Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash
By Victoria DiMartino, Contributing Writer
In the long list of things that COVID-19 has put on hold in your life, is dating one of them? With every state following its own set of rules, and every household in America following a different standard for how severe the pandemic actually is, how do we find a middle ground for social interaction?
Maybe you’ve decided that you’re ok with unmasking with your roommate and a few friends of choice. Maybe you only wear a mask on a campus because you’re told to and when you’re in your hometown you don’t have to wear a mask at all.
With the array of choices people have made in terms of how severely they are halting their lives, I couldn’t help but wonder, in true Carrie Bradshaw fashion, how was dating fitting into all this?
I had a lot of questions.
Is dating dead because of COVID-19 or only slightly maimed? Were we now limited to the people we knew pre-pandemic until the wonderful doors of BJ’s and Bots reopened for a normal night at the bar? Or we were just saying screw it and going anyway? Was it for the dating or the booze? And how were we ever going to meet anyone if 18th Street was quieter than Selinsgrove?
It seems that there is no linear answer to any of these questions. While it’s all a personal choice, it may also come with some guilt.
If you do x is it going to affect y? Even if you do want to go out to the bar or on that Tinder date, do you feel comfortable with the outcomes? We’ve been told for so long to not interact with too many people, and to limit our time with our loved ones.
But, when you want to try and find Mr. Right, that can definitely put a wrench in your plans. Hopping from a date with Johnny on Tuesday to a date with Susie on Friday who also went on a date with Roger on Wednesday, could mean that while none of you have the virus, the fear of it may still lurk in the back of your mind.
It seems that with trying to find new love, there are now so many barriers in the way we can’t even detect the slightest beating of a heart. Masks, social distancing, and contact tracing are as much a mental barrier as they are physical. We feel more distant to people than we ever have before.
While Zoom and Facetime, texting and Netflix parties, have connected us so that we don’t feel alone, they just aren’t enough. For now, when we actually do have in-person interactions, we’re awkward and don’t really know what to do with our bodies. When was the last time you gave your friend a hug, let alone giving flirty signals with your body to the girl across the bar?
What do we do now when we see that cute girl in Target and we can’t smile at her? Now if we “causally” end up in the same four aisles as her, it’s no longer cute, instead it’s kind of creepy because of the mask and loss of human connection.
If we’re all struggling with the barriers to the physical, what about the mental?
Are we still stuck in March even though the months have passed? In a time like this where people are still a little numb, trying to work through the confusing web of feelings that comes from living in a pandemic, what can we expect of others emotionally? Do people want the long term, trying hard to find someone they could seem themselves quarantining with? Experiencing another pandemic with?
There’s a lot to assess, too much to even think about. It feels like our problems ballooned into something bigger than a house. And you were worried about finding a good man before? Maybe new love is still possible for us and all we need is to switch up our game.
Just like fast fashion starting to fall on a downward curve, maybe that’s how it will be for fast dating, too. Maybe instead of hopping from one person to another in the course of a week, maybe now we need to think harder about whether we even want to go on that first date.
I mean it could mean that you actually have to change out of your pajama pants that have been your closet companion these past few months and actually put on jeans. Possibly it means that new potential soulmates are on the horizon, so you mentally quarantine for two weeks and think about what you actually want.
At the end of the day, it makes you wonder about what the world wants, and what you want. Maybe someday we can jump back into the maskless bar scene. Now the question remains, after taking things slow, will we be able to jump into the world quickly again, or will our hearts need time to quarantine as well?
If you need help, consider these resources:
The Violence, Intervention, and Prevention Center:
https://www.susqu.edu/campus-life/student-safety/vip-center
Located in the basement of the Blough-Weis Library.
The Susquehanna Counseling Center:
https://mysu.susqu.edu/COUN/Pages/default.aspx
Virtual appointments available.
