I found love online in a pandemic in one of the deadliest cities in the world and it’s the last thing I thought I would ever do.
Something was coming. The world was changing and we had to change too. I had to change, but maybe I knew that already. It was March 2020. I had just returned from Los Angeles, my family home with childhood friends, exciting (and erratic) lovers and a career I had left at a gallop. We had gotten coffee, traded notes on TV shows and sipped fancy cocktails (my personal vice). When I watched New York Governor Cuomo’s press conference issuing a stay at home order, I thought back: Just one man wore a mask on my flight.
I was the last person in my co-working space. I watched as people shuffled out of their offices and locked their doors. I wondered where they were going. I wondered what was next and what would happen to me.
I rode home in an empty subway car and somewhere between Manhattan and Brooklyn I realized something that would change my life — I was alone.
My life in New York has always been about being alone. It’s the kind of city where you are alone, but never alone, where you can get stuck in a sea of people going quickly even if you have nowhere to go. Where you can be anyone that you want to be in the company of strangers, knowing that statistically you’ll never see them again.
You can go days without speaking to anyone but go to a bar and have the best date you’ve ever had, just listening to the couple next to you. It’s a city that never sleeps so you don’t have to. You can go anywhere, do anything, concerts, bars, theater and everywhere where there are people, and no one notices or cares if you’re alone. You are on your own, but you’re never lonely, because you’re part of something, united, by a force bigger than yourself — New York City.
I built my life on being alone. My passions — writing, photography, art, walking — don’t involve people and are therefore self-sustaining, capable of great hurt, but never breaking. I was happy alone in my studio apartment.
Then there was Cuomo back on the television altering the fundamentals of our reality, or maybe just stating what I didn’t want to consider and I realized all at once that I was isolated, more so than at any time of my life, and it didn’t feel empowering. It felt heartbreaking.
It was like someone pulled a string somewhere inside that created a flood that came out all at once. Spilled out onto the table and then the floor, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wondered when the next time someone would touch me. My hair, my waist, the small of my back. I wondered if I would ever fall in love again.
I wondered out loud and, in my head, and in the park. I wondered at Trader Joe’s the line wrapped around two blocks, people afraid of each other, impossible to touch. I wanted to be with someone. I wanted to be with everyone. I couldn’t go back to being alone. I wouldn’t go back. I wanted something bigger than New York. I wanted a human connection even if it was at six feet. I promised myself I would fall in love again.
***
“Quarantine happened and casual sex was suddenly gone, just gone,” says Tiffany Haddish in Amazon’s ‘Yearly Departed’, “You have to ask yourself, are they cute enough for me to die in about three weeks, possibly?” The audience laughed and so did I, but also my chest crunched like I was slowly imploding.
I’m a serial dater capable of keeping sex friends longer than most relationships. I’ve been on and off the apps for over nine years. I’ve tried everything from Hinge to OkCupid to eHarmony. I’ve messaged back and forth (sometimes for forever), transitioned to a date (sometimes awkward, sometimes really hot) and had approximately two relationships, but never fell in love. The death of casual sex has swept the sites, conquering and taking hostage of the men I once was so attracted to. The sexual messages remain, but they don’t hold the same weight. The “Wanna Get a Drink” messages after midnight are retired or ignored, stricken of their power in the face of closed bars.
Then there was the secret: dating during the pandemic is easier than ever before. The safest sex we can have is with ourselves or with someone we live with, and after that, sex with someone in our pod. Communication has become essential. Commitment required. With its death went my youth, my quiet and sometimes big indiscretions — the life I lived as a single person. I had to rethink everything.
There were rules now, some learned, many unspoken. Did I need to fall in love with someone I already knew? Who could I trust with my health when I couldn’t even trust someone to buy me a drink? Was this a test of the sum of the connections I had made in my life thus far?
