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

“It just adds such a weight to everything related to dating. You not only have to have the regular levels of trust that someone isn’t going to intentionally physically harm you, you now also have to trust they aren’t going to intentionally or unintentionally infect you with a deadly disease. You have to believe what they say about their habits. You have to build such a trust and rapport with someone to even meet them in person, and that just didn’t exist before. And when it ends like this, it makes me wonder if that trust was misplaced. It makes me wonder if I am a bad judge of character.”

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The words flowed out of my mouth as I spoke to a journalist who was writing a story about having to date slowly in this pandemic era (I ended up not being included in that published story). Until then, I didn’t even realize that this was my issue with what had happened between me and the first guy I took a chance on during Covid. I knew I wasn’t happy with how things had ended. I knew that I was angry about how he handled it. I had spoken to my therapist at length about it. She had tried to dig into why I expected him to act a certain way. Exasperated, I eventually blurted out “Because it is just the RIGHT thing to do. It is the DECENT thing to do. If you aren’t interested in me, just SAY that so we can both MOVE ON. Don’t leave me hanging when I have been SO UNBELIEVABLY KIND to you.” We spoke a lot about expectations and how most people don’t have the same moral code as me, and what that means for me in terms of how I react to things. But during that conversation with my therapist, it was all about me. That’s the point of therapy — I pay a lot of money for that to be all about me! In this conversation with the journalist, however, in an effort to give a broad overview of the situation from 12 stories up, in an effort to really describe the issues of pandemic dating as a whole and not just the bruise to my personal ego, I had inadvertently stumbled on what my real issue was with the situation. It was broken trust. It was feeling like someone was a good person, when really they were just as self centered as any other guy.

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?

Over the course of the next few months, I continued to use apps regularly. A lot of conversations started and went nowhere. When you aren’t doing anything with your day to day life, there isn’t much to talk to strangers about. Quite a few men asked me out, which I always declined. Anyone who asks to spend time with me right now without even asking what my isolation habits have been is not someone who is truly being careful. You can’t tell me how careful you are being and yet have an apparent willingness to see me regardless of what *I* have been doing. This was a point lost on most men. As with all things dating, men never consider their safety as much as women. Why would covid change that?

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A few weeks ago, I matched with someone who instantly had conversational skills that struck me. It is hard to be consistently engaging AND funny via text, and this guy managed to somehow pull it off. He asked me a lot of questions, and a week or two into our messaging he asked me so many questions about one particular topic that I suggested maybe we have a FaceTime drink because it would be easier to answer that way. He was enthusiastic about that idea, saying he would love to have a FaceTime date with me. His substitution of “date” in place of “drink” was not lost on me. A few days later we FaceTimed for almost 5 hours. We drank a lot, we laughed a lot, the back-and-forth just felt incredibly natural. There was so much about our family dynamics, our worldviews, our interests, that just felt so well aligned. Compared to the first guy, there was slightly less of an intellectual connection there, not because this guy was not intelligent (he was extremely intelligent), but just because we were more similar to start with. It felt like there was less we could teach one another because we had experienced so many of the same things. What was maybe slightly lacking in intellectual connection was more than made up for in instant comfortability and sense of humor. For the first time in a very, very long time, the connection just felt natural. I wasn’t sure yet if it was a romantic connection necessarily, but at least it was something.

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I really try to learn from my mistakes in dating. I try to take every experience, even if it ends in a less than ideal way, as something that can teach me something about myself, about men, or about life. I try my best to not repeat behaviors that are going to cause me pain. With that in mind, I felt it was important to not let this situation drag out as much as the previous one had. Of course covid safety was still my top concern, but I did not want months to go by this time feeling this great connection, only to be let down like last time. This guy lived alone and had claimed to have been very careful. His descriptions of his isolation habits came up naturally in conversation way before we ever even FaceTimed, so it did not feel like he was trying to convince me he was safe — it just felt like he genuinely was safe. I had recently taken a covid test and therefore knew I was not going to put him at risk, so I suggested we meet in person.

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We spent 6.5 hours together, and didn’t have anything to drink. I don’t know if a date without alcohol has ever lasted that long for me. I had a genuinely great time. We…also did not keep socially distant. But at this point, I felt all-in on risk. I didn’t see the point of doing a socially distant date only to have to follow it up with a less distant date down the road, if the connection was already there. Any time around a stranger is a risk, so you might as well concentrate that risk. Afterward, I was definitely interested in a second date, despite having a few concerns. I was worried about our age gap, and I was not 100% sure if I was actually into him in that way or if I just thought he was really funny and fun to be around. But, I figured those things would reveal themselves in time, and for now it was worth leaning into a situation that was engaging and entertaining. It had been quite some time since I had laughed that hard — quarantine doesn’t bring a lot of laughter. The rest felt like it could be answered down the road.

