Dating : The Weight of the World: Reflections on Dating in the Time of Covid

In the early days of “lockdown,” (for the rest of this post I will use that term, and the term quarantine, very loosely as the United States never properly locked down or quarantined, which is part of why we are in the situation we are in now) none of us knew how long this would end up lasting. We were told to be good for a few weeks to flatten the curve. Being on dating apps during March of 2020 felt like lining up options for people you would maybe get to safely meet in a month or two. I thought that lockdown would be a good chance to actually make effort on dating apps. By that point I had been on apps on and off for about 3.5 years. I would have a month or two here and there where I would make a lot of effort and go on a few dates. And then I would go months at a time taking a break. My life is very full. I am generally okay being alone. Dating isn’t ever really a top priority, even though in an ideal world I would like to find a long-term partner at some point. I saw quarantine as a chance to really spend time on apps in ways I hadn’t before. I thought maybe since everyone was at home with nothing to do, people would be more inclined to have deeper conversations.

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Toward the end of March, I matched with a guy and we had an initial conversation over the course of a couple days. It was a solid conversation, he knew how to ask questions, but nothing really stood out about it. A week or two after that faded out, I messaged a few people to check in, him being one of them. I normally wouldn’t reinvigorate a mediocre conversation, but for the first time I was playing the (very) long game when it came to meeting people. This time around, he and I got on a topic that started a really great back and forth. In the coming days, we switched to texting, and the conversation continued to get better and better. He was one of the most intellectually stimulating men I have ever really encountered on a dating app. I felt like I could actually learn things from him, and as conceited as I realize this sounds, I don’t often feel that way about men on dating apps. He asked me if I wanted to do a FaceTime date; I said yes and we had a nice initial conversation that lasted a little less than two hours. He was willing to drink bourbon at 2pm with me, and earned points for that. We kept texting after, and a week or two later scheduled a second FaceTime date; this one lasted almost 4 hours.

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At the end of that second FaceTime, he started asking about my comfortability about meeting up for a socially distant walk. This was still in the stricter phase of lockdown, so unless someone was an essential worker, if you felt they were a decent person and not hanging out with a bunch of friends, you could reasonably assume they were being pretty isolated. Nothing much was open to do. I lived alone; he had one roommate that he said had been even more isolated than he had, and he had been very isolated. We were both working mostly from home. It felt like the only risk we were really posing was to one another. With that in mind, we met for a walk.

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Turns out socially distant dates are fairly awkward. Conversation was still pretty good, but it definitely felt weird to have to keep distance. After the walk we got takeout and I let him come through my apartment to get to my deck so we could eat outside in a distanced way. I never let men into my apartment on the first date; if we are going to go back to someone’s place after a first date, it is going to be the guy’s. I am very paranoid about men I don’t know very well having my address, but Covid turns dating safety upside down. As we ate, I kept vacillating between feeling so happy to just be around another human being and feeling so overwhelmed with sadness that the first person I had seen in weeks was this total stranger and that I couldn’t see my friends or family. At one point, I said out loud, “This is just so weird. The first person I’ve seen in weeks….is you….and I don’t even know you….” (I really know how to make a person feel comfortable) and he agreed. As much of an out of body experience as it felt like at times, it was kind of nice to have someone in my physical presence to discuss it with.

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While that date ended how it began, which is to say slightly awkward, (I have never had someone have to ask if it is okay to give me a hug after a date), we decided to have a second in-person date. We were still texting often throughout this time. The more I learned about him, I knew he was not going to be a long-term dating prospect. He had a lot going on in his own personal life. There is a lot I can’t say out of respect for his privacy, but in short, he grew up in a high-control religious community, had gotten married young, and despite being younger than me had already been through a divorce. He was somewhat newly single and I knew he needed to truly experience dating at some point, and whatever this stuff we were doing in Covid was definitely not normal dating! He was very open about needing something more casual, but described what he was looking for as “meaningfully casual,” in that he genuinely wanted to get to know people but he knew he couldn’t be a good partner to someone right now. I was fine with all of this. I told him I felt like we had a good connection and that I knew he didn’t have much to compare it to, but that connections like this on dating apps were rare, and this could be something fun in quarantine (still not thinking quarantine would go on indefinitely…) and that maybe one day we would end up friends. I told him if he did decide to date others during this time, to just let me know so we could leave several weeks between people we have both seen. It felt like we were on the same page.

