I downloaded Feeld and turns out every man wants to be a dom

Not to kink shame, but it feels a little Andrew Tate

A few weeks ago, on a whim, when I was in bed one night and had exhausted both my TikTok and Instagram feeds, I downloaded a new dating app.

When it comes to the apps, like you, I’ve tried them all, to no success.

No one likes me on Hinge (not a pity story, a true one), same goes for Raya. Meanwhile Bumble and Tinder are a gamble between getting ghosted or getting inappropriately sexted.

Back when I co-hosted a sex and relationships podcast at Cosmo - All The Way With, still available in all the usual places - I first heard about Feeld from my fellow host, Paisley.

Paisley is as effortlessly cool as her name suggests and I so desperately wished I could be her.

While I had stories like my one failed attempt at speed dating, Paisley would casually drop in that she was looking for a couple to have a threesome with on Feeld.

Now, let me just clarify something straight away. I’m not looking for multiple partners. I can’t be doing with more than 10 curious fingers.

Ultimately I just want someone who will make me a boo basket for Halloween and a brrr basket for Christmas, to keep up with the other TikTok girlies.

Like most of my female friends, I’ve given up on dating apps. But, looking for some external validation that evening, I wondered if I might have more success on Feeld as a plus-size woman.

Described as a dating app for open-minded individuals, Feeld has become more mainstream. Yes, there are people still looking for, quote on quote, “Gangbang Queens”, but others now also searching for long-term, monogamous relationships.

I wondered if these open-minded individuals would be more interested in me and not just in that awful fetishising way.

Turns out, I am way more popular on Feeld than I am on Hinge and I’m currently sitting pretty on over 500 likes.

However, that is as far as I’ve got because sieving through the list and filtering out the people who are looking to put their willy in any open cavity, I’ve found that almost every guy wants to be my daddy.

*Gently voms in mouth*

Now, it’s not that I want to kink shame anyone, I promise. I learnt a lot about dominants and subordinates in my time on that podcast and truly, I am envious of all of you that can be so openly free.

But, call me paranoid, there’s something that makes me feel uneasy after clicking on the fifth profile of a guy wanting to dominate a woman. I truly hate to bring him up, but it starts to get a little Andrew Tate.

What was supposed to be an exercise in boosting my self-esteem, has now turned into an existential crisis.

Do all men secretly just view us as sex slaves? Are we really not that different to the animals David Attenborough so softly narrates on Life On Our Planet?

Now I’m thinking about a video of this poor deer who was killed by a stag in rutting season. He wouldn’t leave her alone, he kept following her. By the end she was too exhausted to even stand. The final time he accidentally stabbed her stomach with his antlers.

No, I don’t think Feeld is going to work out for me.