u/Altruistic_Society99

Last week I was on vacation and did some calisthenics in a park by the beach. I have a short video where I do some and wondered if it could be something acceptable for my OLD profile (Hinge) or if it's perceived as a "gym selfie - left swipe" kind of thing.

I want to add it because I value physical exercise and also (as most men) I don't have that many recent pics/videos and this sows accurately who I am atm. Just double guessing because I read a lot of negativity about gym/sports pictures.

My ex-girlfriend, who I broke up with about two months ago because she wanted to open our relationship, just reached out to me. Back then, she framed it as needing to “explore,” not wanting to feel restricted, all the usual language. I wasn’t comfortable with it, so I ended things. Now she’s come back saying she’s “experimented enough” and is ready to have a closed, committed relationship with me.

I’m honestly struggling with how to process that. On one hand, I still care about her and part of me wants to believe she’s figured things out and knows what she wants now. On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that I was basically the stable option she put on hold while she tried other people. The wording especially bothers me, like I’m something she can come back to once she’s satisfied her curiosity.

What’s making it more confusing is that some people around me are telling me I’m overthinking it. They say I should be more open-minded, that experimenting at this age is normal, even healthy, and that my reaction comes from outdated ideas about relationships. Some have even framed it as a control issue, like expecting exclusivity is somehow treating a partner as something you own rather than respecting their autonomy.

Would you even consider it?

One thing people don’t like to admit is how much extreme attention changes perception. On most dating apps, many women are dealing with a volume of likes and messages that no human brain is really built to process. When you’re exposed to that kind of abundance, it’s almost inevitable that individuals start to blur together. You’re no longer engaging with a person, you’re scanning options.

The problem is that this environment quietly normalizes behaviors that, outside of apps, would be considered rude or dysfunctional. Ghosting, minimal effort, one-word replies, treating conversations as disposable, all of that becomes standard because there’s always another option waiting. If you have 50 new likes by the end of the day, the incentive to invest in any one interaction drops close to zero. It’s not that every woman behaves this way, but the structure of the apps makes it very easy for those patterns to emerge and feel justified.

And over time, that level of attention can start to distort expectations. When you’re constantly being validated at scale, it’s easy to internalize that as a reflection of your overall desirability, rather than a byproduct of how the platform works. Again, this isn’t about blaming individuals as much as recognizing the environment. But pretending this dynamic doesn’t exist doesn’t help either.

It usually takes 15 days for Bumble to send your data after you request it. Unlike any other app, Bumble lets you know your outcoming yes, outcoming no, incoming yes and incoming no stats (the likes you send, the passes you send, the likes you receive, the passes you receive).

I thought it'd be funny to share these stats, see how other's are doing (also wondering if anyone's doing worse than me LMAO).

• Outgoing "yes" 215
• Outgoing "no" 622
• Incoming "yes" 176
• Incoming "no" 2803

According to these stats I swipe right 25,6% of the time and I'm swiped right 5,9% of the time. I'm 25M, live in london and have been using Bumble for ~2 months.