Are you seeing anybody? – no, how am i supposed to “see” somebody when the world’s in lockdown? A common exchange that pops up during our catch up sessions with my girlfriends.
I know it’s hardly a “dateable” world as is, even without the pandemic with everyone juggling their careers, social life and gym memberships. But when all is taken away, what has changed?
Is covid eliminating casual dating?
Remember how at the beginning of the lockdown, everyone was saying how routines help with uncertainty, anxiety and suggesting to establish a daily routine around the lockdown life and stick to it as closely as possible. Needless to say, that’s what everyone did. Now that we’re all so used to being locked in our homes, finally perfecting our lockdown routines that include all tasks from cooking daily meals and attending zoom meetings to working out, it got me wondering, when the lockdown lifts, will it be hard for us to modify our such well-molded little routines just to draw the time out of our days to actually go out on dates and meet people? The “routine” I’m saying fits the lockdown life perfectly, but the problem is, casual dating doesn’t exist in locked down world, therefore, is likely excluded from our perfect little routines too.
Personally, it’s been over half a year since my last “date” and frankly I have such mixed feelings about going back to the casual dating scene again. I am a pretty independent person, who can be very content with just spending time alone with myself. Yet, I feel like I’ve lost a few chance meetings, that could have possibly found me somebody “nice”. That got me thinking, if I am, a person who loves her single life, am thinking about dating when dating is usually the last thing on my mind, many people who love dating and that kind of affection, their lives ought to be affected by the pandemic, perhaps a little more than it’s discussed.
I know there’s a lot of things that are like million times more important than our “dating lives”. I mean we’re talking humans loosing lives, loosing their loved ones and many more people risking their lives to serve or save others. By no means I’m prioritising the dating life, but the fact is, it is a part of everyone’s lives and we have not heard a whole lot on the subject throughout the period we spent social distancing and covering our faces.
Lately, we’ve been catching a glimpse of normalcy in between lockdowns, with more and more people getting vaccinated, people were starting to gather at social settings, although with limitations and with the vaccines conquering the headlines I feel like the world’s slowly finding its way back to the normalcy that it lived in before Covid-19. Then again, what is normal life? Will it feel normal? I mean will we be able to socialise with hundreds of people without feeling anxious or feeling the need to cover our faces with something? And how about dating? Will we be able to confidently share food and get intimate with our dates again, or will we have to present our most current Covid-19 test results in order to score a date?
Let’s just be optimistic and although it seems far away, supposing we all get effectively vaccinated and the world’s Covid free again, so all medical precautions aside, how mentally open will we be? For instance, recently, I had reunited with an old friend – a guy, and at the end of our little “meeting” he went ahead to hug me, which startled me a bit. I mean, isn’t that supposed to feel normal? It’s just a hug for crying out loud, but since I had not been that close to a guy for months it felt so weird, almost wrong. And yes, we both had face masks on.
Nonetheless, while I reckon it’s probably still very far away, but eventually when things get back to normal again, the question is will we be ready for it?
Love,
yours truly x
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