Illustration by Linde Vergeylen
As Covid-19 struck I was single but pining. I was the bruised kind of single, happy to be swallowed up by a moment in history devoid of sticky dance floor hook-ups and serial dating. I had come crashing out of a questionable, controlling relationship that had eaten up eighteen months of my time and completely estranged me from myself. At 22 the only remedy I could find was to go out and get absolutely ruined on a regular basis.
By New Year’s Eve 2019, I’d had just about had my fill of self-inflicted bad times to give up the ghost, making a commitment to myself at the start of the new year, that I was done with the scene, with clubs, with drinking, and, with wonky love affairs. Of course, now, looking back and knowing what was coming, I feel like shaking my past self by the shoulders and telling her not to give up until March.
The world closed down and everything slid online, from lectures to quizzes and, of course, dating. I think in the age we live in it is easy to become desensitised. Not only are we being fed live streams of slowly occurring natural and political disasters minute-by-minute all day every day, but, also, we are inundated with an extensive and extending list of platforms to see it on. We have condensed presentations of different versions of life into 5-second blips, and we have to squeeze ourselves into similar concentrations. Relying more and more on an internet profile makes many cynical, assuming the worst, wanting the best, being made to make yourself look like a filter version of the real you just so you can have a panic attack about how ugly you really are a half hour before a first date.
In theory, online dating offers you a sea full of fish, but it also confronts us with the idea of choice, and, when we have choice, counterintuitively, we become picky. You start checking mental boxes of all the things that would make the perfect partner and realise, with some abject horror, that it looks suspiciously like a shopping list. You never realised how particular you were. You see girls rejecting any man under 6 foot 2 and guys spitting ‘no fat chicks’ — I mean, what does that even mean? You start to feel like it will be impossible to ever find ‘the one’. I don’t even buy my eggs and bread in the same supermarket, and I’m supposed to find all these desirable attributes in one body?
Of course, not everyone online is looking for ‘the one.’ Far from it. When you’re in your teens or twenties it’s natural to feel untethered, floating around and craving new experiences that don’t involve being solidly attached to any one person in particular. If you weren’t tied down by March 2020 though, there was a fat chance you’d find any connection over the next year.
I am not someone who is often lonely. I’m lucky in that I have always been comfortable in my own company and maybe not so lucky in that I find it easier to be by myself than with others. But Covid managed to isolate even me. Gold medal, flying colours. I made the decision to move back to my fractured parents’ house for that first lockdown in 2020 for the simple reason that I had been sharing a room in a dingy house with no internet connection and no desk, so college work without library access didn’t really seem viable. Having to move home and re-evaluate my life without the distraction of work or any of those sticky one-night stands was, in a word, difficult. Many people had to make similar decisions about where, and, significantly, with whom they would spend their quarantine, and for many it was a lonely experience. Of course, there were exceptions;some people got lucky, spending their lockdown with friends or happy families, unlikely romances blooming under the weight of everything like wartime love stories.
I for one struggled not to feel just a little bitter when friends made exceptions to the rules and sneaked lovers and love interests into their lockdown homes under the cover of darkness. I understood, because I too felt that particular loneliness, but my fear of this mystery illness stopped me from making any moves. Except, of course, scrolling Tinder.
For me, online dating has never worked out. My friends know me as an infamously bad texter, so to try and convince a complete stranger I’m worth their time when I forget to reply is an uphill battle. Surprisingly, even with all my spare time, this habit did not improve over lockdown. I need to see people in the flesh, see how they move in their body, how their words are hiccupped by their own personal inflection. People are so much more than they can ever say they are and so, for me, become inaccessible through online dating. Video-calls and texting only ever enhanced the distance.
Now that the world is reopening, the option to date in real-life places and sit face-to-face is an option again, but the waters are murky. Some are still shaken, worried about expanding their bubbles and cautious of new variants that might undercut our optimism once more. And, aside from Covid fear, many of us have simply lost our mojo. When that first lockdown lifted last summer, I travelled to town for the first time since I had moved away, visited my old housemates, put make-up on, wore a dress instead of pyjamas, shoes instead of slippers. I became me again. I met friends for dinner. Used a knife and fork again, sat outside again. It was then that I realised how fragile I had become in the intervening months and, how, whether you intend it to or not, something like a pandemic will change you even if you don’t become ill. I was lucky enough never to contract covid, at least that I know of, but suspending your life for over a year, going into everything as a 22-year-old and half-emerging at 24, will undoubtedly result in some changes. We have all changed over the past eighteen months. We have all experienced something unique to our time and I think it’s pretty safe to say that the dating profiles could do with an update.
The beautiful, and terrifying, thing about dating is that you never know what will happen and the beautiful thing about Covid is, first, that it’s coming to an end (touchwood), and, second, that it’s given us a new appreciation for what we had before. Closeness is something that many of us figured we’d never have to refrain from. I still see signs warning us against hugging and it feels surreal and sad, and I’ve never even been much of a hugger. It may be too early for some to paddle back out into the waters of dating. We have experienced a moment in history — one that has pushed many to their psychological limits — and it is okay to take your own time to recover; don’t expect normality, don’t punish yourself for not getting back out there. Dating can be fun, but, in the meantime, if you’re not ready yet, take a moment to appreciate the closeness that we can have once again with friends, family and those who matter most. I’ve seen so many students putting enormous pressure on themselves to do it all and I’ve been guilty of it myself. Working, studying, trying to set up the building blocks of your life so it looks as close to perfect when you come out the other side. This past year or so we have been shown how precarious all that is.
When I set out to write this piece, I intended to focus more on the dating scene and how it works and to be encouraging, but I kept running into the same block. I don’t want to encourage anyone to do anything they aren’t comfortable with. This is unchartered territory and while I tentatively say the end is in sight, we’ve all learned things can become very unexpected very quickly. Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. It’s an incredibly brave thing to stand up for what is right for you, and I think that sentiment will hold you in good stead in your dating life, too. If you take anything from this, let it be that it’s better to prepare yourself to be alone than it is to prepare yourself to be with someone else. What I mean is, if you struggle with sitting with yourself and were desperately crying out for another half during Covid, don’t scramble to welcome your next partner in. You can afford to take your time. Don’t shape yourself to fit someone else just so that you don’t have to be alone. I’ve done that, and it isn’t worth it, and it will take more than a lockdown to pop the dents out of you. You’re good as you are. You’ve been through a lot. Covid is not the end of the world, and although it may sometimes feel like it, neither is your love life.
