Lessons from the Tinder King

Turns out you can have too many matches on Tinder.

I actually dealt with this problem a few years ago *dusts shoulders and looks off into distance*

My friends dubbed me the ‘Tinder King’.

And I’ll be honest - I wore that crown with pure, unadulterated pride.

Throwing back to my single days (which oddly enough stretched from birth until I started dating my now wife at 22), every so often my friends and I would run through this short dialogue:

“We should go on an interstate trip this weekend and meet new people.”

“Even though we don’t even talk to new people here?”

“Yeah, we just need to expand our territory, y’know… see what’s out there.”

“True. How much are flights?”

A few days later, me and a few friends were jam-packed window, middle and aisle on a red-eye from Perth to Melbourne.

But NOT SO FAST. There’s no such thing as a last-minute flight for an interstate adventure without rebooting your old dating apps on the last lick of wi-fi before your plane leaves the tarmac.

So I whacked up a Tinder profile with my best six catfish pics, set my location to Melbourne, and started swiping like my life was riding on it.

My friends did the same.

Then the plane took off.

And we waited.

A few hours of patchy sleep later, the sound of a gentle ping on my phone roused me. We were approaching landing and I’d caught a whiff of internet connection.

Tinder. You have 4 new likes.

BINGO BABY.

I jostled my friends violently to wake them up and bask in my glory, before asking them to check theirs.

And you better believe I’ll never forget what I heard next. The sweet, sweet chorus of my friends in unison,

“Nah, we’ve got no matches.”

And so, the Tinder King was born.

The trip was a whirlwind, with everything from three-man rides on a single e-scooter to eating sushi outside a train station at 2am. To top it all off, sitting on the plane home, I’d racked up a whopping 36 matches inside 72 hours.

There was just oneeeee problem:

I did not meet a single person. Not one. Not even a real one on the street just casually. Not even one of those awkward eye contact encounters on the tram. Nothing.

I literally just rode e-scooters around Melbourne for three days with my friends. 

It turns out (thankfully for my future wife) too many matches were a problem for me. And here’s why:

I was a socially anxious nerd I was the victim of a choice paradox.

Too many chats to stay on top of with too many possibilities, all whilst I had one hell of a time on an e-scooter. Days passed, I pursued none of them, and then I went back to my sad single life in Perth, dreaming of another interstate trip.

If that’s not a piece-for-piece replica of how we treat our mental training, I’m not sure what is.

There are an infinite number of ways to trim the mental fat (my new phrase to jab at indulging in ‘self-care’) - meditation, exercise, ice baths, walks, journalling, family time - the list goes on (albeit with varying levels of effectiveness).

But dilly-dallying over which one(s) to lock in on will leave your two feet exactly where they are right now - wasting your days going to work, eating ice cream, and doom-scrolling until dark.

If it were me, I’d pick one or two things to go all in on for the last few months of the year, and see how they go at tackling some of that stubborn mental fat.

But hey, since you’re not me, maybe you need my advice - so shoot me an email with your questions on what to go all in on, and I’ll shoot you a reply!