Maybe Don’t Spend Your Life Savings Meeting Some Dude From Tinder

24-year-old blows her budget to meet her online boo

The #1 thing women are not supposed to do to other women these days is judge their choices, but this piece, about a 24-year-old who spent her life-savings in an attempt to meet a guy she’d known only a few months via a dating app, is testing me. Lord give me strength.

Woman Spends Life Savings To Fly From Prague To Denver To Meet a Tinder Date

There are so many “first of all”s crowding my head that I can hardly figure out which one to pick.

• FIRST OF ALL you’re 24 and he’s 42 and you’ve never met in real life and you live on different continents. Maybe just Skype for a while first??
• FIRST OF ALL don’t spend your life savings flying to DENVER.

• FIRST OF ALL don’t spend your life savings on anything! But especially not a second-tier city. Don’t @ me, Denver, you know I’m right. You’re fine, but you’re nothing to empty a retirement account over.
• And especially especially on a guy you haven’t even met in person!

In high school, a friend of mine convinced me to go meet her older Internet boyfriend IRL on her behalf, because she felt like she was so in love with him that if they met, they’d have to have sex, and she had promised her parents not to have sex with anyone before she turned 18. I was her proxy, and possibly I was nuts for agreeing, but I was really into other people’s drama then, so I went. It was okay! I didn’t die; he and I had a nice afternoon at the zoo. (I chose a public place so it would be harder for him to axe-murder me.) Then, after he didn’t axe-murder me, she decided to meet him after all, and — TWIST — she didn’t actually like him that much in person! She broke up with him soon after. Subsequently, over IM, he asked if I would like him to take care of my pesky virginity problem for me because he was good at that. THIS IS ALL TRUE. The moral of the story is, people are different in real life than online. Also, never be a teenager. (Possibly my mother is encountering this story for the first time. Sorry Mom!)

Oh, and hey, Bravo, way to turn the skeeziness factor up to 11 from the start.

Experts say you’re not supposed to go chasing guys — but one woman flew from her home in Prague, Czech Republic to Denver, Colorado, to meet a man she met on Tinder.

Veronika Dolezelova, 24, revealed she spent her savings to fly 5,000 miles around the world to meet Bryan Davis, 42, in March. The two ended up not meeting in the middle after Bryan had to catch a 12-hour flight back to his home in Denver and didn’t have time to see Veronika, she explains on her blog.

But she planned to stay in America for three weeks, and they met and fell in love. They went on dates to the Rocky Mountains and local bars and restaurants.

Oh, “experts” say women shouldn’t chase men? What experts? St. Paul of Tarsus? Josh Harris? Give me a break.

My objection to this story is that Bravo, despite its initial retro prudery, frames it as romance done right (like Veronika, who hashtags one Instagram #ModernFairyTale), whereas it strikes me more as potentially major life decisions done wrong. Veronika’s father agrees with me, by the way. She recounts in a sort of blithe, offhand way that he was furious because she could have been raped, abducted, or killed. UH HUH. Because that shit happens, Veronika! In the real-life version of a #ModernFairyTale, Sleeping Beauty has been roofied. But maybe her dad is also pissed because when your kid has done the hard work of saving thousands of dollars, you want her to reap the rewards, not blow it all on a whim. That’s for trust-fund kids.

Veronika says she’s already saving up for the next trip, which makes me hyperventilate a little. Lady, your boyfriend is 42. Let him pay to visit you this time. Focus on replenishing your FOF or your retirement accounts instead, maybe? 65 isn’t as far away as you think.

I don’t know, am I being a fuddy-duddy? Tell me the most romantic thing you’ve ever splurged on. Tell me how you have no regrets. After all, in the long-running battle of Things vs. Experiences, ❤️ LOVE ❤️ is the ultimate experience. Even if that does sound like a line straight out of Pepe Le Pew.

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