How We Met Through Tinder: One Year Anniversary

In the spring of 2013 my friends showed me the app Tinder. Mostly we would all look through our Tinder accounts when we were all just sitting around together, waiting for something or were just chatting. Nobody really took it seriously because it was more for social validation and fun than for meeting somebody. Most of us were going on dates and hanging out with members of the opposite sex already and it wasn’t our only hope for meeting new people. Often it would result in us just trolling the people who matched with us and making jokes of it.

May rolled around and I was traveling cross country from Utah to Georgia to work for the summer. I would occasionally look through my matches while I wasn’t driving because it was interesting to see what kind of people you match with in different areas. While nearing Nebraska I remembered I had gotten a match with a girl from Utah that knew some of my friends, that I hadn’t messaged yet. If you have ever driven through Nebraska you know that you need to something to do during the ride or you’ll die of boredom, she would become the treatment for my boredom in Nebraska. I looked again through her pictures and thought that she really was good looking so I messaged her. I immediately noted from our first few correspondences how quick witted and feisty she was. I was hooked, so to validate our progressing banter i asked for her phone number. (I told her I was driving through an area with bad network connection and it would be easier if I had her number. I lied.)

We messaged back and forth for the rest of my trip to Georgia and in the course of the drive I explained where I was going and what I was doing. She was obviously frustrated that I would be in Georgia for the next 4 months. We kept texting though, and every night we would stay up late and message back and forth. This lasted for about two weeks. One night she demanded that the next night I call her instead. I was of course nervous, but conceeded as I had nothing to hide. Our first phone call lasted a little over 4 hours. I couldn’t tell you a single thing that we talked about but it was mutually enjoyable. It became a nightly routine that I would call her when I got home from work. My work hours at the time were 9am-4pm. I would get home usually around 5:30 and we would talk from 6 till the early hours of the next day. We began Skyping after a about a week of phone calls.

I began to be more and more attached to her and the Skyping sessions and phone calls began to get longer and longer.  It became clear that neither one of us wanted to see anyone else and we decided to become exclusive. The whole thing was perfect except that we had never seen each other in person. This was an awkward thing to explain to friends and family that I had a new girlfriend, and no I had never even seen or met her in person. Things continued to progress and we began to talk more and more about how awful it was that we wouldn’t be able to see each other for a couple more months. I boldly decided that I would fly her out to stay to come see me for the week of July 24-31. We talked it over and she decided that she was comfortable coming out to visit. Naturally, her parents were thrilled at the prospect of their daughter flying across the country to spend a week with a guy she had never met. Lauryn has always been stubborn and independent, so once she had decided she was coming out, that was that.

We were both nervous of course. Imagine, I had spent hundreds of dollars to fly this girl out and what if after the first day I was like, nope, can’t, she’s awful. I would be stuck and it would be a terrible week. Also, what was she going to do the whole time? I mean, I had Sunday off, but I would be working the whole time and what would she do while I was at work? Just sit around my apartment and watch Netflix? I could only imagine her worries as well, what if I wasn’t a gentleman? What if i was gross or smelled weird? I remember she specifically asked me before she came out if i had bad breath. I had never been told that I did before but I made sure to have mouth wash, a new tooth brush and plenty of gum ready for July 24-July 31 2013.

When she arrived I went to pick her up in one of the company cars. Adding to the stress of meeting my girlfriend for the first time was the stress of navigating the Atlanta Airport for the first time. I am chronically directionally challenged and my knowledge of airports was limited to the Salt Lake City Airport at the time. I finally made it to her terminal and collected her. I recognized her instantly, and she was just as pretty in real life as she had been on Skype fortunately! I gave her the flowers I had brought and took her luggage for her. The first couple minutes together were actually kind of awkward. I mean, we knew each other, but we didn’t know each other. Hundreds of hours of phone calls and Skyping equate only marginally to real life relationships. After an awkward moment or two we started to feel more comfortable as we drove back my apartment where she would be staying for the week. It was a less than ideal scenario, because I had just picked up my girlfriend from the airport and I wanted to spend time with her and I wanted to talk about everything, but all I could do was drop her off at my apartment and head off to work. We got her stuff in the door and I showed her where everything was.

As I headed toward the door telling her that I would look forward to seeing her right after work she gave me a look that I am now very familiar with. The look of:  you are forgetting something, you better know what it is. The tension was palpable, our first kiss. We had talked about it quite a few times. Adding the physical relationship into the already stable mental and social relationship came as naturally as had the phone calls. We made out for a bit and we decided that I really should go so my boss would stop texting me.

Later that night we got off on the right foot, we had a nice dinner and enjoyed ourselves. The week continued on this course and overall we had an excellent week together. The only hang up was one that already existed. She had had a boyfriend of a year that had left for a two year LDS mission six months prior to our meeting. This created some tough decisions to make for her because she still had limited contact with him but of course their relationship was different than ours was. She would have to decided what to do, if she would stay with me or bet on him.

After my return to Utah at the End of the Summer things coasted into normal. We went on dates. We hung out, went to parties. I met her friends, her parents and family. As December drew near we both new that we wanted to get Married. We were engaged on February 17 2014 and married May 8 2014.