Why Dating Apps Slowly Destroy Your Self-Worth

A few days later, Nikki moved in with Joachim in his second apartment.

He offered her the bedroom but she refused.

The couch worked well.

After another couple of days, she had arranged a job at a café.

Joachim sat at home coding and doing what he could to try to find opportunities for the future of PlaynDate.

As a coder, he was quite absorbed in his work and after a few weeks Nikki said that as much as she appreciated seeing his adjustments in a gamified online dating app so food on the table was something a waitress could appreciate even though it was great fun to serve at work too!

He looked at her with embarrassment, but she laughed.

“That’s what happens when you live together,” she noted.

Maybe.

Offering Nikki a place to stay would have been easy.

Having her clothes and stuff scattered all over the floor would have been pretty easy.

Running into her in the shower would have been hard.

Having her there in your life was ultimately impossible.

No and no again.

He was not free from her face, scent, hair, eyes, laughter, bad humor, naive thoughts, smart thoughts, everything that was Nikki Nikki Nikki.

He was less free than ever.

But he did this to help her.

What she didn’t know was how he did everything he could to not sometimes reach out a hand or just touch her wonderful hazel hair.

She didn’t know how the nights were sleepless, and the days sometimes filled with nothing but stomach aches.

What he did know, however, was that this couldn’t go on forever.

At the same time, he couldn’t kick her out.

She seemed to notice it, too.

“I hope to find something soon,” she said over a Thai chicken in the small kitchen.

“I see you’re having a hard time.

I get it.

And you’re on Dating Line and everything.

You can’t have me here if you’re going to get a date here.

When is that going to happen?” she said in a more affirmative tone.

“This styling we talked about, shouldn’t we try it soon?

Like now?”

“I have no clothes,” he said in surprise.

“You helped me so now I’ll help you.

Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for clothes and that’s on me.

Tonight, we’ll start with hair and skin.

I have enough so we can get started.

Fun, huh?

Now you’re the guinea pig and I’m the one creating.”

He bit his lip.

She started with his hair, cutting it up and styling it before she started using gel on him.

But he wasn’t at all aware of what she was doing because he loved her touching him.
He loved it with everything he could feel, and he wanted it to never, ever end.

It was in his dreams, in his thoughts, but never here: in physical space.

Until now.

The next day they bought him clothes and with them on he looked like a new person.

Nikki seemed very pleased.

“So.

Now it’s time for you to start posting pictures on Dating Line.

“I probably need to get into this new look a little,” he said.

“Oh, it’s just a matter of accelerating.”

“Like you?”

“Maybe not like me,” she said a little more quietly, and he immediately regretted it but couldn’t get the word out of his mouth.

“I think I might find something else soon.

I’ve been talking to a guy about a one-room apartment a little way from here.”

“You can live here as long as you want,” he said immediately, realizing that he was signing his own death certificate at the same moment.

“No.

I can’t.

And you know it,” she said seriously, and he was sweating.

Did she see?

Did she know?

“I need to have my own place.

And you too.”

They went to bed in their rooms, and he slept restlessly.

When he woke up at 12, she was at work as usual, and he started to pick through her things to get some order when his phone rang and it was her.

She sounded upset.

“What is it?”

“They’re letting me go.

They can’t afford to keep me.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Maybe the real problem was never love — only the way people searched for it.