Love, Actually (Loading...)

She deleted it. She downloaded it. She has notes.

Someone, and I imagine him to be twenty-seven, in a hoodie, subsisting entirely on energy drinks, decided that the solution to human loneliness was an algorithm. You upload a photo from that one good day three years ago, write something breezy about loving “good food and good conversations” (we all love good food and good conversations, that is not a personality), and then you wait. For love. On your phone. While also watching Netflix. Multitasking your way to a soulmate.

I have been on not one or two but several different apps over the last year or so. And it is always, without fail, the same story. During a particular moment of loneliness, I download a dating app, create my profile, upload the most reasonable photo I have, and start scrolling through possible matches with the cautious optimism of someone who absolutely knows better. I give it a real shot. I do. Two weeks, sometimes a little more. And then, without exception, my patience runs out before my hope does, I delete my profile, exhale deeply, and arrive at the same conclusion every single time: it is genuinely better to be single and living exactly the life I want than to keep auditioning strangers for a role they have no idea how to play.

And then a few months pass. And I download it again.

Here is what nobody tells you about dating in your 40s: you are simultaneously too much and not enough for everyone on these apps. You are too independent. Too busy. Too settled in your life, your routines, your deeply non-negotiable workout schedule. You have a whole child, a full-time job, a social life that does not require a man to activate it, and opinions, god forbid, about things. This, it turns out, is deeply inconvenient for a significant portion of the dating pool.

And the pool. Oh, the pool. I should mention that I live in Utah, a genuinely beautiful state populated by lovely people, most of whom are Mormon, which also means they are not looking to date outside their faith. And that means the non-Mormon dating pool is not large. Add in the fact that Utah’s diversity could charitably be described as “a work in progress,” and what you are left with is a rotating cast of, I want to say, seven men. Maybe eight on a good week. I have started to recognize profiles the way you recognize your neighbors: wearily, without surprise.

So. A year in. Here is my field report, filed with affection for the process, contempt for the execution, and a very specific kind of exhausted hilarity that I believe only single women in their 40s fully understand.

Chapter 1: Six Days and a Shipping Container

His profile picture was the kind of handsome that should have been my first clue. Chiseled. Soft-eyed. The kind of man who appears to casually own a boat. His profile said he was from Karnataka. Engineer. Widower. Single dad. Living abroad for work. The full sympathy starter pack, efficiently assembled.

He was charming in that specific way that feels like charm translated through three languages and back: slightly too smooth, slightly too eager to establish trust. He said all the right things. He wanted to do a call to confirm I was a real person. Sweet, I thought. Reasonable, even.

Around day two, I noticed something. His profile said Karnataka. But in conversation, he casually mentioned Punjab. So I asked lightly, the way you ask when you already know the answer. His explanation? A friend had created his profile. The friend had apparently gotten the entire state wrong. He was actually from Punjab. He was a widower. He did construction. He had a son. Everything was fine.

I filed that information away.

Day six. He messaged saying his day had been very stressful. I am, at heart, a warm person, so I asked what had happened. He told me in great detail. Equipment. Shipping port. Delays. Money was needed to release the delivery. A full, textured crisis, narrated with impressive specificity. I was sympathetic. I told him he would figure something out. I meant it.

And then he asked me for money.

I told him I did not have that kind of money, which is also the polite version of what I was thinking. He was still trying to convince me to loan him funds when I blocked him on WhatsApp, reported his profile, wished his fictional friend better geographical knowledge, and moved on without another word. Six days. A shipping container, a missing state, and a loan request. The audacity was almost impressive. Almost.

Chapter 2: The younger men, bless their hearts

A surprising number of younger men find me on these apps. And before I can even process the flattery, they clarify their position with great urgency: age does not matter to them. They say this like it is a gift. Like they have decided, very generously, to overlook the fact that I have lived a whole life, built a whole career, raised a whole human, and still show up to the gym every morning, and all they need in return is to make sure I know exactly what they are interested in. Spoiler: it is not my book recommendations.

The opener is usually something passably normal. “Hey, how are you?” Fine. And then, with the grace and subtlety of a freight train, the conversation takes a turn. Message three or four, and we have somehow arrived at questions about what I like, what I am open to, what I look like without, and I cannot stress this enough, having exchanged last names yet. Some of them do not even get to message three. Some of them lead with it. One man’s opening message was so specific in its request that I had to put my phone down and stare at the ceiling for a moment.

What I find most remarkable is the confidence. The complete, unshakeable belief that this approach, to a woman they have known for approximately eleven minutes, is not only acceptable but welcome. That I, a grown woman with a full life and a teenager and a morning workout routine, logged onto this app hoping someone would ask me something deeply inappropriate before asking me my last name.

I work out for myself, boys. I always have. Blocked.

Chapter 3: The date that went well, until it didn’t (very quickly)

This one I am still laughing about, so I need you to appreciate the comedy with me.

We met in person. I thought it went well, genuinely well. Good conversation, comfortable energy, the kind of date that makes you think, okay, maybe this app isn’t entirely a crime against humanity. We made plans to meet again, but after two weeks. It was Navratri season, full of Golu invites and Garba nights, something my daughter and I never miss. My people, my community, joy that cannot be rescheduled. Plus, prior commitments that were not moving for anyone. I told him warmly, honestly: I cannot meet for the next two weeks, but I am looking forward to it.

He said he understood.

Two days later, he was furious. He had seen, presumably through my social media, that I was having the audacity to be happy: dancing, laughing, spending time with my friends during a festival I love, while being unavailable to him, a man I had been on exactly one date with. He said, with the full confidence of someone who had misread every signal: “You don’t need a relationship.”

I looked at that message for exactly three seconds.