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Throughout the following week, I could tell he was creating distance. I planned to give it until the weekend before saying something in case he was just having a busy week, but I figured at some point I would have to force his hand, just like last time. To my surprise, on Friday morning he sent me a rejection text (I wasn’t surprised to be rejected, just surprised that he actually had the courage to do it unprompted). His message was honest and kind. He echoed some of the concerns I was also feeling. He wished me well. He ended with an inside joke. It was incredibly pleasant. While of course I was disappointed to not get to see him again, I have been in his shoes so many times, where you think someone is a great person but you just can’t force feelings for them. I have sent a similar message to many men over the years so I respected what he did. It was everything I felt I was owed by the last guy, but never got. I felt like finally someone respected me enough to handle things well. I didn’t even care that this was ending. I was just glad to finally have been treated with respect. I sent a very nice message in response, thanking him for his honesty, acknowledging some of his points, and wishing him well. I felt very good about the whole exchange and figured if nothing else this would all be a positive quarantine memory; plus, some of the details of our time together provided me with a funny story or two that I knew I would be able to look back on and laugh. On the whole, I felt good about the whole exchange…until I realized my response never delivered. 12 hours later I sent another text to see what would happen; that one also didn’t deliver. It appeared this guy had blocked me.

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Blocking someone who didn’t do anything wrong is not really something I can wrap my mind around even in the best of times, but during covid it feels incredibly irresponsible and unsafe. At that time, it had only been one week since we saw each other. What happens if I develop symptoms during the second week and can’t reach him?! I can not imagine being so afraid of a real human interaction that your cowardice and selfishness makes you put your fear of slight awkwardness over your own health and safety. It makes me wonder if he was ever telling the truth about his covid safety habits, or if this is just an entire M.O. during quarantine to get women to come to his house. Yet again, I am questioning my own judge of character.

It is a joke among my friends that I wind up a “life coach” in dating. Men tend to open up to me very quickly, sometimes before we even meet. I have tried to become more aware of this over time and to not get myself in those situations in quite the same way. To his credit, I could tell the first guy was very wary of not putting me in that position. He would only tell me things if I directly asked. This felt like a step in the right direction in my own dating life, like someone actually just wanted to get to know me and didn’t want to use me for free therapy. But there was still so much under the surface there that made me so curious. My own curiosity made me ask a lot of questions that other people might not have asked. I found myself thinking often about the quote I see online from time to time, attributed to Christopher Poindexter. “I once knew a girl who loved things most people shun. Every man she ever loved was terrible to her, terrible I tell you. But there was something about them that intrigued her — she liked broken things, broken people. To her, if there was nothing to fix, there was nothing to love.” I wondered if somehow, unbeknownst to me, this had become me. I do consider myself someone with immense capacity for empathy, and a person who wants people I care about to be the best they can be. I always root for the underdog, and for the people who for whatever reason I don’t feel like have been given a voice in society. I’ve built a career out of these values. I volunteer for organizations that align with these values. But I did not ever intend for them to become my dating values. Of course, I want to be someone who is able to look beyond a person’s past and see them for who they really are. I want to be someone who is patient with others. But I only want to be that with someone who is able to extend the same grace to me. The first guy did not appreciate those qualities in me enough. With the second, I was determined to do things differently. I was careful about the questions I asked. I met him sooner. I relied more on light banter and less on deep talks. I leaned more into humor and less into intellect. I didn’t let him become a fixture in my day to day life, so that I wouldn’t have to miss him when he was gone. I thought I was doing all the right things, and for a brief moment when I got that rejection text I felt like it had worked. It had led me to someone who at the very least respected me, which should be bare minimum expectations but anyone who has dated for any length of time knows it’s not. Any step in the right direction I felt I was taking with the first guy, I felt like I had taken twice that many steps in the right direction with the second. It didn’t matter to me that it didn’t last, I now had a new standard by which to judge future men. But quickly I realized, this was just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. My trust, yet again, had been misplaced. And yet again, I am left wondering, what could I possibly do differently? And why am I literally risking my life for men who could not care less about me?

