Almost a year into the pandemic and I’m still trying to figure out how to date during this time. I know I don’t have to date right now, and I’m not doing much. But I also don’t want to stop completely because I know there is always a chance of meeting someone awesome. And that is something that happened to me over the summer. Talking to someone every day for a few months built a really strong bond between us. But there was just no romantic chemistry so we are going to be friends. But that’s still something good to come out of dating right now.
But there are so many negatives about dating right now. It’s not easy for sure. I miss the days where I would match with someone and be able to easily go to a bar or coffee shop to meet up in person to see if we click. I’ve always known that in-person chemistry is different from texting chemistry, but it’s so much more obvious now. I hate the idea of wasting weeks on texting with someone only to find out that we don’t click at all when we are face to face. But that’s what really has to happen right now to be safe.
Not every person feels the same safety concerns as I do. I’m still shocked how many guys I will be messaging with who either say they don’t believe in COVID or they aren’t scared of it. That makes me so much more fearful about who they are and I know I can’t take the risk of meeting them. I understand they aren’t scared, but that also probably means they aren’t isolating that much so I have to worry about every other person they have met up with. And maybe they have been dating women who don’t care either. I have never expected something exclusive with someone right away because that’s not how I date. But these days, you almost have to be exclusive when you meet for safety reasons.
I’ve had so many guys be frustrated with me because I wasn’t willing to meet up with them right away. It used to hurt to see what they wrote to me, but now I’m just happy to unmatch with them. If that is how they feel, there is no way that they were the right person for me. If we weren’t in a pandemic and we met up, we still would have had something that didn’t match up well. So I’m just saving that time. I won’t deny that it’s annoying because it is. But I also don’t feel like I’m missing out on someone when they say it.
The other odd thing about dating right now is that most dating apps have allowed anyone to set their location to be anywhere in the world. Normally, that’s something that only paying members on apps can do (if they can do it at all). But now, you can put that you are in another city/state/country and match with people there. I still have my own location settings set to be that I’m in LA and that I only want matches that are within a certain distance from me. But that still allows people who might be in France but claiming to be in LA to be in my matches. I understand that some people are just looking for pen pals or open to a long-distance relationship. But for me, I’m not on the apps for something like that. I am still trying to find my person and I don’t want them to be someone that I have no way of doing a social distant meet up with.
I still have my random silly or weird stories (like people who “forget” to mention they are married), but I haven’t had nearly as many stories as I did before. I feel like I’m matching with about the same number of people as I used to, but I’m not really getting anywhere with those matches. I’ve only met a few of them in person for socially distant dates and none of them have turned into anything more than that first date. Maybe I’ll meet someone who matches my concerns about the pandemic along with everything else and I’ll actually date them. Or maybe I won’t be able to really date until things are safe again. I don’t know which one it will be, but I know it will be one of the two. And I can’t wait until my stories are about the problems I had in the past. Those problems were annoying and bad, but at least I wasn’t worried about my health the way I am now.
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A Weird Dating Milestone (or At Least I Know I’m Trying)
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