Grindr didn’t break me but it did expose something

This isn’t written from the outside looking in.

It’s written from inside the room.

I’ve been part of the LGBT community my entire adult life. I’ve used the apps. A lot. I’ve benefited from them, relied on them, escaped into them. I’ve matched, ghosted, been ghosted, blocked, desired, rejected, and validated - sometimes all in the same week.

So this isn’t judgement.

It’s recognition.

For a long time, the apps felt like connection. Or at least the closest thing to it. They felt like access. Freedom. Choice. Especially in a world where many of us grew up feeling hidden, unsafe, or unwanted.

In that context, the apps made sense.

But somewhere along the line, something shifted.

What I see now - and what I feel in my body - is less about sexuality and more about behaviour. About nervous systems that learned to survive early and never quite got the memo that the danger had passed.

The apps run on speed, judgement, and performance.

Thumbnail decisions.

Instant validation.

Instant rejection.

You are reduced to a face, a body, an age, a moment.

And if you stay in that environment long enough, it starts to shape how you see yourself.

I know it did for me.

I noticed how quickly I began to anticipate rejection. How I’d brace for it before it even happened. How a match could lift my mood for an hour, and an unmatch could quietly sink it - even when I told myself I didn’t care.

I noticed how easy it became to confuse attention with intimacy.

How physical connection became a shortcut to relief.

How scrolling became a habit rather than a desire.

At times, it was escapism.

At times, it was dopamine.

At times, it was loneliness dressed up as choice.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth I had to face:

I wasn’t always using the apps because I wanted to meet someone.

Sometimes I was using them because I didn’t want to sit with myself.

That doesn’t make me weak.

It makes me human.

What’s particularly painful is that this all happens inside a community that knows rejection better than most. A community built on shared experiences of shame, hiding, and exclusion. And yet - without realising it - we’ve recreated those same dynamics.

Just faster.

Shinier.

With better lighting.

There’s an unspoken hierarchy at play.

Youth. Bodies. Image. Status.

Most people don’t enforce it consciously. They’re not cruel - they’re conditioned. Swiping for validation. Matching for reassurance. Blocking instead of communicating because it’s easier not to feel.

I’ve done it too.

But as I’ve done deeper inner work - eight years of psychotherapy, a lot of uncomfortable honesty - the apps have slowly lost their grip on me. Not because I’m “above” them, but because I can feel what they cost me.

I can feel when something pulls me away from myself rather than towards connection.

I don’t want to be a thumbnail anymore.

I don’t want to be someone else’s distraction.

And I don’t want intimacy that collapses the moment it asks for presence.

That doesn’t make me anti-dating.

And it doesn’t make me anti-sex.

It just means I’m no longer willing to confuse intensity with intimacy.

Maybe the apps aren’t the problem.

Maybe they’re just mirrors.

And what they reflect back at us - if we’re brave enough to look - is a community still learning how to feel safe without performing.