I Met My Husband On Tinder And We Are Happily Married

October 7th, 2012: You have successfully joined Tinder.

Growing up I always fantasized about how I would meet my future husband. With our generation, our parents always have such romantic stories about how they met. For instance, my mom worked at a hardware store that my dad was a customer at. They spent months secretly pining after each other until finally my dad asked her on a date. Never in a million years did I imagine I’d be telling this story. I met my husband on Tinder. Yes, you read that right. Tinder. Even I had a hard time coming to terms with that for a little while. For the first several months of our relationship, I only ever gave a very vague answer regarding how we met. I finally fessed up to my mom how we had really met, and honestly it was liberating. Yes, we met on Tinder, but no, I am not embarrassed about it. (Anymore.)

You would think at this point people wouldn’t think it’s so out there that yes, you can in fact find decent people online. Personally, I find the quality of people you meet in a bar just isn’t there. When I would go out (which wasn’t often with my super busy life as a law student), I never tried to meet anyone because it almost ALWAYS ended up a ghosting situation. Either that or they just wanted a one night stand, which is perfectly fine, but obviously won’t lead to a relationship, much less marriage. I had dated enough assholes in my life, I didn’t any more experience with that.

October 11th, 2012: You have a new match.

I joined Tinder shortly after it was released on the app store. I thought “why the hell not, it’s not like I’m having much luck when I manage to make it out.” I spent a couple of months matching with people and periodically going out on dates. It sucked. I would match with a ton of people, only to exchange a message or two before one of us stopped replying. When someone did reply for longer than five minutes, it usually ended with them asking for nudes. Sorry, I already have enough thirsty guys on my Snapchat. (PSA when you join Tinder, join knowing that you will get a lot of weird messages, sometimes bordering on stalkerish. It comes with the territory.) So fast forward about eight dates and endless amounts of matches later and I was pretty done with Tinder. I probably had too high of standards at that point. I was super picky and it was super easy for me to find a reason not to continue with a guy.

October 11th, 2012: You have a new message.

Then I matched with Reid. Obviously I didn’t know I would end up marrying him at the time. Plenty of guys will start a genuine conversation with a (somewhat) normal opener. Honestly, when Reid first messaged me, it wasn’t anything special. Just a simple “Hey!” Which I responded to with “Hey you!” I know, so clever. Clearly it worked (and to think I had been about to delete you, Tinder!) What really drew me to Reid was his bio. He had stated right there that he wasn’t looking for a hookup, but rather for something “with substance.” He wasn’t in your face I want a relationship, but it was clear he wasn’t on there for a one night stand either. I wasn’t necessarily banking on finding my next boyfriend on Tinder, but I was on there for a reason, wasn’t I?

Reid and I chatted for about two days and I learned he was home for spring break for two weeks (I happened to catch him on his first night back in town.) He also happened to live in the town right next to mine, what are the odds? I also learned that he had gone to the same undergrad college that I had just recently graduated from. Seriously, could this be any more of a coincidence? I think not. I’m not sure whose idea it was to meet up for a movie, I think we just kind of simultaneously decided it was a good idea as we both had wanted to see a movie that was still in theaters.

Most of the time, when guys did ask me out on Tinder, I always said no. For some reason, this time I wasn’t too nervous leading up to it and I didn’t try to ditch at the last second.

October 13th, 2012: First date.

I met Reid at a bar near a movie theater that was close to our home towns. We had decided on a 9:30 movie, so we met up around 8:15 for a drink. I remember sitting at the bar, nervously scrolling through my phone to look busy, as I had gotten there a few minutes early. Thankfully I recognized Reid the instant he walked in (we all know this could easily have been a horrible episode of Catfish.) As he walked over to me, all I could think was “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. What am I doing?! I’ve made a terrible mistake!” As I got up to give him a hug, all I could think about were ways to cut this date short.

Fast forward an hour, neither of us wanted to leave for the movie yet. Thankfully there was a later showing, so we stayed for another drink and chatted away another hour. It was so easy. By the time we got to the movie, we still had so much to talk about we didn’t pay attention to a minute of it. Lucky for us, there wasn’t anyone else in the theater. After the movie was over, he walked me to my car and kissed me goodnight. I’m not really someone to gush over a guy, but damn, that was some kiss. Since we lived in neighboring towns, we took the same way home, but I was so flustered by that kiss, I took the wrong turn right in front of him. It’s something we look back at and laugh about now, but at the time I was so embarrassed. I figured he must think I’m an idiot, I don’t even know how to get home!

October 16th, 2012: Second date.

Reid asked me on a second date the same night as our first one. I got home to a text from him telling me how much fun he had and that he wanted to go out again. At this point, I was hopefully optimistic, but in the back of my mind I still had my reservations about him. I met him on Tinder, after all. But I said yes, and three days later we met up for another drink. This time we didn’t have a movie to catch, so we had all the time to chat. And chat we did. We closed the bar down that night, and even sat in his car for another hour afterwards to continue talking.

We continued to go on dates for the two weeks that he was home. By our third date, we were texting fairly consistently throughout the days. On one of our last dates, Reid brought up the fact that he was going back to New Jersey for his second semester of school. It was his last semester before he graduated, so he would home for good after that. He started asking me how I felt about long distance relationships, and as much as I liked this guy, I really wasn’t sure I wanted to get into that with someone I had known for two weeks. But I also couldn’t deny how well we got along. Seriously, he’s basically a male version of me… and he knows it.

We decided we would continue to talk while he was back at school and see how things went. As close as we had gotten when he was home, we got even closer after he left for school again. We ended up skyping several times a week and decided early on that neither of us wanted to date anyone else. This was not a fall in love at first sight relationship though. I had reservations for a while before I finally let myself fall completely into it. He seemed too perfect to be true. I kept waiting for the other foot to drop, but when he came home for spring break, and that other foot had yet to drop, I was in this.

October 9th, 2017: Just married!

Fast forward four years and we are now happily married. It’s become a thing that we met on Tinder. Out of all of our friends, none of them have met their significant others on that app, so everyone makes sure to bring it up fairly often. Our save the dates may or may not have been a Tinder match spoof. (I kind of love it.)

I was never one to believe in fate. Hell, I didn’t even know if I believed in love. But if one thing’s for certain, I have come to believe that there is someone out there that will compliment you perfectly. Unless you’re one of the few lucky ones to meet that person early on, you’ll have to go through MANY duds before you finally meet that one that makes everything fall into place.