On a random Tuesday night in April, loneliness paid a visit to Matthew. He’d been single for two years and was completely content with his bachelor life when he realized he missed having someone in his life, and going on a first date again didn’t seem too bad.
Twenty minutes later, he had downloaded Hinge and created a profile. As the left swipes kept piling up with zero on the right, his thumb suddenly stopped and hovered over one profile. A photo caught his eye, and he made his first-ever right swipe, closing the app and not opening it again.
He matched with me, and I checked out his profile
A notification popped up on my phone from Hinge. I had a new like, and I went to check out his profile. I wanted someone who was looking for a life partner, didn’t want kids, and was a cat person.
After a few years on and off Hinge, I’d realized the app is a sea of people “figuring out my dating goals” and “undecided, but open to kids.” In the past, I gave those wishy-washy types a chance and, unsurprisingly, got nowhere. I yearned for commitment, someone who could match my energy and felt the same way about contributing to the world’s declining birth rate.
So I knew it was rare to see a profile of someone who was also looking for commitment and didn’t want kids — two decisive green flags for me — making it an easy yes. Within three weeks of our first date, the green flags kept coming. We shared the same worldview and financial goals, and we passed all of each other’s non-negotiables. By our third date, we were officially dating.
Not only was it a bit of a whirlwind, but ending up together meant he fell into a rare category of dating app users.
Our love story hinges on one photo
I was Matthew’s first and only match, the only profile he ever swiped right on. He had never been on Hinge before downloading it that fateful night, meaning that he has a 100% success rate. On the other hand, I’ve been fighting for my life through indecisiveness, ghosting, and awkward talking stages.
His perfect score and our matching hinged on one photo I posted on my profile: me bouldering at our local rock-climbing gym. It was the only reason he swiped on my profile; no one else had his favorite hobby listed.
We quickly found out climbing wasn’t the only thing we had in common. We both hate small talk and wasted no time going deep and unpacking the things most important to us in relationships, our fears, and what we want a relationship to feel like.
All the steps we took led us to where we are today
In climbing, “beta” is a term used to describe a series of individual moves that complete a climb. As corny as it may sound, when looking back on what brought us together, I feel that’s what happened between us — we somehow found the beta for love.
We front-loaded all the important topics so early on, making it easy to figure out how compatible we were. We didn’t have an awkward stage, just a lot of open conversation about our non-negotiables, things we learned from previous relationships, and what we value the most from a partner.
I put that photo on my profile because I thought rock climbing would make for a fun first date. Little did I know that my casual special interest would carry so much weight in finding my person.
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