Dating After Divorce: Why Bumble Made Me Feel Like I Was Shopping for a Person
I went back on Bumble because a friend encouraged me to. She’s younger than I am, recently divorced, and apparently having the time of her life. She made it sound fun, so I thought, why not?
I’m single and soon to be an empty nester. I genuinely like my life, I feel good about where I am, and I know myself better than I ever have. So it seems like a good time to add that next layer of depth.
That doesn’t mean I’m looking for someone to swoop in and complete me. I’m not even sure I want a traditional committed relationship right now. What I do want is companionship. Someone to travel with, have dinner with, sit by a fire with over a glass of wine, go to a concert with, maybe take a spontaneous weekend trip with. Someone interesting and kind and funny who makes life a little more fun.
Then I opened Bumble and immediately started wondering what I had gotten myself into.
Give Me Some Depth
One man described himself as a good kisser.
According to who?
I’m sure kissing ability matters eventually, but I’d like to know a little more about you before we get there. Can you hold a conversation? Are you kind? Do you have friends? Do you like your life? Are you curious about anything?
Give me some depth.
Then there are the pictures.
Sometimes I’ll see the first one and think, okay, he’s attractive. Then I swipe and suddenly he looks five years older. Swipe again and there goes another five years. By the fourth picture, I’m wondering if I’m even looking at the same person.
Can we just be who we are from the outset?
It’s not aging that bothers me. We’re all aging. It’s the feeling that I’m being asked to make a decision about someone based on information I don’t entirely trust.
Attraction Doesn’t Work That Way for Me
I’ve dated men who, if you had shown me a picture first, I probably wouldn’t have immediately thought were my type. They weren’t necessarily in great shape or the men I would have picked from a lineup. But then I got to know them.
They were kind, funny, spontaneous and caring. They paid attention to me, cared how I felt, made me laugh, and somewhere along the way they became attractive.
Dating apps ask us to decide what we think of someone before we’ve actually had the chance to experience them, and I’m not sure human attraction was ever meant to work that way.
We look at a few photographs, read a few sentences, swipe left or right, and then, if we happen to match, we start texting.
I don’t think texting is the best way to get to know someone either.
Meaning gets lost in a text. Heck, meaning gets lost when you’re actually talking to someone. You can say something one way and have another person hear it completely differently. Now remove tone of voice, facial expression, the little pause before somebody laughs, the look on someone’s face when they realize you’re joking.
What’s left is a sentence on a screen, and from that we’re supposed to figure out whether we might like someone.
Maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing. That’s entirely possible.
The Strange Vulnerability of It All
There is definitely a part of me that feels uncomfortable with the process in a way I haven’t fully figured out. Some of it is vulnerability. There is something strange about being a single woman and putting pictures of yourself on an app that essentially announces: I’m available.
You don’t really know who is looking at you. You don’t know when their pictures were taken, or even with complete certainty whether the person behind the profile is the person in the pictures. And we live in a world where it’s remarkably easy to find information about someone online.
The whole process can feel incredibly public and strangely anonymous at the same time.
Then there’s the waiting. You match and wonder if he’ll message. You message and wonder if he’ll respond. And if he does, will he have anything interesting to say? Will he ask anything about you? Can he write more than “hi”?
Maybe I’m too picky, but if that’s all you’ve got, I’m probably not your girl.
Recently, I finally matched with someone who seemed different. He was in his early sixties, messaged immediately, made an actual plan and offered a convenient restaurant for us to meet.
We were going to have lunch, and I remember thinking, thank you. A grown man who can communicate and make a decision.
Then he got a little flirty and I immediately thought, ooh, too much.
Which probably says something about me too.
Would the same comment have bothered me if he had said it in person with a smile and I already liked him? Maybe not. And that’s part of what makes this whole thing so weird. We’re trying to create chemistry through words on a screen before chemistry has even had a chance to exist.
The date was eventually cancelled by him (go figure), and shortly after that I hid my Bumble profile.
For now, I’m done.
Not with dating. Not with meeting someone. Not with the idea that there might be a man out there who would make my already-good life even better.
I’m just done with this version of it.
I Don’t Want to Shop for a Person
Because what I keep coming back to is that I don’t really want to shop for a person.
I want someone I know to say, “I met this guy. He’s kind. He’s funny. He has an interesting story. I think you two should meet.”
I want to sit across from someone and have an actual conversation. I want to hear his voice, laugh out loud and notice the things you can’t put in a profile. I want the chance to discover that someone I might not have picked from a photograph becomes more attractive the longer I talk to him.
Mostly, I want to enjoy the experience of getting to know someone without immediately asking myself, is this going anywhere?
Maybe that sounds old-fashioned. Maybe this is simply the way dating works now and I need to get better at it. Or maybe there is something inherently odd about trying to find human connection through a process that asks us to reduce one another to a few pictures and a handful of sentences.
I don’t have the answer.
What I do know is that I’m happy with my life. I know who I am, I know what matters to me, and I’m still open to meeting someone.
I just hope that when I do, I get the chance to know who he is before I have to decide whether to swipe left or right.
What’s your experience? Share in the comments.
“Less Noise. More You.”
A gentle note from me
Everything I share here comes from my own lived experience and the work I am actively doing in my own life. This space is for reflection, encouragement, and gentle practice — it is not therapy, medical advice, or a substitute for professional mental health care. If something in this post lands heavier than you expected, or surfaces something that feels bigger than a tender moment, please reach out to a licensed therapist, counselor, or trusted healthcare provider. Coaching is a beautiful complement to that kind of support, never a replacement for it. Other content you may enjoy:
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Hi! I’m Sandra
I help women whose lives look good on the outside but no longer feel like their own start choosing themselves again.
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I went back on Bumble because a friend made it sound fun. A few profiles, some questionable photos and one cancelled date later, I found myself asking a very different question about modern dating.