Women using the Tinder dating app are getting what they want from men – and it’s not necessarily fancy dinners or one-night stands.
Rather than seeking the perfect partner, a growing number of women are said to be ‘swiping right’ to find a man to do their household chores and DIY.
Tinder users have told how they use the App to find men to fit air conditioners, shovel snow and move furniture – all with no strings attached. Now experts believe the trend could spread to the UK.
Disillusioned by her efforts to find a suitable date on Tinder, one user, Fiona Bloom, 47, decided to try another tack. “I’ve tried speed dating and all the dating Apps, but every time I put my real age, all I get are idiots and losers,” she told the New York Post.
“I figured, why not make them useful and have them help me around the house?” She found a match with a man wearing overalls and wielding a hammer in his profile photo and invited him over to install her air conditioning.
“I wasn’t attracted to him, but he was very forthcoming,” she explained.
After he successfully carried out the installation, Bloom asked him to leave and didn’t answer his messages asking her to go on a proper date.
“Men are hard-wired to feel strong and be a provider,” she told the New York Post. “I don’t feel guilty using them for a little help.” Susan Zalkind, 27, managed to find two men on Tinder to help dig her car out after it was twice buried in snow in Boston last winter.
“In less than 15 minutes I got eleven matches and three offers,” she said, referring to a Tinder request she posted that read, “Looking for someone to shovel out my car. Nothing complicated, no strings attached, just please shovel out my car. Thanks so much.”
Ted, the first volunteer, showed up “with a shovel and an ice pick and did not kill me”, she said.
In fact, he freed her car and appeared to be happy as a reward with coffee and scones. After a second storm, she was less lucky. “I made 74 right swipes, got 35 matches, and 11 offers to shovel,” she wrote. “There were only two reliable contenders. I tried to keep an open mind – that is, until he told me he had a wife,” added Zalkind.
“In another situation, the wife thing would have been a deal-breaker. But so long as he kept digging, at least it wasn’t a total waste of my time.”
Lori, a 24-year-old social media editor from New York, found her current boyfriend by asking on Tinder for someone to install her air conditioner.
“I sent him a selfie of me sweating in my room, and he came over like a knight in shining armour,” she said of her now-boyfriend, Andrew, 28, whom she met on Tinder in 2014. “I think men really like a damsel in distress.”
Expert opinion was split over whether the App should be used to choose men for odd jobs rather than romance.
Dating site expert Marni Kinrys said she couldn’t see the harm as long as the woman was upfront about her practical needs, saying: ‘If a man thinks waxing a woman’s floors will get him action, why not? This could be a great starting point for both parties to get to know each other.’ Los Angeles-based dating coach Evan Marc Katz wasn’t so sure. “It just seems so transparently selfish,” he said. “It’s equivalent to the guy who has sex with a stranger and never calls her again. You get the wrong guy on the wrong day, and he has anger issues and yeah – it could be a bad situation,” Katz told the Post.
Kinrys warned men not to try the same trick by swiping right to get women over to cook or do the ironing.
“I know no single woman in New York City who would ever do a man’s chores… they should go on Craigslist instead.”