SEX FILES: I spent a week on Tinder in Italy and here's what I learned

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My Italian adventure began the moment I stepped out of the Rome airport and fell flat on my face. Cue the handsome stranger who helped me to my feet. It was a classic meet-cute that set the tone for the entire trip. 

I’d come to the Eternal City with a single mission: to reset my love life and spend a week dating like an Italian (ideally with a side of truffle carbonara). 

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The idea struck me while I was mindlessly swiping on Tinder. Bored, I opened Passport Mode – a feature that lets you change your location and match with people anywhere in the world. Think of it as dating app teleportation. Soon, I was swiping through singles in London, Paris, and Medellin. But it was Italy that stole my heart. Gone were the usual dirty mirror selfies and bearded hipsters who made Forrest Gump after his cross-country run look like a GQ model. Instead, I found well-groomed, sharply dressed men – and even better, I was matching with them left, right, and centre. 

I’ve been single for two years, with the only highlights being two comically bad dates: a recovering sex addict who led with that fun fact and a “pervy Picasso” who texted me hand-drawn sketches of his genitals (yes, an analog dick pic). If anything was going to pull me out of my cynicism, it was a new setting and a well-deserved vacation. 

Seated on a patio, my first morning in Rome, I panicked. Should I have arranged more dates in advance? My fears were unfounded. I started swiping. Before my entree arrived, I was chatting with three different men and had a date lined up for the following night. 

Date number one, a divorced dad with kind eyes, picked me up with his Vespa. Minutes later, I was living my rom-com fantasy as we zipped through the streets of Rome. He took me to his favourite pizzeria. What surprised me, after avoiding dating for so long, was how easy it felt. He passed me a slice of pizza, and I bit into it heartily. We strolled through Trastevere with gelato, then rode to Janiculum Hill to see the city from above. 

Behind us, an elderly man sang a rendition of Rod Stewart’s Forever Young with a thick Italian accent. I couldn’t help but laugh. Dating in Canada, I’m hypervigilant, always waiting for the next shoe to drop. With the city lights stretched out before us and my date’s hand around my waist, I felt myself soften. 

Still riding the high, I opened Tinder and lined up date number two. Like the first, he arrived on a Vespa. There’s a saying: “how you drive is how you make love,” and if that’s true, this man was a human espresso shot. Much like the cafe where we downed our coffee standing up, his driving style was chaotic, intense, and over too quickly. As we whipped through Rome at warp speed, my increasingly sweaty hands struggling to stay gripped on the bike, one thought took hold: it didn’t matter how cute this guy was, if I feared for my life, this wasn’t going to work. 

For date three, I needed a control sample. I met a handsome academic who splits his time between Italy and North America. His driving was fast enough to get my heart racing, but smooth enough to make me feel secure with my arms around him. There was dinner, gelato, conversation, and more strolling. Without a language barrier, I felt freer to reveal the messier, truthful parts of myself. The night ended with a makeout session outside my hotel. I wanted him to ask to come up, but the fact that he didn’t made it even sexier. 

It quickly became clear what was missing back home: the slow burn of romance. Dating often feels transactional – even a simple dinner can leave me wondering what my date expects in return. But in Italy, the men didn’t want more than my time, attention, and the shared joy of the moment – something that was surprisingly easy to give. 

Over a bottle of wine and perfectly al dente rigatoni, I recapped my dates to my friend, a Rome local. Was all this romance…normal? 

“The shenanigans start around date three, but at least you’ll have some hot sex before you find out his mom still cooks all his meals,” she said, sipping her wine. “Also, during the pandemic, the dick pics were not analog.” 

My Italian dates let me revel in romance and possibility. Maybe it would all go to hell eventually, but in the meantime, there were new people to meet, pasta to eat, and Vespa rides to enjoy.