"I Just Can't Commit Right Now". Hinge: The App Designed to be Deleted or Redownloaded?
Research suggests too much choice makes us miserable (Tang et al.). It leads us to fear the loss of a hypothetical “better”, fixate on this as opposed to what we’ve gained or to abscond from making the decision altogether. And this, surely, must map onto romantic relationships. In a digital age, bodies queasily become consumptive products feeding a devouring ego, offering a quick fix. It is the short-lived nature of these relationships, however, which reveal that what they’re truly offering is a break. In my day we just had a KitKat.
When I think of love, my friend Anna, who walks me home after we’ve had coffee, springs to mind. In broad daylight, she traipses halfway across town to deliver me to the door. I could tell myself she journeys simply to get her steps in, she assures me liberally enough. But in a conceited way I think there’s a sweetness in that longing to conceal affection, to guard it as though it’s something precious. If she didn’t like me, she’d get her steps in walking around the park or pacing in the kitchen. If she didn’t like herself, she’d go for a run. But she chooses to walk me home and blushes when I tease her for cherishing the time. Love is shy, I think and easily spooked, but not so easily crafted. The other day she told me I was “well read”. I’m not entirely sure what it means to be “well read”. If it’s pouring over immeasurably long and tedious works which seem to serve no purpose, I could read old paragraphs sent to exes and come away a professor.
The irony is that she is and always will be a better reader than me. My dyslexia could make me stutter over even the shortest sentence in the English language: “Jesus wept.” I don’t know why he wept. Perhaps for Lazarus’ death, perhaps for the misery marking Mary’s face. Perhaps his all-knowing father gave him 2026 spoilers and he just wasn’t ready for the concept of Hinge. Ovid documented the thin line between the pathetic and the ridiculous, but both seem to converge at this precise and fragile point in contemporary history, the masochistic melting pot of online dating.
In Devon, the pool consists mainly of farmers, which made my pet sheep an easy talking point. They’d offer “I’ll show you my cow if you show me your sheep.” I’d say, “I hope that’s not a euphemism”, which was usually followed by some allusion to the grand size of their prized cattle. Nice. Better, however, than the firemen, who kept threatening to show me their pole. Even the way I recite this speaks to the dispensable way we’ve been conditioned to view one another. Men become one mass of flesh; one string of words haphazardly held together by a single pursuit. How, I wonder, could we be the same species which believed the myth of Aristophanes? The Greeks thought we once walked the Earth as two-headed beings with two sets of each limb and both sex organs. But Zeus, growing wary of the power invested in this, severed the creatures, damning us to spend the rest of our lives searching for our other half. There’s something strangely romantic about that conjoined figure, perpetually inclined to swoon, lonelily against its will or else happily fall back into itself. But could it ever look so alluring attached to more than one other? It becomes some monstruous birth when the being is formed from countless mouths, each wailing for their tangled limbs to be unwrapped from one another, knotted tighter than a deceptive promise clings to the mind and binds scepticism to the skull. The promise that there might be something better.
The issue is, there could always be something better. But subscribing to that view means you will never have anything best. You cannot. It betrays the philosophy. And the philosophy is self-fulfilling. You render your lover fleshless when the slipperiness in your gaze makes them feel as though you’re talking through them, not to them, for heaven’s sake, not even at them. A roving eye is not so much seen as felt. And a fleshless object cannot accept affection- there is no tangible orifice through which to absorb it. The recipient is barred even from feeling a warming touch brush against their own skin. Vicious whispers drip off well-meant fingers, hissing “any flesh, any flesh would satiate.”
Unfortunately, the brooding mystique of those who just can’t seem to settle is liberally punctured by science. After we’ve ended a relationship, we’re suddenly apprehended by what seems to be a wealth of choice. Our brains are at capacity from the options, and from dealing with the grief, dysregulating our nervous systems. This is all before considering the relentless buzz of modern-day life which, as previously mentioned, fosters far too much choice for a typical human brain to contend with. We may not know we’re hinging on dissolution, but the body does, and fight or flight systems are activated. Vexingly, our brains will always prioritise survival and autonomy over bonding. Likewise, a distressed nervous system values flexibility over attachment, and there births the dreaded phrase: “I just can’t commit right now”.
Soberingly, this isn’t a lie. Long-term commitments activate shared identity formation, and you can’t share an identity you’re trying to rebuild. It also activates vulnerability circuits, which your brain will avoid when it already feels overwhelmed. Ultimately, no one can form an emotional tie or feel someone is “the one” when their brain is at capacity. Yet fight or flight becomes the norm, and so the violent thrum of pulsing nerves translates to a numbness for what surrounds us, which is why we fill the void by being permanently busy. Instead of slowing down, we speed up and move from one person or hobby to the next. Go out, get drunk, get fit, play guitar, play dress-up, play with feelings, pick up guitar again, oops I dropped it, and oh that’s strange- I heard the smack but didn’t feel it… And somehow, in the midst of all this, we flirt with the possibility of connection. We just can’t seem to make it stick. How sickeningly human that we might pursue affection for affection’s sake, and not for some committal goal. It nods to W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939”, which he famously revised 16 years after publication. The final line, initially reading “We must love one another or die”, was changed to “We must love one another and die”. Having witnessed the horrors of the Second World War, the poet could have grown cynical and done away with the concept of humanity entirely. Instead, it seemed to make him more decided. Love is a fact of life, and as certain as we are to die, we are certain to surrender to it.