“You’re right,” I said. And blocked him.

He then contacted me from two different phone numbers. Left messages. I ignored every single one and thanked whatever divine force was watching over me that I had not wasted a second date on this man. One date. He wanted priority over my friends after one date. I do not even give that up for myself.

Chapter 4: The slow fade (a ghost story for adults)

This one does not arrive loudly. That is what makes it so insidious.

It starts well. Really well. A few days of good conversation that turns into a week of great conversation. You are talking about real things, not “what do you do for fun” small talk, but the kind of exchange where you finish typing and think, huh, I haven’t said that out loud to anyone before. The messages come quickly. Sometimes you are both online at the same time, and it moves like a real conversation. You start to think that maybe there is something here.

And then, subtly, slowly, so gradually that you almost do not notice, it starts to cool. His replies take a little longer. A few hours become half a day. The messages get shorter. Where there used to be a question at the end, something that showed he was actually curious about you, now there is just a statement. A one-liner. Something that requires nothing back. You tell yourself he is busy. You are busy too. This is fine. Adults are busy.

Then the days between messages stretch. You notice you are always the one initiating. So you stop, just as an experiment, just to see. And the silence that follows answers your question completely.

No fight. No explanation. No “hey, I’ve met someone” or “I don’t think this is going anywhere.” Not even the basic dignity of a proper ending. Just evaporation. You are left holding the conversation like a receipt for something you paid for and never received. The worst part is not the loss. It is that there is nothing to be properly angry about. You cannot mourn something that was never named. So you quietly file it away and try not to think about it.

The soft delete. It is cowardly, it is extremely common, and honestly, it should be a punishable offence. But here we are.

Chapter 5: The almost, and the wall you didn’t see coming

And then, rare as a good parking spot at a Navratri venue, you find one who seems genuinely real. Intelligent. Interesting. Warm, even. The chemistry is there from the beginning: easy, unforced, the kind you cannot manufacture. Conversation flows like you have known each other for years. There is laughter. There is depth. There is the particular intimacy of someone who asks good questions and actually listens to the answers. You think, quietly, carefully, because you have been here before, okay. Maybe.

And for a while, it is. It actually is. You are learning about each other. The connection feels real and mutual and safe, a rare word. You let your guard down, which, for a woman who has rebuilt herself from scratch, is not a small thing. It is, in fact, a very large thing that you do not do lightly.

And then you hit the wall.

Sometimes the wall is ego. You have an opinion, a strong one, an informed one, the kind of opinion that comes from a woman who has done the work and knows her own mind, and suddenly the energy shifts. He gets quiet in a way that is not thoughtful; it is pointed. Or he dismisses it, just slightly, just enough that you feel it. You realize, with a slow and familiar sinking, that your confidence is not something he finds attractive. It is something he finds threatening. You are, in the language of men who cannot keep up with you, too much.

Now. I want to talk specifically about Telugu men of my generation, because this is where it gets personal, and because I say this with a very particular kind of love: the love of someone who grew up inside this world, who understands every unspoken rule of it, and who is therefore not confused when it shows up on a dating app at forty-something wearing a nice shirt.

Telugu men, the ones I have encountered on these apps, often arrive carrying a very specific set of contradictions. They want a modern woman, they say. Independent. Educated. Accomplished. And they mean it, genuinely, right up until the moment that a woman’s independence inconveniences them. Right up until she has a strong opinion about something, or a schedule that does not accommodate spontaneity, or feelings that require more than a redirect and a subject change. The contradiction is not meanness. It is conditioning. These men were raised in homes where Amma did everything and never complained, where a woman’s competence was expected but her ambition was decorative, where the highest compliment you could receive was “she manages everything so well,” and the subtext was always without making a fuss about it.

I know these homes. I grew up adjacent to them. I understand how a boy raised inside one turns into a man who wants a partner but cannot quite stop expecting a supporting role.

But here is the thing: it is not only Telugu men. It is Indian men of my generation, broadly, across state lines and mother tongues, and the particular flavor of guilt each regional culture has perfected. The Bengali intellectual who intellectualizes your emotions until they dissolve. The Punjabi man who is extraordinarily generous right up until you stop being grateful enough. The Tamilian, who has been called very responsible his whole life and has no idea what to do with a woman who does not need to be taken care of, only to be met. The patterns shift by geography, but the architecture is the same: feelings were managed, not expressed; ambition in a woman was tolerated, not celebrated; and stoicism was dressed up as strength for so long that nobody noticed it was actually just avoidance wearing a nicer kurta.

They did not choose these lessons. But they absorbed them. And absorbed lessons have a way of surfacing exactly when you need them, not to.

I do not think these men are villains. I have spent enough time inside this dynamic to know that most of them are genuinely trying. But trying is not the same as arriving. And I have lived enough of my life waiting for someone to arrive that I cannot afford to spend any more of it there.

So. Is any of this worth it?

I genuinely do not know. And for once in my life, I am sitting with the not-knowing instead of immediately solving it.

What I do know is this. I have a full life. A teenager who needs me and drives me crazy and is wonderful all at once. A job I show up for every day. A body I take care of. Friends who actually see me. I did not wait for anyone to hand me this life. I built it, piece by piece, on my own terms.

If someone is going to enter it, they need to be worth the disruption. They need to show up for the mess, the loud, and the opinionated woman who is absolutely not cancelling hanging out with her friends for a first date. They need to hear my feelings without flinching and stay when staying requires something of them.

Is that too much to ask? Some days, the app tells me yes. Some days, I almost believe it. Most days, I put my phone down, go work out, call my friends, and remember exactly who I am outside this little rectangle of hope and disappointment.

And that woman? She is doing just fine.