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home / 世界杯决赛2022

the risky business of pandemic dating

"it goes from your first date, which is like a walk in the park, literally, to skipping to the three-month point."

by montreal gazette

mar 30 2021
read time 4 minute read
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by: jp karwacki

after the city’s first lockdown and every public health guideline that has been put in place since, the covid-19 pandemic has forced single people into a life of secrecy and risk for uncertain rewards. dating has been flipped on its head.

thing is, over the past 365 days, it hasn’t been a total minefield for everyone.

you can’t hurry love

alejandro, 25, put dating on hold until last summer. alejandro, like the other people the gazette spoke to for this story, asked to remain anonymous.
“even then, it was only one person who i would see now and then,” he says. “i remember i didn’t want to just hook up during the pandemic. it’s funny, i was judging people for doing the same thing i was doing.”
everything seemed risky from the start. for him and many others, using apps like tinder, bumble or grindr became a drawn-out experience. the risks of infection changed the name of the game, making pre-pandemic life’s more casual relationships far less attractive.
on one hand, the pandemic slowed the pace of single life to a crawl — having to carefully assess one person at a time over socially distanced dates — while speeding it up on the other, with dating history becoming one of 20 questions asked to address the infectious elephant in the room.
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“you don’t want to ask, but you kind of have to. it goes from your first date, which is like a walk in the park, literally, to skipping to the three-month point,” says michelle, 26. “it takes no time before you’re asking them what are we, who have you been seeing, what should i know about you?”
at the same time, there are folks like abigail, 29, who says dating became a leap of faith. having found herself newly single during pandemic, she decided to start with small, distanced coffee dates with people she met through apps — that was the plan, anyway.
“i didn’t expect to meet anyone serious through an app in these circumstances because it’s so complicated and awkward because of covid,” she says. “but i ended up connecting with someone over the course of a week. they couldn’t come to my place, i couldn’t go to theirs, so we met at a hotel.” (they’re still together as of the end of march.)

love is something risked

michelle found herself adding a mental covid-19 checklist to the one she had pre-pandemic when meeting men through apps, but it came in handy.
“there was a guy i went on a few dates with, and he had three roommates,” she recounts, saying that it seemed ok at the time. “then i found out that all three of them were single and all three of them were on tinder going on multiple dates, meeting multiple people. that made it eight people in a single apartment.”
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they didn’t date for long, and she says she dodged the proverbial bullet.
for others like simon, 41, the patience and caution the pandemic demanded created some much-needed introspection. “dating during the pandemic refined the thing i was looking for,” he said. “all of this pushed me to ask myself who someone was that i’d really want to spend a lot of time with. is it because of the pandemic? no. was it assisted by the time and space the pandemic gave me? yes.”
“when i felt ready, i felt there was a way to be safe,” alejandro says. “at the end of the day, you use your judgment, you talk to the other person, hear what they’re doing, and watch out for red flags.”

forbidden love

among all the different dating paths montrealers could take, stigma has been one of the pandemic’s most common lasting effects. “i remember in the first wave, i was almost ashamed that i was dating,” michelle says. “how does this make me look to my colleagues? does it make me look desperate, or am i a risk to them? am i putting them in danger? was it worth putting myself at risk? you can’t just think about yourself.”

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“i understand it’s important to be safe, but at the same time, you’re asking at what cost to your mental health are you denying yourself what you want and need?” alejandro says. “as much as this is scary, you can be respectful, you just have to be more surgical about it. i have to frame things through covid.”
“do i feel bad that i didn’t lock myself in my house? no, because that’s unreasonable,” simon says. “but was i afraid of stigma? sure. i understand that you have to obey the law, but i also know that people need people, and that romantic and sexual relationships are important to our health.”
“you can’t be perfect all the time; you need to figure out how to do what you need to do while hurting the least amount of people,” simon adds.
“there’s this perception that single people should just stay in their houses and (wait) until this thing is over, and that’s unrealistic. it feels like like the people who level that criticism are the ones who don’t have to deal with it.”
jpkarwacki@postmedia.com
twitter.com/jpkarwacki
all our coronavirus-related news can always be found at montrealgazette.com/tag/coronavirus.
 
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