Bumping into your ex on Hinge.

I’m realising that though break ups are technically the opposite of a relationship, in reality they’re very similar; it’s just a series of first replaced by another series of first.

I bumped into my ex on Hinge. That’s not how you say it but that’s how it felt. You bump into ex’s IRL, in Pret or Tesco or on the Northern line coming back from getting a smear test wearing tracksuit bottoms and no make up. You don’t “bump” into him in the palm of your hand. I stumbled across my ex-boyfriend on a mobile phone application designed for single people to find each other without needing to leave their home. Monday afternoon, at my kitchen table. I’d opened the app to avoid writing an email and there he was. No worse than that, he was in my “STANDOUTS” or as Hinge describes it: “a bonus batch of people most your type”. Even the algorithm thinks we belong together.

Five photos and three captions that I can meticulously walk you through because the first thing I did was screenshot them and send them to my friend Ophelie with the caption “LOL”- which is millennial morse code for: “I NEED A LARGE GLASS OF WINE AND A DEBRIEF”.