"Standing outside the pub, 36-year-old business owner Rachel took a final tug on her vape and steeled herself to meet the man she'd spent the last three weeks opening up to. They'd matched on the dating app Hinge and built a rapport that quickly became something deeper. From the beginning he was asking very open-ended questions, and that felt refreshing, says Rachel."
"One early message from her match read: I've been reading a bit about attachment styles lately, it's helped me to understand myself better and the type of partner I should be looking for. Have you ever looked at yours? Do you know your attachment style? It was like he was genuinely trying to get to know me on a deeper level."
"Which is why the man who greeted her inside the pub polite, pleasant but oddly flat felt like a stranger. Gone was the quickfire wit and playful rhythm she'd come to expect from their exchanges. Over pints he stumbled through small talk, checked his phone a little too often, and seemed to wilt under the pressure of her questions. I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I'd never even spoken to, she says."
Rachel matched on the dating app Hinge and spent three weeks sharing thoughtful, personal conversations about attachment styles, childhood experiences, and relationship expectations. Online exchanges included late-night messages and probing, open-ended questions that created a sense of intimacy and understanding. When they met in person, the man's polite but flat demeanor, frequent phone checks, and awkward small talk clashed with the online persona. The mismatch led Rachel to suspect the messages were not authored by him, suggesting use of AI to craft convincing, vulnerable-seeming texts. The situation raises concerns about authenticity, consent, and emotional harm in modern online dating.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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