I am SUPER excited to be back with part two of our Tinder Tale…mostly because it will be Clay telling you the remainder of our time spent on Tinder! (You can read Part 1 HERE)
To begin with, I cannot say with absolute certainty how exactly I responded to Gina’s first message. If I recall correctly it was something along the lines of “hey!” with a couple of follow up questions that were probably just as well thought out and articulate as the “hey!”. But, anyway, here we are.
I would also like to point out the reasoning behind my failure to message Gina first….she was waaaay out of my league and I knew it. I figured she accidentally swiped right on ol’ Clay after a few glasses of wine or something. Ultimately, I wanted to save both of us the time and embarrassment of sending out the ubiquitous “sup girl….” But, interestingly enough, after a few days of no activity on the Tinder app, a message popped up on my phone from the megababe that had really caught my attention.
One thing I know for sure about the first message is I was at work when it arrived. I was out in the hall when I saw I had a Tinder notification on my almost brand new smart phone (I was way behind the times, sue me). When I saw I received a message from Gina my first response was “no way.” There weren’t any glitches or anything, though, so then I was like “Sweet.” Surprisingly, after racking my brain over what to say, all the messages and chatting came pretty naturally. I say “surprisingly” because when a guy somehow gets a golden opportunity with a girl like Gina the first line of thinking is “don’t scare her,” which is immediately followed by scaring the shit out of her. We, as guys, don’t mean to, but when you’re trying too hard to make a solid impression things happen….
Anyways, I found out I really enjoyed messaging Gina. She was very interesting, fun to talk to, and had a great personality. So the next logical step was to begin texting her, which was kind of a big deal considering personal contact (phone :D ) numbers were going to be involved and we’d never even met. No big deal, though, I told her one night that I’d like to text her and promptly ended that evening’s conversation without ever asking for, or providing, a number. Pretty brilliant stroke on my part. Thankfully she messaged back, pointing out the blatant omission, and even provided a working phone number. So things were lookin' up!
I’ll admit that I had to come off to Gina as either a total creeper or, at the least, a bit of an eccentric when trying to get a first date. My work schedule at that time really limited my social life so when I tried to get Gina to meet me around 11:00 pm at a bar on a weeknight, the situation probably seemed a bit suspicious. But, to her credit (and my benefit), she rolled the dice and showed up. We talked for at least a couple hours over a few drinks and I was pretty ecstatic. So when we parted I knew I definitely wanted to go out again and luckily she agreed. And now we’re totally married!
Honestly, there is so much more I can say about my and Gina’s early relationship, but I think she wanted me to touch a little on the internet dating scene. As with anything, there are some positives and some definite drawbacks. Even though its 2015, there is still kind of a negative stigma associated with starting a lifelong relationship with someone via the internet. For some reason, casual dating (or hooking up) doesn’t really seem to strike those same chords, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you why. I’m not a scientist. But at first, I was even a little weary to mention we’d met on Tinder. I felt like it wasn’t something people wanted to hear. But after a while I think we both started to embrace it.
How Gina and I met is just as fun of a story to tell as people who met face to face for the first time. Whether it was at a bar, a concert, the library, or wherever. When it comes to how we met, there are still really sweet and romantic parts of the story... as well as humorous and embarrassing ones. The important thing is that we found each other and connected, and it really doesn’t matter what avenue we utilized. I’m incredibly lucky. And I’m still, like, 90% sure it was the “U.S.A!” chant on my profile page that got her to finally say something. Gina is a great American :D
And not even two years after the fact, we are happily married! And for the record, I'm the lucky one.
