what tinder taught me about specificity and getting what i want

Written by: Tamar Simone Weir

Art by Audrey Jones

This blog today will investigate how my many random, hilarious, and weird tinder dates have helped me in getting better at asking for what I want, even if I don't get it!

Back in high school, I downloaded Tinder... I don't remember how I began to hear about this app, but once I did, I knew I had to get on there and swipe. Tinder began in 2012, and has now lost some popularity due to other dating and hookup apps that are more specific and tailored to certain folks needs and desires, but back in the day Tinder was very popular!! As a sexually and romantically curious teenager growing up in a small town with very few options for dating around me, downloading this app opened a whole new world for me, and I was ready to dive in....

I went on a few dates, most of them were not very eventful and quite disappointing in addition to being a waste of time, although I was dedicated to continue in this journey of juiciness. I was also obsessed with trying new things, and having such an easily accessible app to help me reach more people than in just my small towns radius, was huge.

Below, are some throwbacks to my early tinder days being a 17 year old....

I know people have mixed feelings about dating apps, as do I. Dating and sexy apps are filled with scary people, situations that can be murky, and exhaustion / overwhelm from all the back and forth messaging and filtering of people through a small screen. I go through periods of loving the connection it brings me, and also needing to take breaks due to feeling the disconnect from being on my phone all the time and constant messaging....

Now it's not all bad, and it's not all good. Tinder and other dating apps having their pros and their cons and its important to investigate the benefits and the disadvantages these apps hold in connection to what you need, want, and your overall framework for dating.

Decisions are everywhere. From what we decide to eat to what we wear, how we spend our days and what words we choose to use. Decisions are necessary parts of life, but often times being the one to decide something can be very challenging. Sometimes when there are too many options, decision overwhelm plagues us with doubts about which option is best, or sometimes others have decided for us what we should want / like / do for our whole lives that making our decisions seems foreign and anxiety producing.

Even understanding what we want can be a distant experience for folks who are always thinking and having to provide for other people's needs instead of their own. People pleasers, caretakers, and people socialized as women often times have had to put their own desires and needs aside and therefore have not been given the chance to truly connect with what decisions they would truly make.

Making a decision can be scary, it can feel like you are closing the door to so many other things, and as someone who is an avid adventurer and seeks new experiences often, I am like an octopus, wanting to put my tentacles in many places at once, but it is not possible. Choosing and deciding actually gives us more options that are right for us, that are aligned with what we want, and filters out some of the excess noise.

But where do these juicy stories come in?

And how do they connect with specificity and decision making?

Back in August of 2022 my best friend and I were in France. We had a few days to explore before meeting up with her family in the scenic south of France countryside for a little vacation. We were in Montpellier, and had excitement filled in our bones. I had already had experiences using tinder while traveling and or on vacation, with some positive experiences, so I suggested to my friend that we make a joint profile indicating that we are purely platonic friends looking for people to take us out on adventures and to pay for us in exchange for good conversation and company, that's it. After a few edits on our profile, we were ready.

We started matching with lots of people, and later that night we had scheduled to meet up with a young french guy to watch the sunset and have a little picnic. I remember us nervously waiting for him at this gorgeous fountain at the center of town, already scheming the ways we would get out of the date if he was boring or problematic. He showed up and immeditately we went to the store and filled up the cart with wine, cheese, crackers, meats, all the good essential stuff you want to indugle in during a sunset picnic.... He paid of course as that was the specific arrangement we were looking for. We then headed to this sunset spot, Royale du Peyrou that overlooked the city, filled with lots of other folks enjoying the hues of orange and yellow in the nighy sky. I don't remember much of what we talked about, only that we laughed a lot, and that he spoke really good english. It was an enjoyable night, as the hours went by, we ate and drank, and drank some more before bidding him farewell. It ended up being a funny night, and showed us that we could ask for what we wanted!

Fast forward 12 hours, we wake up very hungover, and needing to get to this tiny little town where my friends family was already waiting for our arrival. We didn't have a clear plan, and only knew that our heads hurt, the sun was too bright, and we needed to check out of our airbnb. So we started packing in the heat, and I had an idea... I asked my friend if we should match with someone else, so that we would have an activity to do until we had to make our way to the other town. We were at that point at a cafe with all of our bags, sweating our asses off, brains not fully functioning. We somehow agreed to meet up with another guy, about a 30 min train ride away as he planned for us to have a river picnic and water sounded like the only solution to this hangover... So there we were on the train, going to meet up with a random man at 10 am with ALL of our personal belongings...

At the train station we saw him in his car, there he was all ready. We got into his car and quickly realized he spoke very little english, and we spoke absolutely no french, other than my confidence in using google translate, our conversations were very hard to understand. We soon discovered that he spoke a bit of spanish so that was the main way we communicated that whole day... Lots of awkward laughter later, we arrived at this beautiful river called L'Hérault, and truly the water felt like silk on my skin. It immediately cured us of our hangover. At that point we were a little closer to our destination, but still needed a way to get to our next spot, and he offered to take us all the way to our friends home. It was absolutely perfect... And explaining to my friends aunt as she saw this man unloading our bags in the driveway how we managed to arrive to their home was hilarious.