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We saw each other two more times after that. Both those times were…less socially distant. Physical intimacy with him was somewhat challenging for a few reasons. Again, there is a lot I can’t say here, but let’s just say I had to google quite a few things after. I re-listened to the chapter of the audiobook Comedy, Sex, God (a book that, as though anticipating this exact moment, this very guy had recommended to me about a month prior) where author Pete Holmes sleeps with a woman for the first time after his marriage ends, and it helped remind me that anything going on here was not about me. Despite some challenges, I had extreme patience. I will sacrifice a lot for an intellectual connection, even a casual one, because they are so rare for me to find in dating. I didn’t care about the occasional challenge if it was someone who was recommending me books, podcasts, and articles on a daily basis, who took the time to check out my recommendations too, and who, most importantly, I trusted during covid. He was making my day-to-day life better, and any challenges that did exist, let’s just say he knew very well how to compensate for them. On the whole, it seemed like it was shaping up to be a good quarantine situation.

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After the second time we hung out in a less socially distant way, I could sense a different vibe from him when he left than I had felt before. I knew what it was attributed to, or at least part of what it was attributed to, and I didn’t want him to overthink things, something I could tell he was prone to do. So, in an effort to overcompensate for that, after he got home that evening I sent him a very encouraging text, letting him know how much I enjoyed spending time with him and how much I respected him as a person, and reiterating that this was a low-pressure dating situation and he wasn’t going to hurt my feelings if he needed out of it at some point. Days went by without a response.

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In pre-covid times, rejections between men and myself usually go one of two ways. Either I reject them politely, or they disappear and I have to force their hand to make them awkwardly reject me so I can get some closure. I am not a fan of the slow fade once you have met up. If I am interested in seeing someone again, I would prefer to just know that is not an option so I can mentally move on. Turns out during covid, this trend stayed in tact. After a few days, I told him it felt like he was ghosting me. He apologized immediately and gave some vague reasoning for things, but still never outright said he couldn’t see me anymore. Ultimately, I had to be the one to read between the lines and assume that. The issue with being the type of person to always need closure is that you often wind up having to provide it for yourself.

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When all was said and done, we knew each other about two months. We did two Facetime dates, three in-person dates, and texted a lot. All in all, that is really not that much time with a person. But two months in covid feels like twenty two in regular life. When we stopped talking, I was kind of shocked at what a void I felt in my day to day interactions without him around. Even though I knew we would never date seriously, nor did I want to, I was really banking on him sticking around as a friend, and when he didn’t, I was a little sad. On top of that, I couldn’t help but feel a little bitter at how much patience and understanding I had extended this guy, including going out of my way to try to encourage him and try to make sure he didn’t lose confidence in dating, and his response to that was to…blatantly ignore me? To not even thank me for my kindness?

Enter those conversations with my therapist, and later, the journalist. I have always considered myself a good judge of character. This made me wonder if that was really true. In a time when trust and getting a good read on someone is paramount to my health and safety, it seemed like I had placed my trust in the wrong person. I questioned what it is about me that is so drawn to mental stimulation above all else, to the point that I often end up drawn to people who are dealing with a lot of things. I knew I was never going to actually date this guy, but I thought he was a genuinely good person. The way things ended made me question that. I felt like he couldn’t even return 10% of my kindness, and I wondered why I had such bad judgement to think that he could.

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My therapist assured me I did all the right things. She told me she had to refresh her memory about what I did for a living when hearing this story, because the way I responded made it sound like I myself was a therapist. She told me I had no idea the role I had played in this guy’s life, and that I would probably never get that validation from him, but that I had to remain confident knowing that one day he would look back on this situation and realize how kind, gentle, and understanding I had been and how important that was for him in this specific moment. I was kind of surprised at how much better that made me feel. Immediately after realizing that, I wondered what was wrong with me — why was it so important to me to feel like I had an impact on someone’s life? Was it because I didn’t want to admit they had impacted mine, and feeling like I did the same for them at least restored some intangible balance that was easier to wrap my mind around than just admitting someone had left their mark on me?