Five date disasters that put me off apps forever

This month marks Tinder's 10th anniversary, but the dating revolution it triggered hasn't all been love and romance. And after eight years of dodgy swiping, Abha Shah has had enough

- Abha Shah

HAVE you tried Wednesdays yet?" a well-meaning married friend asked. "You mean Thursday, the dating app? No point," I replied, before changing the subject.

We had been discussing my dismal love life, and how to defibrillate it, but the truth is, I have zero time or patience left for dating apps. I haven't for a good few years, and singledom has been much more fun for it.

Sure, the going was good at first rifling through London's buffet of bachelors on the commute was more fun than Candy Crush. But the novelty wore off when it became clear that choosing beaus based on five photos and a snappy bio is the digital dating version of opening Pandora's Box.

All manner of horrors lay within; some resulted in simply bad dating stories to be rolled out for dinner parties, while others were pushed to the back of Room 101 inside my head.

After eight-odd years on and off the Waltzer ride of online dating, I quit for good. It was more for my mental health than anything: there's only so many toe-curlingly bad dates one woman can go on before feeling her sanity slip.

I'm not just talking about general dating fatigue; the sort that comes from banal chat, whiny entitlement, sexism, mansplaining and gas lighting. It was the race fetishisation that did it for me. It only happened a handful of times, but that was enough to delete the apps for good. These were not my kind of people.

And it's not just me limping off the battlefield. There was the mate who was sent an unsolicited nude; so far, so depressingly normal - except the bits in question were displayed, unfathomably, in a chastity belt. Another had a date who claimed to be an MI5 agent and used it as an excuse to end their drinks abruptly. One friend was accused of being "too powerful"; apparently her confidence gave him anxiety s**ts.