I had a milestone birthday after my divorce that I celebrated by taking myself abroad to a European city. I spent the week exploring castles and museums and cathedrals and using Tinder as my personal Rick Steves- apparently I was not the only woman with that idea because one of my matches’ bio simply said “I’m not TripAdvisor.” (He wound up giving me some of the best travel advice and the whole backstory on a local monastery but that’s another story.)
Anyway on my actual birthday I’d had one younger man take me on a bike tour along the coast and another man take me for an afternoon drink at a rooftop restaurant overlooking a gorgeous older neighborhood and I’d taken myself to an amazing dinner. It was a perfectly lovely day, but when I got back to my hotel my inner Veruca Salt was not satisfied so I returned to swiping and immediately matched with one of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen. He said he was just home from a business trip- I got enough info to look up his LinkedIn and match the face to his wetsuit-clad tinder photo- and so when invited me over to his apartment i demurred for a minute before saying well, as long as it’s just to watch TV…