Seven years ago, I went to the theater with my then-girlfriend. Defending the Caveman is the longest running one-man play in Broadway history. It’s also full of great dating advice.
The show is about a guy who gets kicked out by his girlfriend, and then uses the time on his doorstep to tell the audience about the evolutionary roots of men and women. While I’m not sure how much of the play is based on actual science, plenty of it feels like it could be, which makes it fun and informative.
A recurring concept in the play is the hunter-gatherer analogy: Men hunt, women gather. Men have spears, women have baskets (in more than one literal sense). Men chase, women collect.
According to Rob — the guy on the street — this is why men are, on average, more competitive, single-minded, and prone to forgetting everything but their goal, whereas women are more collaborative, better at lateral thinking, and can juggle more balls at once.
Stereotypes or not, when it comes to modern dating, the online variant in particular, it seems at least one of them immediately falls apart: Both genders collect matches, even if they end up not pursuing most of their chat partners.
Let’s think out loud about why that is and if there’s a better way to handle your list of lucky swipes.
What’s in Your Matchbox?
Based on my experience and the occasional glance at a friend’s Tinder account, it’s not uncommon to scroll through several dozen chat windows once you’ve had the app for a while.
Not accounting for supermodels on both sides, for men, these are often hard-gained over the course of several weeks, whereas women might pick up 100 matches in a day, if they so choose to. Naturally, men treat their list of matches like a prized possession. “Look, I got 100!” It’s an ego boost and a competition. I wouldn’t expect this among women. I’d guess they’re better at match-pruning, both before and after swiping right. Not just to handle the fact that it’s raining men, but also because they face more personal attacks and subsequently — and rightfully — unmatch.
Regardless of origin and reason, both men and women might find their matchboxes swelling over time. Just like real matches, however, most of them go unlit — and that’s why you should delete them.
The Case for Matchbox Minimalism
Minimalism is advertised as a recipe for happiness, but it’s really about making room to process your emotions and handle your challenges. The extra physical space isn’t as important as the mental clarity that space enables.
For that clarity to come, however, the space still needs to be real. If you stuff all your clutter into your basement, you won’t feel a big wave of relief. Your items are gone from view, but not from your brain. Everything you own takes up memory. Sooner or later, you’ll need to remember that you have it.
The same is true for the people and relationships in our lives, no matter how small. Sure, your brother requires more emotional bandwidth than the surfer dude you just sent one message to, but both of them do. Even if that message goes unanswered, the spark you put into the universe will always be there.
Deleting the chat is, therefore, not about trying to unsend the message. That’s impossible. It’s about making room to create new sparks. Whether they ghosted you or you ghosted them, whether you didn’t click in the chat or on a date, every dead-end conversation weighs on you as is — so why keep that weight around?
In the long run, a ghost town of empty chat windows will just make you miserable. Unmatching is shedding the skin that doesn’t fit anymore so you can meet the next person as your best self. Instead of slowly poisoning your attitude and prematurely judging new people and interactions, you’ll have a small set of connections you’ve decided to put more energy into — and room to make more of them if they don’t pan out.
The Unmatchable Question
Unlike our inbox, we don’t quite want our matchbox to go to zero, but if the number gives you a hint of anxiety each time you see it, you know it needs to go down. Personally, I just went from 45 matches to 18, using one question:
Do I want to meet this person (again)?
It may sound rather obvious, but if you have a match you don’t really care for, it should not have been a match in the first place. That happens, but it doesn’t need to stay around. If you’ve already met the person and want to see them again, keeping the chat can’t hurt, even if you have their phone number. Who knows? Maybe you’ll want to remember your first exchange one day.
At first, I also considered how much we had talked already if I hadn’t met them yet, but that’s really just one indicator of whether I’d like to see them or not. Once you’ve asserted this is a person you’d have coffee with, really, all there’s left to do is work towards it. If things change or go nowhere, you can unmatch them later.
Once you’ve narrowed your scope of matches, it’s a good idea to try and catch up with them over the next few days. Don’t just auto-ask out everyone, but try and (re)connect with all of them eventually. If there’s no echo, that’s another match gone soggy — and fine to delete.
Finally, and this is equally as important as pruning your matches, if not more, do the same for the list of people who’ve liked you. You have to pay to see who did so on Tinder, but it’s a long line of potential matches — all you have to do is swipe right.
For me, this induces even more anxiety than actual matches, and it made me feel good to swipe left on 93% of them to go from 87 to 6 maches in the making. Everyone left is someone I’d like to chat with in the next week or so, and I’ll match and message them as soon as my existing chats don’t keep me too busy.
All You Need to Know
People aren’t stamps. Just because we can now track our relationships through social media doesn’t mean that’s a number we should maximize.
In online dating, our archive of connections is even more emotionally charged than elsewhere. Every cold chat leaves its mark, but if we don’t leave those chats, the scars will never fade. Whether your collection of matches gives you an ego boost or you just can’t decide, those aren’t good reasons to keep a weight on your shoulders that’ll make you slouch on your next first date.
For more emotional capacity and a lighter, more positive attitude in online dating, ask who you’d actually like to go out with, and unmatch everybody else. This might not fit your gatherer-nature, but then again, we also live in 2020 AD, not BC. Dating has evolved. It’s time we do the same.