I don’t talk often about how quarantine makes me feel. I will occasionally make comments to friends, or tweet about it, but for the most part I keep a lot of it to myself. I don’t want it to sound like I don’t realize how lucky I am in many ways. I have been able to work this whole time. I do not have to face any of the challenges that parents have to face, in determining how to keep children entertained while isolating, or how to educate them while working from home, or what the best decision about the upcoming school year is. I don’t even have to deal with frustrating roommates during this time. In many ways, quarantine should be (and often is) easiest for single people who live alone. But underneath all of that, there is a deep pain and bitterness. In the “Before Times,” I had a life I enjoyed. I would date from time to time, but much of my free time was spent traveling, spending time with local friends, visiting friends that are within a few hours radius on weekends, volunteering, and making the most of my life in any way possible. All of that is now indefinitely on hold, which in and of itself is something I can accept. I am someone who really believes in personal sacrifice for the greater good, and at no other time in our lives has that been more pertinent than during covid. But there is at times an extreme loneliness that comes from being in my situation. It isn’t even necessarily that I feel lonely at home. There are a million ways to feel lonely even if you are surrounded by others. It’s not the sitting at home alone day after day for now 5+ months that gets me. It is that every aspect of my life is on hold. And only other fellow single people can relate to that. Sure, none of us can travel, even my partnered friends can share that pain. Even they are sad to not be able to see their friends. We have all those things in common. But what they do not understand, is that there is no aspect of my life that is able to move forward during this time. If you have a partner or a family, that relationship still moves forward. Your kids still grow in this time, albeit with so many new challenges. The family dinners, the date nights — all of these things might have to get more creative, but they still exist. Half of their lives are on hold, while the other half moves forward at least in some form or another. But none of my life is moving forward. I feel like I am stuck at this point indefinitely. And as my country continues to deal with this crisis in the most horrific ways possible, I see no end in sight.

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I had long since accepted that I would most likely be single forever. But whenever I envisioned that version of my life, it was filled with so many other things that I can no longer do. So I felt like this was maybe the time to re-write the story I had been telling myself about how my life would turn out. Maybe if dating was one of the only things I could do, I should just do it. I did not expect to necessarily find my future husband right now, but I felt like I might at least meet some other people who, like me, are normally too busy living life to give a ton of thought to dating. I thought I would make new connections and keep an open mind and see what happens. But I don’t know if I can continue to risk my health when no matter how much I learn, no matter how much I change my behavior or expectations, no matter how much therapy I engage in, no matter how much I adjust my age and distance range to cast a wider net, men will invariably put themselves and their needs first. That’s a fact I could accept when the biggest risk was a broken heart. Now, covid feels less worth the risk.

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I am aware of the platitudes. I am aware that having no relationship during covid is much better than having a bad one, and many relationships are bad. Some are even physically and/or emotionally dangerous, and my heart goes out to people trapped in those situations right now. I am aware that in this and many other aforementioned ways, I am very lucky. I know as a society we are going through a collective trauma right now, and everyone feels lonely, even if they have people around. We are all feeling it. I know all of these things. I know. But what I also know, is that this is going to go on for, at absolute minimum, a year. What I also know is that as we learn more and more about covid, and more things are allowed to occur because of it, it is single people who will remain lonely the longest. We are already seeing it. As mask usage becomes a clear way to prevent spread, as testing becomes more widely available, people expand their bubbles a little bit. Families start to trust one another so their kids can play. Couples hang out with couples they are friends with so they are able to maximize number of people seen — why hang out with one person you care about when you can hang out with two people you care about since they already live together? For single people, unless we happen to have a lot of other single people in our lives, we can’t expand our circles in the same way. It is just us for the foreseeable future.

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I think that is part of why dating right now is so hard. That heaviness, that weight, the idea that someone’s presence, even if just for a few weeks or months, could break you of this alone-ness and same-ness, makes us put so much hope in people we meet through dating. What used to be “I hope one day I will find someone to be with long term, but if this date doesn’t go well, it’s just a few hours out of my life, no big deal” has turned into “I hope this person can provide a respite, however brief, from the ongoing hellscape we are locked in forever as the United States appears to crumble around us! If this date doesn’t go well it’s going to take me so long to find someone else I trust enough to risk covid for so can this please please please just work, at least until we have a vaccine? I don’t need a life partner I just need a quarantine partner! Please! ”

No men, especially dealing with their own version of that in their own minds, can possibly live up to that level of hope….but what they could at least do is say goodbye politely and avoid blocking my number.