OPINION: Can you really find romance through Tinder?

I was single for a solid amount of time before I met my husband, but the face of dating was vastly different to what it has become in just a few years.

Author T.J. Hamilton.

BEING the happily married woman, modern concepts of meeting "the one" is something that I feel a little removed from, yet it fascinates me so much that I quiz my single friends about it, constantly.

I was single for a solid amount of time before I met my husband, but the face of dating was vastly different to what it has become in just a few years.

Online dating was still a very new concept and therefore quite intimidating, but with Tinder being an app that almost every single person has on their phone, meeting someone seems so much more informal than it used to be.

Out of my single girlfriends, the overwhelming majority of them don't take Tinder too seriously because the menfolk that they're encountering are not exactly the type of guys you want to write home about.

I've heard some absolute horror stories of Tinder from girlfriends and the shocking conversations they've had with guys who think the informal nature of Tinder is a green light for conversations that should never really happen.

Much like when trolls think it's acceptable to sprout viciousness online and hide behind the protective shield of a computer, Tinder is also susceptible to people acting outside of their usual social norms.

This isn't limited to just men behaving badly either with some of the accounts that my younger, single brother has given.

But in the haze of my 'swipe left' friends, there have been some positive stories of 'swipe right' success.

One friend has met 'the one' after only one day on Tinder.

Despite this, I still think Tinder is too two-dimensional to be able to evoke the true romantic within those initial moments of a possible new love.

Call me sentimental but I prefer the old fashioned face-to-face meeting or magical impromptu encounter that spurs on the wonderful butterfly-fuelled feelings of romance.

What do you think about online dating? Have you found love through Tinder? Join the conversation and have your say below.