At the end of 2017, after hurtling full-speed out of a seven-year-long relationship, I became a single adult for the first time in my life. Both electrified and mildly overwhelmed by the newfound liberation, I decided to get organized and make myself a catalog of singlehood goals-a sort of dating bucket list of all the things I wanted to try out but had never been able to best place in Canada for cougar dating while cooped up in the high tower of long-term heterosexual monogamy.

Immediately topping my list were two desires: 1) Try dating apps, and 2) Explore dating women. I’d been curious about the former ever since their invention and curious about the latter ever since, well, forever. At some point, I’d acquired the knowledge that Bumble was one of the least sketchy dating apps on the market. So one day in January, I set up my first-ever dating profile and set it [...]