How To Call Off a Dating App ‘Thing’

Is a break-up still a break-up if you weren’t ever really together? 

Do you owe a dating app fling the same grace as someone who’s already involved in your world? 

Be honest: meeting on Tinder, Hinge, or Bumble can often lead us to immediately relegate a less-serious status to a romantic endeavour. 

When you meet people online it’s easy to forget that they’re real people too. We scroll, we judge. Suddenly, people are products. You feel like the main character, and your Tinder matches are just the fun extra plot lines you’ll someday forget. 

But when people are putting their feelings, bodies and reputations on the line you do owe them basic respect. And if you’ve gone beyond just messaging and have actually met up then you definitely owe them more than just dipping. 

What a “thing” can even be defined as is hotly debated, but most people seem to agree that it means you’ve hung out a few times.

A “thing” probably isn’t someone you’ve introduced to a bunch of your mates, or someone you’d invite on a trip to the family bach. Maybe you see each other a few times a week, but it’s mostly spent horizontally. Maybe you’re catching up once a month but talk a lot online when you’re both bored. You might be keeping things at a distance because you know they’re not someone you see as a long term partner – or because you’re only invested in casual dating – but that doesn’t mean there are no feelings involved whatsoever. 

People don’t need to be in love to be affected by rejection. We can be hurt by someone we don’t have strong feelings for. And there’s never a guarantee that the way you feel is the same way the other person feels. So calling a casual thing quits doesn’t mean you get to throw out any sense of caution or care. 

The biggest hurdle at hand is deciding whether you actually have to tell them you’re not interested in anything serious.

Assuming that they’re not gonna care if you just disappear off the face of the Earth isn’t being considerate of what the other person is feeling. At the end of the day, you don’t know what’s really going on with them, and they might be invested enough that ghosting could really affect them negatively. 

If you’re ready to pull the plug, don’t just let it fade out and hope for the best. It’s not a problem if you’ve only been messaging and things just fizzled, but when you’ve crossed into the territory of grabbing a drink or coffee, you owe them a message to say you’re calling it off. 

If the thing has been going for months though… a message probably won’t cut it. But a mutually casual or early days dating situation is one of the rare instances where it’s the norm to end it in a message. 

Most of the time, the message itself is awkward territory on both ends, but it’s better than nothing. Whether it’s best to say you’re “not interested”, “don’t see it going further” or “would like to end things” is up to you – it’s never nice to receive a message like that (unless it’s a relief that they’re not interested, which probably means you should've already ended things). As long as you’re being honest and gentle then you’ve done your best. 

Don’t criticise them in the message and don’t give them false hope for the future by using the “not interested in dating right now” line. 

If you haven’t made the switch to texting or messaging on something other than the dating app you met on, then obviously using the app to end it is the only option. But if you have already started talking somewhere else, then stick with the new platform when you send that final message. If you’re the only person they’re dating, they might not be checking their apps anymore or have their notifications on for things like Hinge and Bumble. You run the risk they won’t see the message, which sucks for them and could be very awkward for you. 

While keeping the other person's feelings in mind is important, it’s also on them to accept that you’ve ended it. There’s nothing wrong with unfollowing them on other socials or unmatching them after you’ve both had your final say.

Everyone is different and will interpret things differently – so if you’re the one ending it, try to think about what they would want. It’s impossible to know for sure. You might be fine with someone fading out and never reappearing, but someone who’s sent you a lot of messages full of affectionate language is probably going to be most satisfied with a thoughtful message. Someone you’ve slept with will probably feel like shit if you disappear without talking to them first. When you’re the one who’s moving on, it’s not about you. If you’ve been spending time together you’ve probably picked up on enough about who they are emotionally to know what the right thing to do is. 

A dating app “thing” comes with endless complications and ending it is just one of them. Save yourself the trouble of a dodgy exit and bow out gracefully. Be smart, don’t be an arse and remember there’s a person behind every profile. Even the ones who only have pictures at bottomless brunch. 

Own the Feels is brought to you by #LoveBetter, a campaign funded by the Ministry for Social Development.

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa. You can find her @rachellydiab on IG and Letterboxd and see her film criticism on Youtube.