Meet someone online? Here are some adoptable meet-cutes for your couple story

When you’re in a new (but not TOO new) relationship, you really want to bask in your coupledom. Like, once you’re making official introductions to all your friends and family it feels so good and official and real, you know? There’s only one awkward snag: the story of how you met your boyfriend (or girlfriend, or your whateverfriend, plug in the pronouns most applicable to you) kind of begins and end with swiping right.

And hey, you shouldn’t feel bad if you met your new beau on OkMatchdotTinderHinge! That’s not only pretty normal these days, it’s sort of the new adorable “just met while reaching for pasta at the grocery store.”  Just because I don’t personally use tech to get dates (read: I don’t date, ever) doesn’t mean that, um…. literally everyone else doesn’t. In a way, it’s basically how our generation dates now. It’s not embarrassing at all. It’s fine, dude. It’s fine.

However, for every friend who met her S.O. on an app there’s seemingly a cover-up story to go with the relationship. You know, “We met on Tinder, but I tell people that…” blah blah blah. And if you’re still in insecure about how you met, don’t worry. I have some adorable meet-cutes for you to use instead, torn right from the scenes of 500 Days Of Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Instead of Saying You Messaged Them On OkCupid You Can Say…

You had gotten all dolled up for a full Sunday of errands, with freshly curled hair and a black peter pan collar dress with silver buttons, very Miss Mary Mack. Of course once you left the cafe after grabbing breakfast it was pouring out, of course it was the day you wore suede ankle strap heels (in the rain, can you imagine?). Well, just as you’re about to start embarking on a tragic, waterlogged trip to Barnes and Nobles, this person walks up behind you with an umbrella and offers to walk you there. You were so shocked at the resuscitation of chivalry, but you got to talking and apparently you had the same major in college and love of new wave cinema. When you reached the book store they asked you out, and to this day you credit them for saving your suede heels. TEE HEE.

Instead of Saying You Were A Tinder Match You Can Say…

You were at Keg & Lantern with your friends and the bartender crowdsourced what game he should put on. You, ever the extrovert, said “The Patriots game!” at the same time the person next to you said “The Giants game!” Say whaaaat? Incidentally, it was the same game, with opposing framing. Still, despite your differences in sports fandom, you decided they were kind of cute, and declared that the loser had to buy the winner a drink. Your victory IPA was delicious, and you’ve been inseparable ever since.

Instead Of Saying Hinge Hooked You Up You Can Say…

You dropped your iPod at a show and they picked it up. Stirred that you have the same taste in post-punk (and the same dedication to using a separate mp3 player instead of your smartphone for music) they went up to every head-bobbing crowd member (all 13 of them) looking for this mystery person. Nobody took claim of the iPod but as they walked out the door of the club he noticed you hysterically crying to the bouncer to let you back in. Your entire life was on that iPod, there were Cocteau Twins B-sides that you can’t just re-download frivolously. Sure enough, they returned the iPod to you, and your gratitude (and mutual taste in music) turned into a ~relationship.~

Instead Of Saying A Match Algorithm Set You Up You Can Say…

You met on the French Riviera. It doesn’t even matter if you know what a “riviera” means, nobody’s gonna question something that sounds so aggressively romantic.

Instead Of Saying You Picked Him Out On Bumble You Can Say…

You were writing in Starbucks and he was writing in Starbucks and you were having a coy eye-sex session the entire time. He eventually got up to leave, just as you summoned the courage to get up and give him your number. Unfortunately you are SO GOSH DARN clumsy that you knocked over the remnants of your caramel macchiato and had to struggle to soak it up with handfuls of brown napkins. He ever-so-gallantly rushed to help you, and then admitted he had actually ordered you another coffee already…to be delivered with his phone number. SWOON.

Or Instead Of Imagining An Elaborate How-We-Met Story, You Can Say…

That the story that truly matters is the one that you build every day as a couple, and you will not let society make you feel strange because you were able to leverage technology to your romantic benefit. It’s 2016, and the reality is that things don’t work the way they do in a Nora Ephron film. You’re very happy with your new S.O., and you two looking towards the future, not in the past where people and their archaic ideas of love are.

Also, you swiped right.