“Obviously it’s harder because of the masks and all of that, but to some extent dating’s almost a little bit easier during COVID,” says John, a 30-something New York actor with hazelnut eyes and a charming smile, “People are so lonely, and they are so isolated, and they want to get out, and they’re more likely to want to form, I think a real connection, because they’ve been trapped inside for so long. I think in one sense it’s like Russian roulette, you’ve got to risk it to get the biscuit.”
Some like John are reporting that they are finding more matches. In a lot of ways dating is easier now because we have a purpose: get into a bubble and get in quick before there’s another shutdown (and/or world end). Over half of singles have become pickier since COVID (YouGov) and therefore get better matches, but my strategy remained the same: spray and pray.
My app style is move fast, swipe smart and when in doubt swipe right. I’m one of those people who accepts every invitation on LinkedIn even if I don’t know them. My network is open. So, when I swipe, I swipe aggressively with determination and flexibility until the free matches stop. Then I respond to messages and pick matches at random and say hello. Some might call it luck or chance but really with all the posturing of online dating and false representation, I trusted chance more than essay sections about “being goofy” or “enjoying podcasts”.
Then he said hi back. It changed everything.
***
OkCupid saw a 700x increase in virtual dates in 2020 with 84% users reporting that it’s important to have an emotional connection before a physical one. While over two-thirds of Hinge members have felt a “growing connection” with someone they’d met only virtually. COVID-19 had accomplished what shame, religion and the Western tradition had failed to accomplish: it forced people to slow down and really take a look at each other. Though of course, not for everyone.
“They were desperate for something,” Maggie, a 20s Boston health care practitioner said of her experience with virtual dates, “I would ask [matches] to do a zoom or FaceTime date first, with the social distancing thing and also to see if I want to hang out with them first, all of them objected. I gave up.”
But I didn’t.
We met on FaceTime. I created an elaborate lighting system in my apartment involving lamps, lanterns, and a desk lamp, which captured my cheekbones and eyes better than in real life. He was my third virtual date. The first virtual guy went through the list of questions and answers on OkCupid and asked if I was kinky. I went out with him anyway. My second date was nice and perfectly attractive, but there was no chemistry. I went out with him too. Then there was him. Easy to talk to, funny, into what I was into. It was different from the last 100 dates. He was different.
As children, we learned the sex talk. Now, we learned the COVID talk. Before meeting a potential mate, you are required to ask questions to keep you and your partner safe. Questions range from: Who is in your bubble (roommates, family, friends)? When was the last time you were tested, and will you get tested before our date? Can we wear masks? Boundaries are important. Don’t let attraction make you color blind.
“You know, it was stipulated from the outset that masks were to be worn, but I found that basically upon meeting up the first time the masks kind of shed themselves within the first couple of minutes” said John the charming actor, “You just had to make a leap of faith that you weren’t going to get COVID.”
We too were risky. We sat at a table at an outdoor restaurant and drank margaritas. We did not keep our masks on. I thought of a safe word, Pickles. If I wanted him to put it back on. The attraction was immediate, especially when it felt like a word long forgotten from my vocabulary reserved only for movie stars and Governor Cuomo, his misdeeds counterbalanced by his possible internet-hinted kink.
My years of serial dating had taught me how to date. What to say and when to say it and all of the stories that I know by heart, real or fictional at my fingertips, but this felt less transactional, less robotic, it felt like something smooth and even, even on the rocky stuff.
I asked him to be my boyfriend twice. The third time he said he loved me. It was a negotiation, a conversation that never ended, always starting with are we safe? Love is dangerous, more now than ever, but I promised myself that I would fall in love and I did. I took a risk and I found what I couldn’t find before COVID. It was crazy. It was risky. It left me open and I wouldn’t fault someone for making different choices. But it found me a person whom I can share my life with and that was worth it all.
Here’s the secret: dating during the pandemic is easier than ever before. Maybe this time has brought something true out of us, the people we are under pressure are not the people we pretend to be. Maybe in all this agony and honesty, we can find love.
