The lighting was blue-gray and mean, the way it gets when your phone screen is the only light in the room. I hadn’t even taken my bra off yet. Just home, just tired, just checking the app like it was a stretch.
He messaged first. No hey, no how was your day, just:
“You ever choke on it a little?”
I wish I’d made that up. I didn’t.
There was something so efficient about it, like he was placing a drive-thru order. He hadn’t earned my sarcasm, hadn’t earned my curiosity, hadn’t even bothered to fuck around with a compliment. Just straight to it.
That kind of message isn’t brave. It’s lazy. It’s the equivalent of throwing a wet sock at a wall to see if it sticks.
So I unmatched. But not before I screenshotted it and sent it to two group chats. One went quiet. The other lit up with five variations of “same.”
That’s why conversations turn sexual too fast now. No setup, no curiosity, just drive-thru lust.
“Research shows many women receive sexual messages early on dating apps.”
The Part Where I Was Also Guilty
I found the same name on Hinge two weeks later. Different pics, same vibe. I matched him again.
I wanted to see if I was right.
If it was just me, or if this was standard issue now.
So this time I opened with:
“Did we match before or do you just give off heavy déjà vu?”
He replied:
“You tasted me in a dream, didn’t you?”
So yeah. Confirmed.
But here’s where I confess something. I didn’t unmatch right away. I kept going, partly because I wanted to test him, and partly because I liked the low-stakes power of rejecting someone twice.
It was petty and a little gross, sure, but also sort of fun.
Which is how I learned something I didn’t want to admit.
There was a version of me, bored, dry-skinned, eating cold pizza off a paper towel, who wanted the attention, even if it was grossly premature. Even if it was sexual texting too early, too obvious. Even if it said nothing about me except that I was available and not asleep yet.
It was still something.
Why Do Conversations Turn Sexual Too Fast?
So why do conversations turn sexual too fast?
Because it’s easier.
Because it’s way less effort than showing curiosity. Horny can be instant. Interest takes time. And time, on dating apps, is expensive. Nobody wants to invest before they know you aren’t weird. Or worse, boring.
But what that creates is a kind of inverse intimacy. We skip the coffee small talk, skip the shared music playlists, and dive straight into “What’s your favorite position?” like it’s a compatibility check. As if knowing whether I like being pinned down tells you more about me than whether I hate cilantro.
And here’s the worse part. Sometimes that garbage works.
Not long ago, I matched with someone who opened with:
“I want to hear the noises you make when you’re close.”
I didn’t even blink. I answered. I gave him too much.
And I don’t say that with shame. I say it with a kind of clinical diagnosis.
I was tired. He was hot. It was 11:02 PM. I hadn’t been touched in months.
That’s all it took.
But two days later, when I tried to steer the conversation toward literally anything else, books, dogs, bad dreams, he ghosted.
When You Unmatch, Do They Even Notice?
There’s a special kind of silence after you unmatch someone and realize they probably didn’t care.
That’s the thing with sexual texting too early. It’s broadcast, not intimacy. If it’s not you, it’ll be someone else by sunrise.
And the inverse is true too. I’ve been the one sending something flirty just to see if it lands. Not because I cared who I was saying it to, but because I wanted a reaction. I wanted a flash of connection in the middle of an otherwise dead Tuesday.
I’ve had men I never met send me nudes. I’ve had men I did meet try to pretend they were deep after leading with “You swallow?” I’ve also done the thing where I imply I’m wild in bed just to keep a guy interested, only to later feel like I’d sold him a version of me that didn’t exist.
So maybe the issue isn’t just that conversations get sexual too soon. Maybe it’s that people are building entire connections based entirely on impulse and projection. It’s like trying to build a house out of fog.
Stop Being Flattered by Low-Effort Lust
Here’s what I do now. If someone goes sexual in the first five messages, I assess it like a recipe. What ingredients are here? Is there curiosity? Humor? Any sense that they’re talking to me, not just a body?
If not, I don’t scold. I don’t warn. I just leave.
Lust doesn’t care if I’m funny, or sharp, or restless at night. It’s not even really about me.
And maybe that’s why conversations always turn sexual too fast. Because we keep mistaking lust for connection, and then acting surprised when it dissolves the second we try to make it real.
So I stopped rewarding it. I stopped playing along.