It often warrants surprise when my best friend and I say we go to church. But we all need something to worship, don’t we? The sheer volume of atheists on dating apps attests to that. So why was I on them, then? As a Christian, is it not troubling that the Alpha and the Omega, the everlasting Father, just didn’t seem to cut it? Recalling my favourite song, Hotel California, “perhaps it is true,” I thought, wading through unrepenting hordes of images with nasty pick-up lines attached, maybe “we are all just prisoners here, of our own device”. I’ve witnessed more creative ways to quench a thirst for devotion. On a match night, chants flowing from the mouths of crowds drunk on more than beer and less than comfort, warble out the football stadium and falter slightly on their way. They become a more mournful melody by the time the voices scrape against my window. For a second, I might even mistake them for the way a voice I no longer recognise broke in sympathy as we laid in the dark. I am convinced there is nothing sympathy can’t make worse. Especially when the recipient’s a woman with more than womanly pride.
When we’re thwacked with a rapid close, it seems the safer option to villainise the one we relished. Somehow there’s a perverse comfort in believing “they never cared at all” and won’t have thought of you since you hung up. Doing them this disservice, affording them no nuance, is an ethical error which my friend has taught me to avoid (though she could moralise the act of tying a shoelace or swatting a fly). During these times then, I remind myself of when I put a past guest’s brown bag by my front door, thinking each time I went out I’d be reminded to give it back to her. It’s still there now; the bag’s become the essence of the place. All draws near to it. The coat hanger wilts above it while the oak doorframe melts into its leather like sun dribbles into sea at the edge of the Earth. I don’t see the bag anymore and I don’t remember to hand it back. It is now as much the doorway and the coat hanger and the room we pass through, as it is itself. Perhaps it makes sense now why I fear forgetting a person I cherished. Because I won’t. I will build my whole life around forgetting them, and when I do, will I have succeeded? Better the compliment when they move on quickly. They’ve handed you back to yourself. I’m not quite so generous. Then again, no one ever fully hands us back and even after running ragged on a dating spree (or something to that effect, though undoubtably less wholesome), they’ll soon realise they’ve been chasing their shadow. And as a shadow reflects an absence, their absence, one can only assume by this point it’s grown vulgar and bulging from how many people they lined up to rip a tender, bloodied chunk out of them. Strange then, that those of us who feasted, still believe we were the sacrifice.
The final point is to do with a book my friend lent me to read last summer. It was about my favourite painter: J.M.W Turner. Our shared fondness was revealed quite theatrically when I opened it and found certain pages were all but dust, words and image abused by a lusting curiosity. The story which stuck condemns contemporary society’s insatiable thirst for what is newer and shinier. Just as the opportunity for final touches were closing, and realising his painting looked dull in comparison to what was exhibited next to it (namely, Constable’s “The Opening of Waterloo Bridge”, which triumphed with its indulgent deep reds), Turner added a small red buoy to his marine painting. As a result, critics agreed his work demonstrated wealth in its restraint, and made Constable’s appear fussy and intense. The moral is then, upon seeing his rival’s art, Turner did not do away with his own but channelled what he desired into the original. He exercised his power and drenched it in a fresher grandeur. In the pursuit of success, as any athlete would tell you, novelty must be the concession. And yet, our veracious desire to live ephemerally, to give up the hobby which reaped no instant results or give up the person we could’ve known better, conquers. Because it is meant to. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Fast-paced consumer culture remoulds us into docile bodies, with no self-control or ability to invest in what we could one day grow to adore. We neglect potential bliss. And then what do we do? Consume again.
Nonetheless, it is no secret: I have grown unfeeling. Incessant options have rendered me unappreciative. When I venture to the supermarket, my twenty-minute hungover Odyssey, I am greeted by dozens of different brands, flashing their teeth as I strain my eyes to work out what on earth is the difference between them. We surely do not need 36 different brands of cornflakes. Then there’s milk: “do I want red milk, green milk, high-protein milk, oat milk, gluten-free, dairy-free, fun-free, strained from a meditating almond milk?” I don’t know, don’t ask me. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving, and this ice cream’s coming with me.
Most concerningly, I fear I’ve become numb to different types of passion. My friends are so deeply caring, they love until they’re blue. Perhaps these options- familial, platonic, romantic- can also overwhelm and make us forget to be grateful. I may go on Hinge again, or I may not. But until then I’ll find warmth in the letters Jyotsna writes and the flowers Izzy sends, in advice Charlotte gives or the way Ollie knocks on our shared wall to say goodnight. And during these moments, I might realise this affection is not a means to an end. It’s not “what will have to do” while I pine for a darker devotion. This, right here. This is love.
Work Cited:
Tang et al. “Purchase decision: does too much choice leave us unhappy?’ European Journal of Marketing, vol. 51, no. 7/8, 2017, pp. 1248-1265.