A friend and I were talking today.

He’s the guy who edits my words. I’m sure he’s editing these words right now, and I’m sure he’s chuckling.

I think to myself as he’s editing these words, it must be really fun to be able to edit your best friend’s words.

Brett is somebody I’ve known since I was seven years old.

To be able to see him grow as a man, to be able to see myself grow along with him, has been a great experience.

It must be fun to be able to read your best friend’s private thoughts 24/7. I never really thought about this until now, about my relationship with my best friend and editor, Brett.

From 6th to 8th grade we were inseparable. He would sleep over at my house as much as possible. His mom was as crazy as my mom, but my mom at least gave him a stable household. A house where he felt warmth, and love, and comfort and safety.

I’m sure as he’s editing this right now he’s reflecting and probably thinking the same way I am. I love having a friend like him. I appreciate having a friend like him.

I honor him as a person. He’s loyal, he’s amazing, and he better not edit any of this out.

Today, during one of the many phone conversations we have over the course of a day, he told me he’s going on a 30-day purge. I was wondering what that purge was.

He said he was purging Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and any other swipe related addiction.

I asked him why.

He told me he doesn’t need the distraction. It’s a distraction, a false sense of having a dating life.

I thought about it, and I realized he’s right. It’s a total false sense of having a dating life. It’s not really a dating life at all.

You get on, you see pictures, you never really meet the ones that you most want to meet. It seems like the one you most want, the person in the picture that you like best, always seems to get away from you.

Maybe they have a swipe right blister and missed you that day.

But you never get the one you want.

It’s an illusion. It becomes an addiction, something that you think you have to do every single day. It feels like you have a dating life.

Sometimes you’ll connect with someone you think you want. You hope they’re as good as their picture. You get into a text conversation, a deep text conversation.

It’s exciting to see strangers convey their thoughts on a screen or the phone.

You get excited, you give out your number, or you take their number, and nothing happens.

It’s a fucking illusion.

That’s all it is. It makes you feel that you’re dating because you’ve got conversation going on, text conversations.

It’s all a bunch of bullshit.

Unless you’re actually seeing somebody, unless you’re actually going to meet that person, it’s just a bunch of words on a screen.

The reason we don’t ever meet is because we’ve all been lied to so many times.

Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid, Match.com, people lie through their fucking teeth.

Women take angle shots. They lie about their age. They lie about what they want. Everybody puts up the perfect versions of themselves.

The quality people, the ones who are evolved, will put in that they only want a long-term relationship, that they’ve done the work. But then there’s the angry one. The angry one will tell you no hook-ups, no games, no this, no that.tinder-logo

Anger, anger, anger.

So you’re dealing with all that. All that energy is piled into one little screen.

The screen, it’s like our screen of life. We’re so addicted to the screen of life. We can kill hours a day staring at it. When we are not staring at it, we want to stare at it. We are addicted to the illusion of who we could meet on that little screen, through Tinder, Bumble, and the rest.

It’s time to put it down.

It’s time to unfriend yourself from the validations of dating sites and social media.

Unfriend yourself from all these sites and feel the energy of the people around you. That’s what life is. Love and energy is circulating around you and when you’re sitting there on Tinder having pretend relationships, pretend dating, you’re not allowing people to see the beautiful person that you are.

Going back to my friend Brett, I know the beautiful person that he is and there’s nothing greater than seeing him in a relationship. A relationship based on love. A relationship of equality that makes him feel like the king. A relationship that makes him feel like the amazing man he is.

I commend him for putting down the addiction. I commend him for putting down the false sense of hope that Tinder and Bumble and Hinge and online dating brings.

Go out and experience life. Experience energy and allow yourself to be seen, because we never know when this ride is going to end.