A Real Story

I matched with Tiago on an app that specifically markets itself for people willing to date across borders — the whole pitch is ‘don’t limit yourself to a 25-mile radius.’ He was in Lisbon, I was in Columbus, and for three months we did the thing where you fall asleep on FaceTime because it’s 1am for you and 6am for him and neither of you wants to hang up first. He sent me voice memos of the ocean. I sent him pictures of Ohio snow, which he thought was hilarious and sad at the same time.

I used my tax refund on a ten-day trip that April. He met me at the airport with a sign that just said my name misspelled, which felt more real than anything a filtered profile photo ever could. The first three days were genuinely great — he showed me a bakery near his apartment, we argued about how Americans put ice in everything, I met his mother who fed me until I couldn’t move. But by day seven I noticed he got quiet whenever I mentioned going home, and I realized neither of us had actually talked about what happened after the trip. We’d spent three months talking every day and somehow never discussed visas, jobs, or who was supposed to move.

We didn’t blow up dramatically. It just sort of dissolved on the flight home, the way a text conversation goes from daily to weekly to nothing. What I took from it is that the app is good at connecting you across an ocean but terrible at forcing the practical conversation — the one about logistics, not chemistry. Now if I match with someone abroad, I ask about the boring stuff in week two, not month three. Chemistry is cheap when you’re both on your best behavior over video; the real test is whether either of you has a plan.