A Real Story

After my divorce finalized, I downloaded Pure because a coworker swore by it for ‘no drama, no dinner, no small talk about your childhood.’ I put in my profile that I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and for three months that was true. There was the guy — wait, sorry, I’m a straight woman, let me back up — there was the accountant who left his inhaler on my nightstand and texted me at 2 a.m. asking if he could swing by for it, which felt like the most 2023 breakup I’d ever had without ever dating anyone. There was another one who brought his own Tupperware of leftover pad thai because he ‘didn’t want to waste it,’ ate it on my couch, and left forty minutes later.

I got good at the script: match, small talk for maybe a day, meet, and by the third message after the fact I’d usually block them so my brain wouldn’t spiral into ‘but what if.’ It worked exactly like it was supposed to. Then I matched with a guy who, instead of the usual opening line, sent a voice memo of him badly singing along to a song on his radio because his profile said he couldn’t type while driving. We hooked up twice. The third time he stayed for coffee the next morning and asked what my sister’s wedding was like, because I’d mentioned it in passing weeks before and he remembered.

I panicked and didn’t message him for eleven days. When he texted ‘no pressure, just wondering if you’re okay,’ I realized I’d been the one breaking my own rule the whole time — I just hadn’t noticed because I was so busy protecting myself from the version of getting hurt I already knew. We’re not a couple. I genuinely don’t know what we are. But I deleted the app, and that felt like more of an answer than anything he said.