Dating : I Did Not Find Love During A Global Pandemic

Online dating sucks. Online dating in New York City sucks more. Online dating in your hometown in your parents house during a global pandemic sucks the most.

After reasoning that I will find a roommate online and have done so for the past two years living in New York City, I concluded that I can also find love on the internet. Now this is after I swore off dating apps after going on too many bad dates that were just plain disappointing. My best and most famous incidents include a date taking out his cell phone calculator to split the bill evenly to not overpay for his portion of the meal, a date who left his Starbucks cup on the table as we got up to leave and I had to throw out his garbage, a date offering to pay for our drinks and after the date ended and we went to our homes, he Venmoed me for my half, and other debacles that are mildly funny but mostly sad. Once I shared a bad dating story on the phone on the subway on the way home from work and the girl across the seat from me said I don’t mean to eavesdrop but that’s an amazing story and it was the best New York subway experience I have had.

I have not found love on the subway but I did find love on Tinder at 21 years old the summer before I graduated college. I was only on Tinder for about 2 weeks before we met up and continued hanging out until we declared our love on a beach at sunset. Now what started with like that transformed quite quickly into love and then hate, but nonetheless that was the first and only relationship I have ever been in through a dating app so I know it can connect people and may even turn into love.

Dating during the Coronavirus is painful, but honestly it was more painful before due to the ultimate let down of it never ending in love. I think the saying love finds you when you are not looking is silly because I want love and I am never not going to look for it. I wanted to leave my parents house at 18 and not come back and I successfully did that for the most part until now. I never realized that my parents’ relationship was bad, really bad until I was in a relationship and then that relationship turned toxic and I was confused how people talked on the phone without screaming and hanging up on one another. My first week of work a woman was complaining about her husband and I asked her if she was only with him because she did not want to be alone, and it was that moment that I realized I crossed a line and that I was damaged.

I grew up in a house where mental health didn’t exist with a mother who didn’t want the life she was living and took it out on her children. I don’t want to carry that with me, but here I am back with the same mother in the same suburban house in my childhood bedroom feeling like I failed being alone at 25 when it feels like all other 25 year olds have someone. They don’t, it just feels that way in this moment right now.

The worst part is watching someone else fall in love. One of my friends got into a relationship right before the pandemic and watching someone else find everything you want just hurts. It hurts that she is having all these firsts in this pandemic, firsts that I already had and now realize that they were stolen from me because so much of my life is tainted by one summer on the beach. It is hard to move forward when there is no one to go back to and no one to move forward with so I am sitting in my bed in my parents house wishing I was somewhere else like I was a child again. I try my best to be a supportive and positive friend, but sometimes it just hurts to be happy for other people all the time.

Online dating now for me in suburban New York is a lot of me asking questions and a lot of responses without any reciprocation of question or regards to how I am doing. Online dating is talking to someone on the phone and getting excited that it may work out but frustrated that it is difficult to meet up and do something, anything together. It is the worry of everything not working out and the disappointment that follows. I was not a big fan of online dating before and now I am even less of a fan, but I am also alone and in order to not be alone you have to try and put yourself out there until like turns into love. So that’s what I am doing and I am trying, trying to find love, trying to find happiness and trying to find peace with all that is happening and for now I am ok being alone and it is ok that I did not find love in the midst of a global pandemic.