I rattled off a few plans, noting my obvious windows of free time, should he want to meet up: “Dinner with friends on Friday night, relaxing on Saturday, a Baptism for a friend’s child on Sunday in the morning, but relaxing again in the afternoon. What are you up to?” His response arrived shortly: “Sounds fun! I hope you have a good weekend! I’m just relaxing all weekend.” Hmmm. Not quite the way I expected this conversation to go. We had met on a dating app, and after a few weeks of nearly daily texting, we still hadn’t met in person. I had hinted at my openness a few times—“oh, our offices are so close to each other. We’ll have to meet up sometime!” I’d write. That’s about as direct as my old-fashioned dating ways would allow me to be. “Yeah!” he’d exclaim, with absolutely no movement to making it happen. Yet, every single day, he found a reason to text me, and so our conversation would continue. According to his profile and through our texting, we discovered we shared a lot of values and aspirations for life. We had some similarities in our upbringings, including some cities we once called home before moving to our current city. But I’ve dated enough to know that those checklist details and a connection online are not a barometer for actual compatibility. The elusive spark we call chemistry can really only be determined by meeting in person and seeing if our personalities match, if we find each other actually attractive (instead of just objectively good looking via our profile photos), and so forth. The longer we texted, the more invested I felt, and yet I also could feel my growing resentment toward him and toward this whole modern dating approach. Here I was, spending time every day considering the right words, phrases, and timing of texts (you know you do it, too), when we could easily establish in one coffee date if this “relationship” is even worth either of our time.

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