After being in a decade long relationship, dating again is weird. Especially if you like dating crazy people like I do.

Chapter 11: Unicorns

As I’ve mentioned, I use 4 different dating sites: OKCupid, Tinder, Feeld and Bumble.

OKCupid is the most effective, as it has the largest user base. If you actually want to meet someone, OKCupid is really the only site you need. I actually even pay them. In fairness I was probably drunk when I signed up, but they provide an endless supply of options and most of the people on there aren’t even crazy.

Tinder is… well it’s Tinder. “OMG it’s so shallow, you just swipe based on people’s looks!” It is exactly that. No one has time to read your two-page manifesto about how you are a nice and caring person. Not alongside everyone else’s two-page manifestos about how they are also a nice and caring person. Yeah you like to travel, and puppies, whatever. Swipe right if you’re pretty, swipe left if you’re not. A good dating profile is this: “I’d like to meet someone nice. Nice and in no way connected to a law enforcement agency.”

You would be surprised at how well that line works.

Feeld is a little more interesting, but it doesn’t work well in my area. Feeld is a dating app for bisexuals and people that are into unusual kinks. It’s a good place to meet a couple looking for a threesome or foursome, or a woman with strong opinions about what to look for when purchasing a riding crop. The user base is too small where I live though. In SF, LA, or NYC it probably works well, but I haven’t got to try it out yet in those areas. So far, I’ve been matched with a pair of lesbians that want to try a guy in bed, two generally heterosexual couples that wanted to try double penetration, and a transsexual that wanted to try out her new vagina. They all chickened out though.

The fun thing with very on-the-margin dating sites like Feeld is that you have to learn a whole new vocabulary the deeper you go. For instance, “mmf” is very different to “mfm”. There are a bunch of acronyms, like “mmfmfff” which is something only carnival performers can do, and arrangements like “soft swap” which I believe refers to doing laundry together.

One thing that I learned is the term unicorn.

I hadn’t heard the word polyamory until a few years ago. I was doing Uber at the time and I picked up a girl that wanted to tell me all about her love life. I enjoy that sort of thing. She was a young, gorgeous, artsy girl that was super chatty. Being that I was driving for Uber, I had to be fairly delicate about engaging with her. Uber had a fairly bad reputation at the time for sexual harassment, and I didn’t want to contribute to that.

She wasn’t having that though and needed to tell me all about her lifestyle. I had just picked her up from her boyfriend’s place and was driving her down to a movie theater where she was meeting a couple that she was also dating. She explained to me that she was polyamorous, and just needed a lot of people to screw. It’s a cute Latin term that sounds a lot better than “slutty”. I like it. I’ve never heard a man describe himself as polyamorous, but if women want to self-apply a term like that, because they are into doing the same sort of activities men take for granted that they can get away with, good.

I’d later find out that she is what is called in the bi community, a unicorn. A unicorn is a woman that dates couples. Not just fucks couples but engages in a long term sexual and romantic relationship with a couple. They are called unicorns because they are so rare. I suppose you can have a male unicorn, but they aren’t quite as sought after. Everyone wants a “fmf” threesome or “ffm” threesome, but “mmf” and “mfm” are not quite as desirable, unless you’re fun.

There are a lot of self-described unicorns on Feeld. They also tend to be into whips and chains and fun stuff like that. But just like unicorns they are hard to catch. They also tend to live in real cities, not Baltimore. Driving to DC for a threesome is something I would do, but ultimately economically non-sustainable over time.

The final site is Bumble which you would think would be the cleanest of the four, but actually isn’t. I get more dates from Bumble than the other three combined. Bumble is a feminist dating site, somewhat similar to Tinder. It uses the same looks based swiping interface, but the difference is that women have to approve everything and make the first move.

The idea is that while women enjoy Tinder’s swiping interface, they don’t enjoy being hit on by literally 50 guys at once, which is something Tinder will provide. With Bumble, even after you match with a woman you can’t contact her, she has to contact you first. She also only has 24 hours to do so, so she has to shit or get off the pot. You have even less time to get back to her. Otherwise the connection gets deleted.

These rules tend to lead to more hook ups. I know that Bumble was designed to keep men from harassing women, but it accidentally made it so that women have to be the aggressor in a romantic relationship. Most will. People like being told what to do, and Bumble does that.