If You Want to Be My Lover

Queer dating stories sponsored by Hinge

This newsletter is sponsored by Hinge! #hingepartner, I know, gag. In celebration of their latest LGBTQIA+ DATE Report, they asked me to reflect on my time as a queer dater.

My credentials include: being gay, having dated, and being with my (current) boyfriend for 8 years. We met on Hinge, sort of… It’s a long story.

When I was a kid on the playground, my peers and I were obsessed with assigning things to each other—fitting ourselves into neat little boxes was our favorite pastime. Looking back, I guess this was a learned behaviour. The world is constantly telling you what you are, asking you to define yourself and showing you what lines you’re allowed to colour within. Our glitter gel pens didn’t stand a chance.

One day, between two games of tetherball, my friends and I were deciding which girl group member we identified with most. Before I could even form an opinion, four index fingers pointed at me and exclaimed, “Sporty!”

I looked at the other members of my girl group, and I accepted the role even though I couldn’t tell if I was actually Sporty or if I was just the only boy in the group. Sure, I wore nylon track pants a lot, but that’s because I liked the swishy sound they made when I walked (still do). And I’ve always had a knack for sports, but I can’t say that I’ve ever enjoyed them.
This brings up the age old question: How can be not Sporty when boy?

The Sporty one was arguably the hardest to define. Her moniker (assigned to her by some random journalist might I add) came about because she did high kicks. Little did she know that meant she’d be in athleisure for decades.

My truth is that I am a Ginger/Posh cusp with a Scary rising. I contain multitudes, and my 8 year old self wouldn’t see that as a strength for years.

The idea that I had to be one thing followed me into my love life. When I started dating, every single piece of media I’d ever modeled myself after was heteronormative… shocker! Even queer cultural touchstones were sending me mixed signals as my frontal lobe was developing. Labels people gave me at a young age were still scribbled on my forehead and I didn’t know who I was without them.

After a few relationships formed in the wild under my belt, I turned to Hinge. Queers have found safety in online spaces for centuries and I wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel. I first joined as I was at the height of my hipsterdom, on the heels of my tenure at a popular hoodie and legging clothing store that will remain nameless. My profile, or persona really, was full of blurry images from disposable cameras of me attempting to be twee. I even had a photo of me with a longboard I never even set foot on.

Looking at this now, I recognize the artifice and all the effort that went into trying. For years, this pressure to present in a way I thought was desirable led me astray. Situationships would fizzle and dates would be incredibly stressful because I was constantly pretending—I did theatre in high school, but I wasn’t that good.

I came to one day, realizing I spent years wearing a mask on every date. I couldn’t spot the difference between who I was and who I thought people wanted me to be. How could I expect to find somebody if I hadn’t even found myself?

What I did next was truly unheard of, I stopped lying.
Music taste: My music taste was varied, but that meant there were weeks where all I listened to was a pop diva compilation from 2006.
Favourite drink: Something fruity.
A word that best describes you: Fruity.
Activities: Guess who won’t actually show up to any dates riding a longboard.

Now that I had started to figure out my side of the equation, it was time to consider what I wanted in a partner. Enter: my Year of Yes.

My Year of Yes was loosely inspired by the book, but it didn’t mean I said yes to every date. For me, it meant asking out any person I felt a spark with. Up until that point, I had never made the first move on anyone—so much for being a fire sign. That entire year, as soon as the banter was flowing and something started building, I would ask them out.

My approach was to be open. I didn’t have a type, and I was applying that truth to my clean slate. My friends appreciated this era because the post-date debriefs were very entertaining, but there were some raised eyebrows. Why was I dating someone in a punk band when my understanding of punk started and ended with heavy black eyeliner? What made me think a banker who was closer to my dad’s age than mine would be a good match? I didn’t know. I didn’t know and that was the point. I let myself be guided by how I felt, not what I thought.

While none of these dates resulted in relationships, they gave me so much. I learned how to have a conversation by listening instead of preparing the next thing I would say. I found simplicity in connection; it wasn’t anyone’s fault (much less my own) if the spark fizzled in person, it was just a thing that happened. I made friends. Finally, I started seeing myself as a full person instead of thinking about how I could fit with another.

Agency wasn’t something I’d ever experienced in dating, but now that I had it I wouldn’t let it go. I could wear a purse on a date without caring how someone might react and that is The Work people!

This newfound understanding of myself is how I came to meet my now boyfriend of 8 years. He was a Hinge match from before my Year of Yes that didn’t turn into anything. Our conversation had been great, but his profile was full of photos of him on hikes (truly an absurd amount of hiking photos). I figured he’d lose interest as soon as he discovered my aversion to trekking through mountainous terrain, so I politely declined to go on a date with him and he fell into my Hinge graveyard.

Despite my low investment, he was persistent. He followed me on social media and kept up with me. A comment here, a like there, just enough to have me remember his name when he popped up on my Hinge again.

I wish I could say the stars were aligned or something felt different that day, but really I was different. Through trial and error, I had pried myself open like a clam and found a pearl. His profile was still photos of him hiking and it didn’t feel like a hurdle anymore. I asked him out and never looked back.

On our first date, he asked me what took me so long to ask him out and I told him the truth. He laughed in my face as I listed all the sports I would have no interest in doing.I wanted to put all my cards on the table. It turns out he was just the kind of person who didn’t get his picture taken much—you know the ones, elusive and always behind the camera. The back to back trips he had taken a few years prior with a total of 0.75 hikes were the only photos of himself he had. He wasn’t a big hiker and he didn’t care that I wasn't either.

To this day, he only made me go hiking once and I beat him to the lookout point. Maybe I am Sporty after all.

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Thank you for reading!!

Let me know which girl group member you are in the comments, and check out Hinge’s LGBTQIA+ DATE Report for a deeper dive into queer dating today.