It can be an uncomfortable feeling being single during a pandemic. When you’ve already been single for some time one of the most natural things to want to do is get out there and meet new people. Perhaps the most unnatural thing to do is what many of us are doing right now – spending a year, mostly indoors, without any kind of intimacy or romance in our lives.
It’s something nearly all of us desire – whether for sex or for love, and usually for both – and it seems something unusual to live without.
Around the late summer of 2020, when covid cases were seemingly dropping, I decided that eight months was more than enough time to be single and decided it was time to try dating once more. I signed myself up to Bumble and Tinder, set up a profile, and began swiping away with an odd sense of childish glee.
I noticed within a week that things had changed. Matches and conversations still happened, but it had descended into two extremes: the lighthearted sending of jokes and memes; or therapy sessions with lonely souls looking for a pen pal. It seemed most people were using dating apps, but few were really dating. It was more like a collection of isolated people looking to go online to pass away the time.
Despite the changes, I did eventually go on a few dates, but romance was never in the air. Even going on a date made me feel guilty. We all want to stay safe and healthy and take the necessary precautions. Yet we all still have this desire to connect with each other and live some semblance of a normal life.
One of the dates I did go on was a simple walk in the park, masks firmly in place, as we talked about our lives and how things had been this past year and what we were doing to cope. After an hour or so, when the date finally came to an end, we couldn’t kiss or even hug goodbye. Hours later we sent each other the typical ‘nice to meet you text’ and then ceased to text altogether.
Two weeks later and this time with another date we both decided to go for a coffee outdoors. We had a good talk and shared some jokes and we both spoke about the normal things we were missing, but something just seemed off – that frothy romantic tension that one can usually sense just wasn’t there.
Maybe without the alcohol and the dutch courage something was lacking or maybe it was simply being indoors for so long without much contact with people – we had all forgotten how to do this thing called dating.
It also seemed that in a world where nobody wants to get sick; the last thing we want to do is stick our tongues into someone else’s mouth. In the back of our minds is this illness we want to avoid and so any of our romantic inklings are smothered before they begin.
I decided that another break was in order until the pandemic had truly passed. I made the decision to focus on the positives and not dwell on the things I couldn’t control so I set out to make a change.
I read books that I’d intended to read for years but never felt I had the time. I began to learn Spanish once again, and in the evenings I worked with people from all over the world exchanging languages. I worked out most days and figured out a way to stay relatively healthy while we were encouraged not to leave our homes. I watched film after film, series after series, and finally felt caught up on seeing the things my friends always told me I had to see.
It felt great to finally find the time to do the things I’d always put off.
But I still missed certain things that couldn’t be undone with books and film. I missed hugs. As a man I feel we don’t often hug enough and I missed that feeling of wrapping arms around someone I love and feeling the goodness spill out. I missed, as silly as it may sound, the smell of a woman’s hair, one of those curious pleasures that can make a man happy, though we can hardly say why. I missed talking to a partner and sharing with someone thoughts and feelings and hearing about theirs in return.
We win and lose in times of change and we must try not to hold a heavy heart over the things we have lost. Love and sex are not dead for us singletons, they are on temporary hiatus, and it is only our hope that that pushes us through.
For me, it has been an eighteen month stint on the shelf that may have to continue for a while longer. Most of us desire love and sex but we have to realise that it can wait. We won’t perish or die or fall apart because we can’t kiss someone we like. It’s a tough time to be single, nobody can deny that, but we must embrace it the best we can, and know that there will always be a tomorrow where we can live the desires of today.
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