A Real Story

I got on Pure after my divorce because I wanted the opposite of everything I’d just been through — no anniversaries, no meeting parents, no ‘where is this going’ conversations at 11pm. The profiles disappear after 24 hours, which felt honest in a way regular apps aren’t. You say what you want, someone matches the energy or they don’t, and the whole thing resets tomorrow. I liked that. For the first month it worked exactly as advertised: a guy named on his profile only as ‘M, 34, gym at 6am’ and I got tacos twice and never once discussed our jobs.

Then there was Danny. He messaged asking if I wanted to split a pizza before anything else happened, which broke my own rule about not learning names or ordering food first, and I said yes because I was hungry and it seemed low stakes. We ate at a place called Two Guys off Route 9, and he told me about his dog’s ACL surgery bill in a way that was oddly specific and funny, and I laughed so hard I choked on a breadstick. We kept ‘casually’ seeing each other for six weeks, always through the app so neither of us had to admit we were choosing this on purpose.

It ended the way these things do when you’re both lying to the interface instead of each other — his profile expired one Tuesday and he just never renewed it, no message, nothing. I checked for him for about two weeks before I admitted he wasn’t coming back around. What I actually learned wasn’t about the app; Pure does exactly what it says. It’s that I’m apparently incapable of keeping something purely casual once someone remembers my order at a pizza place. Good to know before I try again.