Let me count the ways dating apps let you down. The fake profiles, the endless swiping and messaging “dates,” the games and ghosting, the algorithms designed to generate repeat affairs rather than finding true love. What started as a brilliant idea with the birth of the smartphone has turned into a pile of burning disappointments.

After almost four years on “the apps,” I’ve lived all the clichés. I’ve been love-bombed by a narcissist for whom nothing was too complicated or too expensive (until I was attracted to him), suffered a frightening scare with someone who thought he owned me after two dates, I endured the guillotine. I just don’t feel it,” and have repeatedly tried to right the wrongs of men who were clearly in the wrong.

Helen Down was disillusioned by years on dating apps – until love found her on LinkedIn

After leaving my ex-husband in 2020, my post-divorce affair with dating apps was sometimes wild, passionate, and exhilarating, but more often than not it was exhausting, long, and discouraging.

By the age of 50, it seemed like all the good men had been captured and midlife love was impossible.

One day, I stopped annoying my neighbors by repeatedly yelling to the chorus of Wolf Alice’s Don’t Delete The Kisses: “What if it wasn’t for me?” Love’ – I’m committed to turning all the disappointments, false hopes, and many hilarious anecdotes into creative fuel for the novel I’m writing.

But then, out of the blue, it happened. I found love. Or rather, he found me – and in the most unexpected place. Neither Hinge nor Bumble. And certainly not Tinder. He found me on LinkedIn.

No, it wasn’t a romance scam. It started after I wrote an article about my disillusionment with middle-aged men on dating apps. Suddenly, strangers started sending me messages. From university professors and television producers to physiotherapists, teachers and “entrepreneurs”. Some were from colleagues of colleagues, but most were completely random and I had a hard time understanding how they had sent me a private message (although I now realize it was a privilege they paid for via subscription premium).

It started to look a little scary. Sometimes also confusing. This former client who now asks for coffee: was this a new sales question or a request for a meeting?

The LinkedIn invitation that changed my life, however, was very different. When the message arrived in my inbox in March of this year, I felt less scared, more shocked. This was the man who had ripped out my 21-year-old heart three decades earlier. How dare he!

Dating apps can disappoint you, thanks to everything from fake profiles to endless swiping and messaging ‘dates,’ says Helen Down (photo posed by model)

Maybe I should have felt angry. The audacity to reconnect after ditching me for a trip to Australia while I was still at art school and he had already graduated. For a moment, this fragile 21-year-old young woman whispered her fears in my ear. But I reassured her, everything was fine, all these years spent in the ring had made us wiser, bolder, more confident.

But above all, I was damn curious. Waiting for me was a nostalgic Polaroid montage of our first meeting: New Year’s Eve 1994. Drunk and exuberant smiles overflowing with optimism. I was surprised he kept it – maybe even darling? – these photos for 30 years.

I was even more surprised when I read his message: “I hope you remember that we had a brief but pretty intense relationship, starting on a crazy New Year’s Eve and ending when I left for Australia. I often think of that time with great fondness, but I wasn’t very kind in the end and I apologize for that. I was shocked and slightly relieved to find that a piece of me remained with him.

It takes courage to do what he did. So I agreed to meet for a few drinks in a London pub.

When we met weeks later, I remembered how effortlessly he captured my heart. Funny, kind, intelligent, creative, sweet. The blonde was now gray and his face inevitably wasn’t as fresh. Working stupid hours in the music industry and raising two kids will do that to a man (three decades in between and one child did that to this woman, too). Yet he was still, without a doubt, very pleasant to look at.

And, a major bonus, it wasn’t tainted by the cruelty of contemporary dating. In the ten years since he split from his now ex-wife, he has continued to build relationships with friends and colleagues, and has never used a dating app. Oh my God, how that showed up. No games, no demagoguery. Just pure vulnerability, honesty and enthusiasm that felt genuine rather than desperate.

Over the course of a wine-soaked Saturday afternoon, he entertained me with stories about how we survived only on Smirnoff and Pringles, how I allegedly corrupted him (I disagree ), how he cried the night before he left for Oz.

We had only spent four months together, but those months were intense and more promising than my other, longer-lasting relationships. He remembered our time together much more than I did. As a scorned woman, I had made a pact with myself to never think of him again. I threw my heart in the freezer and moved on, unleashing myself into the next relationships in heavy armor. But this time, forgiveness was easy.

Today, we have done our best to make up for 30 years of missed opportunities. Since April, we have laughed together, cried together, raved together, vacationed together, and even gone to the dump together. From the high-octane to the mundane, we fell into easy intimacy made possible by trust-filled app-free connection.

Any sane person who has spent more than six months on the dating app merry-go-round ends up feeling sick. After you’ve exhausted yourself by taking the moral high ground, ghosting, breadcrumbing (maintaining interest by dropping crumbs of attention without commitment) and benching (sending someone in as a replacement) become suddenly acceptable. I sometimes wonder if these apps are partly to blame for the apparent decline in decency and kindness.

Every generation has its dating challenges, but in our 40s, we face a shrinking pool of options and excess baggage. Additionally, we are not digital natives. Taking selfies sets us back. It’s no wonder many women my age think apps aren’t designed for them. Guess what, that’s not the case.

“Middle-aged people may feel uncomfortable swiping, logging in, and talking to multiple people,” says Claire Macklin, divorce coach and author of Break Up: From Crisis To Confidence . “They often invest earlier and therefore have more to lose. If the date proves doomed to failure, it is demoralizing to have to start all over again. This is why more and more mature women are now paying for matchmaking services.

Helen Down at her home in London

Ranging from £5,000 to £15,000, these services don’t come cheap. So what is the alternative? It takes a brave soul to argue with someone in real life.

The same could be said of LinkedIn – and despite my experience, I don’t recommend it as a dating platform. Being asked out on LinkedIn seems even more unsolicited than being chatted up at a bar. And no, the platform isn’t about to launch a feature called “LinkedIn love” — it’s an online myth that gained momentum this summer. A LinkedIn spokesperson told me: “Romantic advances and harassment in any form are a violation of our policies and have no place on our platform. »

So my story isn’t meant to encourage you to use LinkedIn for dating. Of course my ex did. But only because he had no other means. My story is finding love after rejecting apps.

This adage that things happen when you least expect them is true. It also turns out that they occur where you least expect them. So maybe it’s time to take Hinge – the “designed to be deleted” app – at its word. Go on. Delete it. And look for love elsewhere. Look up from your phone, maybe even look at your past. But don’t give up on the search completely.