The Awkward Sharing of My Online Dating Presence With My Son

“Old” People Do It Too

I didn’t plan it. My 19 year old son was showing me some photos on his phone when I saw some push notifications from Tinder pop down. This naturally raised the topic for discussion.

“Hey, you’re on Tinder?

“Yeah, you know.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’m using some photos you took in my profile.”

Ew. I was showing my son my Tinder profile. Oh, well, it isn’t as if he doesn’t know I date. His father moved out four years ago. I remember a moment shortly before that when the same son came into my office looking for homework help and saw my new OKCupid account on my computer screen.

He was shocked and accusatory. “Mom, that’s a dating site.” He had no idea what had been going on in his parent’s marriage. I suppose it looked like I was cheating. I was simply moving along after my husband decided we were going to “open” our marriage. I was embarrassed because there was no way to explain this to him so I simply owned up to the fact that I was indeed online dating as if it were no big deal. The marriage ended in separation very shortly after this happened.

Four years later he wanted to see what Tinder for “old people” looks like. One of my matches popped up, and he said, “Let me see what these old dudes look like.” I swiped through a few so he could see.

“Oh, wow, look at those old dudes.”, he said. The one he was looking at was 58 years old. I imagine the images he saw were jarring compared to the ones he sees in his age group.

Thank you for reading :)