People want to have sex with you, I promise

I haven’t been single for very long. As in, recently out of a very long-term relationship that started when Tinder was just becoming the norm. So I started rifling through the rolodex in my head for all the straight single girls who said “you don’t know how hard it is, Naomi” and asked for specifics.

Again and again I would hear about dates where a guy was clearly trying to give off very gentle signals of interest but was too scared to make a move, resulting in my friends thinking they weren’t interested and thus refusing to make a move themselves. That’s when it hit me – no wonder online dating is terrible. All these people are petrified.

I was on the phone to my sister recently and cut her off mid-sentence to say, “He responded!” He (yes, a man) had replied to a thirst trap I’d posted (if you don’t know, that’s a hot picture posted to lure in other horny singles). He’d sent an invite to hang out that was just facetious enough that he could save face if I didn’t take him up on it. Of course, I was going to, because he was the very target of that post.

I dictated to my sister as I typed back “OK when”. “You didn’t just send that, did you?” she baulked. “Yeah, why?” “Have you ever talked to him before?” “Not really.” “Oh my god, Naomi, you psycho, you can’t talk like that.”

My sister explained that usually there’s more of a dance, or at least some sort of back and forth.

When I recently dipped my toe in a dating app for the first time, I could tell that people were caught off guard by the pace at which I tried to move the interaction from the app to an actual date, mainly because I find chatting online to be tedious and a terrible gauge of chemistry.

I’ve been told many times that I am too blunt, but I have decided – rather than change, which is for losers – to surround myself with people who like that about me (until they’re the one I’m disagreeing with). I filed my sister’s reaction under that category until a friend complained to me about a guy she was trying to flirt with on Instagram.

“I just don’t know if he’s interested,” she griped. I looked at the messages. To me, it was incredibly clear that he was keen on her. Maybe it’s an assumption, but I don’t believe straight dudes are reaching out to random girls on Instagram to have intellectual discourse.