Rom-com author Annabelle Slator wasn’t expecting to see a photo of her deceased dog while swiping on a dating app, but there’s a first time for everything. But it wasn’t just the pooch who Slator recognised. For starters, she’d taken the photo, and the subject was her ex-boyfriend, whose dating app profile she’d just stumbled across.
“He had a picture with my dog (who had since DIED) that I took on his profile!” Slator tells Mashable.
“I was genuinely shocked at him having the audacity to make a profile on the dating app that I LITERALLY WORKED AT but also using pics from a weekend away with me and my family dog!!!” she adds. “I matched with him, messaged him saying, ‘Please refrain using pictures of my dead dog to get laid,’ and promptly unmatched lmao.”
“Please refrain using pictures of my dead dog to get laid.”
Slator’s ex did manage to get a quick apology in before she blocked him. “He gave me a ‘sorry hope you’re doing OK,'” she says. In her book The Launch Date, Slator included this anecdote as “as an evergreen f*ck you.”
Spotting an ex on a dating app is an occupational hazard, unfortunately. The sensible move when you spot a past love might be to slide right past and pretend you didn’t see them. To leave the past firmly behind you. But, life isn’t always like that. Sometimes, we like to be messy, we swipe right on the former flame because life’s too short and, well, they’re still hot.
The complex emotions of seeing exes on a dating app
In Slator’s case, she matched with the ex to give him a piece of her mind, but others tell me they reconnected because they were curious about what might have been. A few people told me they swiped the hell past the ex and pretended they’d never seen them.
It can bring up complicated emotions when you come face to face with your past. Lucie, who wishes to use a pseudonym for privacy reasons, saw her ex-husband on a dating app and felt “weirdly nostalgic and also resentful.”
“Apparently he’s ’emotionally available now,'” she jokes. “The old adage of how women spend an entire relationship working on a man, only for them to put all their hard work into practice for the next woman — it’s real!”
Lucie tells me she spent 20 years driving her ex around. “Then we split and he learns to drive, buys a car, gets a flat, and cooks. I did it all before.” Her ex now has a new partner and Lucie sees a marked difference in how he behaves towards her. “He now picks his new girlfriend up and she’s treated like a queen! I put up with being his mother/wife for decades and it’s very irritating.”
“Sure, maybe he is now emotionally available — but only because i told him to go to therapy!”
For some people, however, the past doesn’t always stay in the past.
Rekindling an old flame
Take Chloe’s experience: she matched with her university ex-boyfriend on Hinge. “We reconnected for a while, slept together. I wanted to be friends, he ended up wanting more, messy,” she tells me.
Chloe and her ex had remained amicable since breaking up at university, so when he left a funny comment on one of her photos on Hinge, she decided to match “out of curiosity and pure shock because he’d been in a relationship since we broke up at uni.”
“It was a very serendipitous reconnection,” Chloe says. “This kicked off a spring/summer of hanging out that kind of peaked in us ultimately wanting different things out of it.” The pair are still in touch, but it’s not the same. Chloe’s in a new relationship now. “It makes me sad but I kind of know I have to accept it’s not really fair on him or my partner for us to be as close as we were.”
Chloe has no regrets over her decision to rekindle things. “It was cool to kind of revisit my uni self,” she adds.
Not everyone is on good terms with their ex, however. On a dating app, Nina spied an ex-situationship who’d ghosted her, so matched to see what would happen. “He even used a photo I took of him for his profile,” she says. Nina’s curiosity ultimately led to confirmation that this ex hadn’t changed. She got “radio silence” despite matching.
So, should we match with exes out of curiosity, just “for the story,” or to be messy? Experts don’t advise it (shocking I know!).
Is it a bad idea to match with an ex?
Zachary Zane, Grindr’s sex and relationship expert, says: “If you’re on a swipe-based app, swipe left. For the love of God, don’t swipe right ‘just to see if they do!’ Disengage!”
“If, for some reason, they reach out to you on the app, feel free to reply, ‘Hey, I’m still hurt and not in a place where we can talk at the moment, but I’ll reach out if anything changes,'” Zane advises. “It’s honest, to the point, and should hopefully discourage them from reaching out further. Boundaries are important!”
What should you do if seeing your ex has upset you? “If seeing the profile of your ex on a dating app dysregulates your nervous state and sends you into an anxiety loop/frenzy, then don’t freakin’ engage. Block and move on,” Zane says. “What if he/she/they saw you and then realized you blocked them? Who freakin’ cares! You two are exes.”
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Marsh Goei, chief dating officer at dating app Breeze says seeing a past love on an app can make the dating world feel small, but it’s more common than we realise. “First, don’t panic. It happens to most of us, and while it might stir up uncomfortable feelings, remember: you’re in control. You don’t have to engage, swipe right, or start a conversation. Just swipe away and keep moving.”
Give yourself permission to step back, Goei adds. Close the app, throw your phone across the sofa, go for a walk. If it’s still bothering you, talk to a friend. “Chances are they’ve had a similar experience, whether spotting an ex on an app, on a date, or on social media. Sharing those feelings with someone who understands can be surprisingly healing,” says Goei.
If it makes you feel better, I’ve seen exes on pretty much all the apps. I’ve also had the misfortune of bumping into not one, but two exes in person in the same pub on the same night. It was a lot. Yeah, I went home and threw up. What else can you do in that situation?
Anyway! Ultimately, what you do when confronted with an ex is entirely up to you. If you’re on good terms and you feel there’s unfinished business, it’s your call. But if this is someone who’s hurt you, caused you emotional pain, treated you badly, curiosity might just kill the cat. So swipe on past and don’t give it another thought.