't hurt to be more open to chatting with and maybe meeting men who weren't necessarily my "type." Mostly because...when it comes to my outlook on relationships and my goals for them, I'm way different than I was even a year ago. Thus, I needed to set my mind on being open to a different kind of man.

Basically, everything I thought I knew about who my "type" was and how to judge whether a guy was for me...I had to toss all of that out the window and start all over again. I'm not really looking, anymore, for the hottest guy ever who can also dance and will make me laugh and who will like all the same music I like and who will think I'm adorable even when I'm being super annoying. That stuff would be awesome, but mostly, I'm looking for a good man with some character whom I like being around and whom I will eventually want to kiss at some point. I know to some of you, I sound so mature right now (thank you!) and to others I sound so boring (I know, right?) but it's not like I'm ruling out hotness (and I've asked God not to rule it out either...right, God? *elbow nudge* Good guys can be super hot, too, right?!) or any of my old preferences...they're just no longer priorities, dig? They're like...that super great icing on the Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake, if you will.

So on my date today, it felt super weird, to sit there and realize that I didn't know anything anymore. That everything I would have judged him on in years past - was he hot? Did I want to kiss him right away? Could I see him hanging out with my friends? Was he funny? Did he think I was funny? Did he fit into my fantasy of what I wanted a relationship to look like? - were now things that I know better than to make snap judgements on. The date was nice. We have a lot in common, we had a lot to talk about. I worked on keeping myself in the present and enjoying our conversation instead of sitting there and envisioning what our lives would look like together 20 years down the road and then either deciding that This Man Will Be Mine, Oh Yes, This Man Will Be Mine or Oh Hey, NEXT. Which is just...HUGE progress for me, you guys. So yeah. Good date. Can I see us going out again? Sure.

I think this whole dating thing is going to be really fun, this time around. Now that I've handled all the weird stuff I used to get so mired and mixed up in, I'm kind of psyched to see what's in store.

(And hopefully, some of what's in store will be kissing. Because it's been since August, you guys. I barely even remember what it's like anymore.)