A Real Story

I’d answered something like 380 of OkCupid’s questions over a rainy weekend in 2019, mostly out of boredom, including the ones about whether I believe in ghosts and whether I’d date someone with a kid from a previous marriage. So when the app told me a guy named with the username involving a Radiohead lyric was a 97% match, I actually read his profile instead of scrolling past. What got me wasn’t his photos, it was that he’d answered the question about splitting the bill on a first date with ‘I offer, but I’m quietly relieved if she offers back’ — same exact answer I’d picked, word for word. I messaged him about that one question before I said hi. We ended up meeting at a taco counter with three stools and no tables, and he ordered for both of us in bad Spanish because he’d lived in Oaxaca for a year, which was not mentioned anywhere in his profile. Four years later we split every bill down to the dollar out of habit, and I still think that stupid questionnaire knew us better than we knew ourselves. We’re married now, and yes, I’ve told this story at the wedding, and yes, people groaned.