Michelle Obama Says You Can't Meet the Love of Your Life on Tinder: here's why she's wrong

Michelle Obama says you can't meet the love of your life on Tinder: here's why she's wrong

"You can't Tinder your way into a long-term relationship" former First Lady Michelle Obama said on her podcast this week.

Obama claimed that the key to a lasting relationship is to be "honest about wanting to be with [somebody], to date them seriously, to plan on making a commitment." Something which, apparently, cannot be achieved through dating apps.

Now I don't have anything against Michelle Obama. In terms of her role in politics she was hugely inspirational as the first ever Black First Lady, and she also achieved during this time helping women in America with their education, implementing wellness programmes, and a lot more. She seems like a nice person and I don't mean to take that away from her.

But Michelle, I'm sorry, you're wrong on this one.

Not everyone has the opportunity to meet the love of their life working together in a law firm after graduating from one of the best universities in the country. I'm glad you found your husband that way, but that certainly doesn't mean the rest of us have to follow suit.

It's incredibly insulting, particularly to the younger generation, to invalidate dating apps as a form of finding a partner. That's like saying that the only way you meet the love of your life is through coincidence or happenstance. By that logic, blind dates, being set up by friends, dating events, and websites are all incorrect ways to meet someone. 

The older generation (and I'm not calling Michelle Obama old, but you know what I mean) like to sell the fantasy that you'll meet the love of your life in a magical, pre-determined instance of all the stars aligning and destiny coming together to present you with the one you'll spend the rest of your life with. Your parents or grandparents have probably told you some amazing story of how they bumped into each other at a diner, or fell in love at first sight in a bar. It's romantic and sounds like something staight out of a fairytale. 

It's also unrealistic.

It's the 21st Century after all, and people have a lot on their plates! Not everyone has time to hang around all alone in a bar, baiting themselves out for what may be their future husband to come and introduce himself. People are busy and people have lives, and dating apps make it a lot easier to navigate an already complicated world of dating. After all, technology has influenced and improved so many other areas of our lives - why shouldn't our love lives be one of them?

But, Michelle, that's not the only issue with what you've said.

For a lot of people, the 'traditional' route of dating isn't available to them. Disabled bodied people may find it difficult to approach the world of dating, queer and nonbinary people may prefer to find like-minded individuals through apps designed for people like themselves, and women may prefer to vet some of their potential suitors and thus feel safer by using a dating app.

Dating can be an emotionally and physically dangerous space for which dating apps provide an escape from.  

Lots of disabled bodied people have spoken out about the benefits of using a dating app in terms of being upfront with their disability and seeking others in similar situations. The same benefits came be found for queer or nonbinary individuals who are able to use apps like Tinder, or even more specific ones like Grindr, with the knowledge that the people they are communicating with all want the same things they do.

Now I know this wasn't your intent, Michelle, but when you've got such an influence and platform as yourself - you really need to be careful with what it is you are saying.

Making such a bold and brash statement as "young couples, they face these challenges and they're ready to give up because they think they're broken" is such a patronising and belittling claim, it's almost laughable. 

In fact, it's entirely untrue.

The reasoning behind the use of dating apps isn't because the younger generation has given up, but is because of their huge successs. Dating apps have been proven time and time again to lead to successful, happy, and healthy relationships which last a long time.

You only need to go to Twitter and see all the tweets directed at you in response to your statements, Michelle, about couples and their successful Tinder relationships.

So much so are dating apps useful, that a study conducted by the University of Vienna actually found that couples who use dating apps to meet actually have a better dating life in comparisson to those who meet through what's deemed as more 'traditional' methods.

So what's the issue?

What's this essentially comes down to is a feeling of tiredness.

Young people are tired of having to prove their relationships and themselves to older people who think they know better, or think they have a right to impart 'wisdom' on the rest of us.

You don't.

We're perfectly happy meeting the loves of our lives through a mobile phone, thank you very much. And excuse us if we continue to do so and continue to prove you wrong.