Lockdown Love: The Many Shades of Pandemic Dating
*Article from Lexington Line’s Spring Summer 2021 Issue, pages 12-13
Check out the full issue here.
Is a pandemic a good enough excuse to stop looking for love? Even The Bachelor has pressed on, with some adjustments for safety. Dating apps have led to some success stories, as will be shared later on, but how else are people finding “the one?”
CHAT ROOM LOVERS
Molly met her boyfriend, Kyle, in a Tumblr chatroom. This might sound kinda odd, but it’s worked out for both of them. Their connection grew from chatroom messages to movie dates on Zoom to sending each other Christmas gifts–but they have yet to meet in person. Even if there were no pandemic, they would still have a long-distance relationship, as Molly is located in NYC and Kyle is in Calgary. He’s hoping to visit her as soon as he can get vaccinated. Nevertheless, even without meeting in person, Molly says, “it’s been weird but really nice because I had someone to hang out with during this entire thing.” Even virtually, romantic connections are still possible. We’ll be anxiously awaiting the day these virtual love birds meet!
STAYING HOT IN THE COLD
Valerie had been dating her boyfriend, Liam, for about four months before the COVID-19 shutdown. They met at an 18+ club party, which of course are long gone now. While the pandemic has made it hard to meet new people, it has also complicated established relationships–when most businesses are shuttered, it isn’t easy to keep things fun and fresh. Valerie’s solution? Outdoor dining. Liam is from Ghana and has been in the U.S. since he was a young teen. He had already been taking great strides to introduce her to his culture, so Valerie used this opportunity to introduce Liam to her Italian culture by taking him to outdoor Italian spots all over the city. “Before indoor dining reopened, we had to go on dates outside, and I had to explain the difference between pasta like spaghetti and penne and explain different sauces like alfredo and vodka,” she says. Doing so while sitting outside in the freezing cold added a whole new level of difficulty, she says. It may not be the hottest type of date, but it kept them connected.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
Who said a bomb-ass single mom can’t find love in the pandemic? It certainly wasn’t Melanie. Melanie re-entered the dating world last May when it seemed (briefly) like things were easing up. She made sure to have small “background checks'' on each person she met up with, just to make sure they were taking safety precautions seriously. As the summer started to die down, she switched to “nature dates” like hiking and kayaking because she felt safer outside. She erred on the side of caution by taking things slowly but eventually found it difficult to find a soulmate online. Melanie found a designated “COVID buddy” in her ex-boyfriend Chris. “When the days got too lonely, and we were both frustrated with dating, we would hang out,” she tells me. Sounds like a perfect arrangement to me!
TIKTOK FAME LEADS TO TIKTOK DAME
Dara has dramatically grown her TikTok following over the past six months. Beforehand, she had no idea how many love interests would come her way as a result. “Oklahoma Girl” made her way up the rankings, and for a while, it seemed that she might even travel to New York to stay with Dara. Eventually, she pulled a Melanie (see above) and tried to get back with her ex. But the two have remained friends. Dara says, “Well, she’s still going to visit I think, but it’ll just be platonic. Realistically, I was still actively pursuing other people, so it wasn’t that much of a letdown, and we’ve actually developed a really solid friendship along the way. So maybe one day I’ll have another chance. If not, I’m happy that she’s happy.” Perhaps the “happy ending” in this scenario is just a good friendship.
TINDER FOR THE WIN
Tinder is known for hookups, but that’s not the only possible outcome. Kary met Ben on Tinder during Summer 2020. At the time, she didn’t have high expectations for the dating app. She tells me that when it came to meeting people, she would “always just tell people it would go where it would go” and didn’t feel pressured to find a relationship. With Ben, things just seemed to come naturally. “We just got close and acted like a couple,” she says. They talked via social media for a while before deciding to meet in person. They began with casual and safe dates, such as masked dates at the movies or meeting at a restaurant. As the couple became more comfortable with one another, they began hanging at each other’s houses and meeting the family members they lived with. On Christmas day, they made it official. Maybe love is possible on Tinder after all.
THANK YOU NEXT, STRANGERS
For a lot of people, pandemic dating has been almost non-existent. That’s how it started for Hilary. The pandemic required more and more effort in order to find love, as there were fewer accessible and easy options. Most dating is done via Tinder. Hilary wasn’t interested in that, but she found the old-fashioned “setup” to be a viable alternative. It works, she says, because “we had a little more in common, and if potentially it ever became anything more, we would have those mutual friends to hang out with.” Maybe our friends can just start running our dating apps for us?
DON’T BRING A BOYFRIEND HOME FROM VACATION
A month before the pandemic hit, Skye was traveling to Israel from Florida. At the airport, she met Joe, who was traveling there as well. The two bonded during the trip and ended up falling for each other. However, as is often the case with vacay romances, when they returned, Joe did not seem like the same person. Skye went back to Indiana, where she was attending college. Joe booked a trip to visit her at the end of February. His plan was to stay for nearly all of March. At Skye’s apartment, he was messy, kept her awake with his snoring, and even ended up clogging the toilet. “When boys are babied by their mothers,” Skye says, “they seem to expect all women to act that way. My ex expected me to cook and clean for him and not be upset about it. It was like being a maid, and not a sexy French one.” When lockdown started, Skye felt like there was going to be no escape from him. Her solution was to break up with him and move back to Florida.
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Morgan met Mark about four years ago at a Memorial Day party hosted by Shannon, a family friend. Shannon’s nephew Tyler was friends with Mark and brought him to the party. But the two didn’t speak at all that evening. “Mark actually was the only person who didn't talk to me the entire night,” she says. “He later told me it was because he was nervous.”
Mark and Morgan spent that whole summer getting to know each other. In July, they officially became a couple. They survived long-distance for years while Morgan completed her Bachelor’s degree at LIM College (and worked as Lex Line’s sixth Editor in Chief). They lived together solely on summer and winter breaks until the end of Morgan’s senior year when she moved home full time.
Even before the pandemic, Mark and Morgan were both very introverted people. Both preferred a night in over a night out, so it didn’t affect their social activities immensely. They did enjoy outdoor events in the early pandemic, as those were (and continue to be) the safest options. It was hard at first since they were both working from home, but when Mark went back to work, it created a healthy distance. “In the beginning, when we were both working from home, it was a little rough because neither of us was used to working from home and would typically use one another as a constant distraction,” she recalls. “Once Mark went back to work–he is considered an essential worker–working from home for me got much better and easier.”
The pandemic has pushed them closer together, but in the best possible way: they are now engaged! In Early 2021, they went on a skiing trip in Colorado. They were hiking on Mark’s favorite trail when he decided to pop the question. Morgan was surprised and ecstatic. The two had discussed getting engaged, but she assumed she would have been able to detect the surprise before it happened. “We had been talking about getting engaged for a while, but we are both horrible at keeping secrets, so I was certain that whenever he would do it, I would know about it,” she says. “But he managed to keep it all a secret, and I never caught on.”
The end of the pandemic seems within reach, and we can’t wait to see the happy couple wed!
Maybe some of these relationships last, maybe some of them won’t, but Morgan’s story shows how beautiful things can happen in horrible times. It’s impossible to tell whether pandemic love can last because none of us have been through this before. Maybe the fact that it’s harder to find love now makes it all the more rewarding if and when we find “the one.”