I met my husband on Tinder.

The story of how an American & a Brit fell in love over the internet...

I met my husband on Tinder. I’m not sure if that’s more common nowadays, but in 2018 it was not. Ironically, I have two other close friends who met their husbands on Tinder as well. Normally when I tell people how we met, their jaws go slack and a look of shock creeps over their faces.

To tell you the full story, I must take you back to my ‘before’ story first. I dated someone from the age of 15, through high school and then college years. I was convinced we would end up together (ah, young love), but after school, our paths very clearly started going in different directions. I wanted marriage and to settle down, and he wanted to buckle down on his business life first. Neither of us wasn’t valid in what we wanted. He was (and still is, I’m sure) a great person, but we just weren’t great for each other anymore. And after almost 7 years together, we went our separate ways.

When I was ready to start dating (really for the first time) around six months later, I didn’t want to date locally. We live in a small town and everyone knows everyone, so I didn’t really want to make connections with people who probably dated a friend of mine or had a thing for someone I knew at some point in time. Besides, my parents took my sister and me all around the world when we were growing up so I felt like my view was more worldly because of it. By the time I graduated high school, we had been to 54 countries. I knew there were so many different kinds of people out there, and I wanted to explore that.

There was only one problem: I’m an introvert who doesn’t drink or go out. 

Sure, I like a good dinner at a fancy restaurant and I love to travel, but you wouldn’t find me hanging out at a bar with friends or out at a club probably ever. It’s never been my thing. 

Like the hopeful romantic I was, I imagined I must have a meet-cute at a bookshop or a yoga studio. My mother wasn’t so hopeful. She told me one day, “I’m just worried you’re going to end up an old maid.” 

Thanks, mom. 

After a couple of months of not having my meet-cute as I’d imagined (shocking, I know), I figured I needed to get creative with meeting someone. I thought, “I’ve played it safe all these years, and look at where that led me.” Maybe if I stepped out and did something different it would lead to a magical relationship, at least that’s what I hoped for. If anything, I’d have some good stories to tell.

A few months before, I had been in Amsterdam visiting my friend Maddie and decided to download a dating app. I talked to a couple of people and almost met up with this random guy for a drink before I freaked out and deleted the app altogether. I liked the idea of getting to know someone first before actually meeting them in person, but I got a few too many unwanted dick pics to actually believe meeting someone online would work. 

I went about life and kind of forgot about it for a while. I was never the kind of person who would date just to date and I didn’t want to waste my time (or the other person’s for that matter) if it wasn’t a right match. I decided that I would not force it, but rather encourage the right person to find me. This is where my woo comes in. I’m actually a very woo-woo person, and so I decided one day to write down exactly what I wanted and didn’t want in a person. I was going to manifest him, dang it. After some time spent thinking, I had a long list of things I’d like to find in said person: kind, funny, adventurous, etc., and a small but important list of non-negotiables (no drugs, please). I refined it until I felt like I had my ‘perfect person’ in paper form and then stuck that list under my pillow. I had two rules. One was that I had to be flexible on the kind of person even if they didn’t hit all my ‘I want’ points, but the person couldn’t have any of my non-negotiables or that just wouldn’t work. My second rule was that I had to be open to different ways of potentially meeting someone new. I would keep that list under my pillow for a few months, checking in on it every once in a while.

Before I knew it, October came along, and on a random rainy evening, I decided to re-download Tinder. But, I wasn’t going to just do this the “easy” way. Nope, not me. I was going to buy *Tinder Gold* (it makes me laugh even just typing this out). It was basically a silly upgrade on Tinder that meant you could search anywhere in the world rather than just your tiny perimeter. After a couple of searches in the US, I ventured into London, where I quickly found a bunch of pretentious businessmen who I had nothing in common with. I thought about a place I’d like to visit and immediately Edinburgh, Scotland came to mind. I typed it in and began swiping. Little did I know that my now-husband would be in a coach driving back from a football (soccer) game through Edinburgh bored and swiping on his birthday. October 21st, 2018. I remember his profile picture so vividly. My immediate thought was, “oh, he’s very sporty. We probably wouldn’t have anything in common.” But for some reason, I swiped anyway. It was probably (definitely) his cute looks. And then popped up, “you’re a match!”. 

A few minutes later, I got a message from said sporty man that read, “are you secretly a man who’s trying to kill me?” 

What in the world? I immediately responded by asking what he was talking about, then he explained that my fancy profile photo (taken on my big camera) and the fact that I was in Florida felt like he was being catfished. Fair point, my friend. After I worked to convince him that I was actually who I said I was, we chatted back and forth for a few hours until he got home to Newcastle, where he was from. As soon as he settled in with a cup of tea and toast (his staple diet at the time), he revealed to me that it was his birthday. “Now who’s not being honest,” I responded. He immediately texted his mom (bless her) asking her when his birthday was and sent me the screenshot that it was indeed today. How serendipitous, I thought to myself. We bonded over our shared love of film, Disney, and being homebodies. And he hit every point on my “I want” list. Remember the woo-woo one?

If it was possible to fall in love over only messaging someone, then that’s what I would describe as happening to me. 

A mere hours after we first swiped, we’d transitioned off of the app and onto WhatsApp, and Matt video-chatted me. It took a few tries before I answered, and our first call was all of 30 seconds long and just us laughing at each other and our different accents. But, after that, we talked for 3 hours. Matt spent the next week working all day, then staying up all night to talk to me because *time change* and then sleeping for an hour or two before heading back to work. We didn’t really know where it was going as we were on the other side of the world from each other. He didn’t have the money to fly to me, so two weeks into our continuous chatting I decided to be bold. This was brought on by my mother, ironically. I think she could tell how happy I was and she said, “why don’t you go visit him?” 

“That’s insane.” I immediately replied, but deep down it felt like maybe the kind of leap I was ready to take. I describe this whole period of time as an out-of-body experience because it was so unlike me. I was a rule-following, playing-it-safe, don’t take any chances, anxiety-ridden person, but something felt so settling and right about him, and that’s what made me feel like I didn’t need to worry at all. 

So, I booked a flight. I didn’t say anything and just sent over the ticket one night, and Matt was shocked. Excited, of course. But I don’t think he ever thought we’d actually meet in person, and that quickly too. Next, I told my dad and sister, and then my friends. By the time I’d left for England, I had at least 10 people tracking my phone. 

But I knew, deep down, that there was nothing to worry about.

I was going to meet my husband. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this little personal essay on how I first met Matt. It’s a sweet story and I love sharing it. The actual meeting is a whole other story in itself that I knew wouldn’t fit into this newsletter, so if you’d like to hear it let me know and I can write it up. If you got this far, thanks for coming along on this journey with us. It’s a special one.