Are we all being swindled?

Thoughts on dating, the Tinder Swindler, & football-related head injuries.

I would like to preface this by saying if there is someone on earth who knows the absolute least about football, I am she. It’s not that I’m necessarily anti-sports or actively trying to avoid sports, it’s more that my brain and body reject them entirely. On the rare occasion I find myself watching a sports event, I ask the person on the couch next to me for a brief low-down of how the game works. And the moment they begin to explain, my brain goes completely blank and I hear a loud whooshing noise. 

My preferred forms of entertainment are as follows: gentle sitcoms, Tik Toks about vintage home decor, YouTube videos about music theory, reality shows about rich people being mean to each other, jigsaw puzzles, and badly produced Netflix crime documentaries. If you haven’t heard of The Tinder Swindler, you don’t have to watch it because I did and I’m going to tell you about it. 

The Tinder Swindler follows several beautiful blonde women who are debilitatingly out of touch with reality. They believe in love at first sight, in finding prince charming, and in ignoring red flags the size of circus tents. They are lovable idiots and I see a lot of myself in them. 

The primary subject of the show is one of the Tinder Swindler’s victims, Cecile. She meets a man (the Swindler) on Tinder (you’re welcome). He is visibly wealthy, incredibly successful, and wildly charming. They have a wonderful first date that lasts days and includes a trip on his private jet. They fall in love and start dating exclusively. This is when the swindling begins. 

Unfortunately for Cecile, over the past few years, her new boyfriend has been perfecting a long con in which he pretends to be a part of a world-renown family of jewelers involved in several international, jewel-related conflicts (If you want more specifics, I encourage you to look them up. It’s really just top-notch drama). 

Because of his extremely high-power business dealings, he has “enemies” out for him. In order to safely relocate and escape from these enemies, he explains to Cecile, he needs to use her bank information for undisclosed trips, purchases, and super-secret-big-boy-business deals. Over the span of months, this man cons her out of tens (maybe hundreds?) of thousands of dollars—all spent on lavish vacations with several equally clueless women. I watched the whole thing in one day, scoffing at these women because I, a genius, would never fall for such a ploy.

But then, towards the end of the documentary, Cecile makes a comment about how she is still on Tinder, still looking for love. Isn’t it funny? She muses. Funny how we always come back to love, searching for more no matter how badly we’ve been hurt. 

This, to be honest, upset me quite a bit. Here I am, thinking that I’m ever so superior to these women. That I’m more clever. I would never trust a man I hardly know with my money! I’m very perceptive! But suddenly I could relate to Cecile. Sure, I have never given thousands of dollars to an Israeli jewelry-mogul-imposter, but I have been hurt. Taken advantage of. Lied to and led astray. Swindled!! 

And yet I still get excited about the prospect of meeting new people. Getting butterflies when the latest of my love interests sends me a text. I walk into romantic encounters with the hope and optimism of a person brand new to this Earth. I come back every time for more, acknowledging how bad it hurt the last time but persisting nonetheless. And I don’t even get private jet trips, million-dollar diamond earrings, or bottle service in Mykonos for my troubles. 

Cecile goes on to explain that we reenter love ready as ever—fresh-faced with endless fountains of clear, untainted love to give. But this is where I have to disagree with my best friend, Cecile. After brutal breakups and horror-movie-style endings, we return to love different than we were before. Haggard and tired, paranoid and full of new superstitions, hardened and constantly looking over our shoulders. Enter, my incredibly limited knowledge of football. 

One aspect of football that has always fascinated and terrified me is the medical condition, CTE. For those of you who are not super-in-the-know sports girls, I’ll try to explain. As it turns out, spending years charging headfirst into 300-lb men and having your head slammed into the ground is really not great for your brain. After several concussions, the brain (literally) doesn’t bounce back the way it used to. Permanent brain damage occurs, sometimes resulting in drastic behavior changes: memory loss and confusion, mood swings, violent outbursts, anxiety, agitation, and generally bad vibes.  

But these football players—locked into contracts, making millions of dollars, receiving sponsorships and ad deals, and holding onto their undying love for The Game—continue to play as their brains and bodies fail. (This is, of course, putting aside the deeply problematic and racist politics at the root of the professional sports industry*). They march forward into every game, giving it their all, despite the fact that they’re on concussion number 27 and can’t remember their own names.

Unfortunately for Cecile, this, I feel, is a better representation of what love is like. After all of the groundbreaking sex and nights spent staring into each other’s eyes and championship games and races to the Super Bowl. After all of the screaming fights and jealousy and betrayal and four-man pileups and head traumas. We know just how good love and victory can feel and we’re willing to fight for it and spend four hours every day in the gym and sit through first dates—torturing ourselves just to try and feel the high again. 

But we’re different this time. We’re more jealous and more self-conscious, maybe a little bit slower, and behaving more erratically due to compounding invisible injuries from the last time around. After being lied to and betrayed or gravely injured, it’s impossible to reenter the game with the same zest and enthusiasm we originally held. We tread lightly and cautiously with our own internal rule books and shortcomings we keep buried deep. 

And if we step back too far and think “Why the fuck am I doing this to myself?” everything would come crumbling down. Because then what? Where do you turn after decades of playing football professionally? An office job? Maybe we commit ourselves to a life of solidarity, but what do we do when a seemingly perfect stranger comes along? Say “no thanks” in the hopes of avoiding further agony? 

So we trudge forward, out of fear of a world without it. Out of habit. Out of necessity and maybe also masochism. 

Hi! While you’re here, I highly recommend checking out this article about racism and the exploitation of Black athletes. I went into a YouTube hole as well and stumbled across this video that offers a really valuable, first-person account of the objectification of Black men’s bodies. Whether you love sports or don’t care at all about them I think it’s interesting and necessary to unpack these things!