Fast forward a few days, after having had a very wholesome time in this small town, we embarked for the big city of Paris!! We knew we wanted to have one last experience as we were in THE paris after all. So we went back onto tinder and made plans to meet up with a man at a brewery nearby. I remember beginning to talk with him and then once the bill came he paid for only his beers... My friend and I looked at eachother like, did he not read our bio? We cleary did not come to this brewery to drink beer and pay for it ourselves sir.... But we paid and were about to go on our way when he started talking about the catacombs and that he is a huge nerd for going down the underground tunnels with his community, and memorizing the routes. The catacombs are an underground ossuary 65 feet below the ground, holding the remains of approx over 6 million people... These underground passageways are connected through a very complex web of turns, larger rooms, and even whole areas full of so much water you need to swim..... Now you may be thinking why the fuck would you go underground with a man you just met in a foreign country? Well, for one intuition, for second it was something that we knew we would do only once in our lives, and three well, because we wanted to. To read more about the history of the catacombs, check out this article that gives really detailed information on what they were used for. There is a small section of the catacombs that you can visit in a guided official tour, but many people have found other entrances, and have created a subculture community who make it their goal to try to explore as much as the catacombs as possible and make several visits per week. The guy we went with was one of those people, who had been in the catacombs more than 20 times, and had this small map on his phone with the names of the "streets" and different "rooms".

I remember being underground and feeling so cold, and being able to hear myself breathe. I had never been up until that point in a space that was THIS quiet. I can't quite describe it even to this day how quiet it was down there. I think we had spent about maybe 6-7 hours down there and then my friend and I were ready to see some light and fresh air. Apparently a 6-7 hour journey through the tunnels is pretty short and for beginners, but after resurfacing onto the streets of paris at like 5 am, we were ready for bed and to hear some noise..... We went on the bus with this guy, our our way back to our airbnb to have some much needed rest, and never talked to him again.

heres a picture of me with some bones. boots drenched in water.

We woke up feeling so amazed, almost feeling like what we had just done was all a dream... But it wasn't and it was truly a crazy experience.

I've had other experiences that are far less scary and filled with less human remains, but that have also been transformational in the ways that I ask for what I want.

A year later I was on a solo trip to Uruguay, and was in the city of Montevideo. When I travel I really like being social, I love talking to the people around, striking up conversation, and seeing what the people from the region I am in do, what they think, where they go etc. I don't mind going to a museum or two, but really going to the sites and tours when I travel is not what I seek to do.

After going to the theatre and watching a show I had planned to meet up with a cutie for a date at the park. We met at this park and then decided to go to a bar to talk and get to know one another. It was so cute to hear about her life and to explore her neighborhood a bit. Me with my tiny bladder had to pee so bad as we were walking around that we decided to go to her place that was nearby. During our entire date I was nervous as we were only talking in spanish, and I wasn't too confident in my abilities to flirt and really be myself while speaking Spanish, but I kept trying, and the energy was flowing. Eventually on her porch I leaned in for a kiss, and we proceeded to have a very sex night, my last night in Uruguay before going to Argentina to end my travels. We smushed into her twin bed, intertwining limbs and bodies, squished together in the best ways. In that date I learned that language is not always a barrier to connection, and that sexy times are possible even when you are not 100% confident in what you are saying..

Title: Voiceless Signal Painting. Art by: Adekunle Gafar

Communication in sex is extremely important, sometimes even more important than the actual act of the bodies having sex... In relationships, whether that's romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, being able to have conversations is something that is essential in the creation of being understood and understanding. I used to think that being specific limited my options, and that by choosing I was narrowing what was possible for me. And while, choosing something can mean not having access to the options you didn't choose, it does not mean that you have less options, only more options for what you are looking for. Specificity is not a bad thing....

In a study done in 2022, researchers analyzed the associations between sexual communication and both relationship and sexual satisfaction. This meta analysis reviewed 93 different studies to examine this association and found a positive connection for sexual communication in couples sexual and relational well-being.

In another study conducted in 2018, 142 couples were analyzed in order to show how sexual communication influences sexual and relationship satisfaction, in addition to orgasm frequency. Their findings also revealed that greater amounts of sexual communication were associated with higher rates of orgasms and greater relationship and sexual satisfaction.

Now the tinder dates that I went on with my friend in the summer of 2022, were not sexual, no sex was had, but what we did learn was that we could ask for what we wanted without shame. There is an energy exchange that is happening when you spend time talking with someone, or just being around someone, and often times it can be easy to get swept up in what the other person wants, what the other person needs, and what they would like, instead of tuning in to what we would want. This applies to sexual situations with your sexy boos but it can also apply to every day decisions and choices with friends, with family, and when you are by yourself....

I always tell people, if you have a hard time asking for what you want, and telling people what you like outside of the bedroom and in sexual situations, it makes sense that when you are in the heat of the moment with someone, or even in your own masturbation practices, that you would freeze up and not know what you want or could want.

In a society that constantly tells us what we SHOULD want, and how we SHOULD use our bodies based on what genitals we have or what we look like, it is genuinely a real challenge to make decisions that are ours, that feel embodied and that feel good, but it is so necessary as a way to take ownership for ourselves, and the joys and pains that we carry.

While tinder has also shown me the ugly side of human connection, it has also been a joyful place for my budding sexuality as a young teen, and a space for connection through my travels, as a way to try on different roles, and as a way to ask for all the specific things I wanted and to relish in the receiving..

What decision did you make today that was for YOU?