If you ever felt like the kind of person who couldn’t compete for a romantic partner because you felt average, or unattractive, this is your moment. The playing field has been not only leveled but completely upset.
Right now, someone who is interesting and who can connect on a human level of intimacy is going to be a lot more successful than someone who is merely pretty. Pretty does not get you very far when your dating interactions are limited to remote conversations.
This time we’re in doesn’t have to feel like a waste. Here’s how to make it work in your favor.
Dating During Corona: How to Reset Your Love Life
Before Covid19 vs. Present Day
A few months ago, when asked how we might like to spend some time working from home, skipping the gym, doing a lot of reading and watching movies–a lot of us might have viewed that opportunity pretty favorably.
The reality of sitting at home, wondering whether your job is safe, how you will pay bills, whether you or a loved one will get sick: this has turned out to be a lot less pleasant. Now our days are full of press conferences, infection rates, and the inexorable march of the death toll. The things that might have provided us with comfort last month or last year often feel hollow or flavorless.
It may be that the current situation will be ongoing, in some form, for the rest of the year or longer. Even when we are not locked down, life is not going to look much like it did only a couple months ago.
Can you really imagine elbowing your way onto a commuter train with people actually breathing on you? Breathing all that air that was just in a dozen other people’s lungs? Gross. A lot of people are going to take a big giant pass on that for a while.
Reality Avoidance & Self-Review
At this time in the world, in your life, it is entirely ok to want to curl up in a ball and do nothing. We have all spent some time curled up on the couch practicing reality avoidance. It is hard to argue with that tactic, and remaining paralyzed is definitely an option.
This may actually be the time, since you have little else going on, to do some self-review. We have a unique chance to stop and think: what from your pre-quarantine life will you want back, and what will you want to change?
Work for Work’s Sake Will Not Complete You
Before the pandemic, it felt like a lot of us, especially in the San Francisco area, spent all our time working. When we weren’t working, we were talking about work; how was our portfolio doing, how much more rent or mortgage could we afford if we worked more and got paid even more.
It wasn’t until traveling out of the Bay Area that we even realized other people in other places don’t have casual conversations that center on speculation over how much a house costs; maybe because working to remain housed isn’t as all-consuming.
Consider the Life You Truly Want to Have
When we stayed in the Bay we spent our time wondering if our lives were cool enough to photograph. Was the table we got at dinner prestigious enough for a social media post? Was the hike we went on suitably photogenic to show off? People spent a lot of time working to achieve a lifestyle we were told we wanted without taking the time to sit back and question whether we did.
What Used To Be Important Isn’t Anymore
Yet, when we read about two thousand people dying, and two thousand people died yesterday, and the day before, and another two thousand will probably die tomorrow, it feels kind of like the things that used to be important just aren’t anymore.
It may be time to reconsider whether those things were worth making important to begin with, and whether work to acquire those things that photograph well is really how we want to spend our time. Is your old life the one you want to go back to or are you interested in making a change to something with a value that you define for yourself?
If you have spent the last few years in pursuit of the perfect social media post and the biggest paycheck. If you thought the good life was found in looking good, earning more, and going out; then it may be difficult to recognize this moment as an opportunity to connect and form an emotional and romantic partnership.
The Loneliness Pandemic
One of the worst effects of the pandemic is simple loneliness. We are in many ways more isolated than we have ever been before. Even if we have avoided illness, even if we are fortunate to have kept our employment, we are all still being denied the simple reassurance of human contact.
The hundred little interactions that we engage in every day have been compressed into a few online conversations, some lines of text, a video chat. All of our interactions are now either contrived or, if we have to go out, laced with a reasonable anxiety of infection.
In some ways though, the old focus on work and acquisition was not really that different; we were still alienating ourselves from one another. Our interactions were still superficial. Our anxieties were about work and career and prestige. If the old things are less important, then what are the things that can replace them?
Are You Content Being Single?
If you’re here, then it may be that you’ve decided that it is time to stop being single. If you went into the epidemic single, it wasn’t the epidemic that caused that. It is bad enough to face the reality of this time and place; to do it alone is worse.
If you are not as fulfilled as you might want, then this situation can be an opportunity. Not to say it won’t still be depressing and awful in a lot of ways, but do not let that obscure your chance to make substantive change to your life, to your way of being and doing.
Build a Life of Authenticity and Meaning
If so many people are feeling lonely, it also means this is a great opportunity to reach out and make a connection. Now is a great time to contact friends and talk to them; not about what cool activity you are doing but about how you feel.
How many of your friends have you actually outright told “you’re important to me” or “I wanted you to know, this friendship is something I value.”
Before you try to connect to someone new, shore up your foundations by reconnecting with the people already in your life. We are not trying to solve a problem of singleness; we are trying to build a life full of authentic and meaningful connections.
This is a Great Time for New Connections
Even if you view this isolation as an inconvenience or an imposition, right now, there have never been more potential romantic partners sitting at home on their computers with more time than ever to have a conversation.
Even better, if you feel like you have never been one of the beautiful people, or one of the best dressed, or someone who can attract a mate just by walking around looking like themselves? Well, this is your time!
Right now, your ability to listen, to communicate, and to engage, are a lot more important than how you look. This is not to suggest you let your quarantine hairstyle collect potato chip crumbs, and to forgo pants, but rather to state that right now the person who can keep a potential mate interested and intrigued with their conversation is going to be the most successful.
The people who could once have walked into a bar or a nightclub and walked out with some companionship are now limited to the same methods you are. This is the moment of the eloquent over the aesthetic.
How to Make the Most Out of Coronavirus Isolation
So what are some basic ways to make the most out of this situation? As always, since you have the time, go over your online presence and make sure that you have put your best foot forward.
Those long, decidedly tedious, profile statements that you never had time to really sit down and write well. Hard to say you do not have the time right now. While you cannot do much about having professional photographs taken (yet), it is still a good time to curate those photographs you are using.
Since you have the time, consider getting dressed up, putting your grooming together, and taking some quarantine selfies. This is also a great time to go through your closet and really do a thorough culling of the clothes that you do not wear or which, albeit much-loved, are trending towards the “rags” end of the spectrum.
Consider cleaning up your residence because even if the outside world is in disorder, you can create order in the place you have control over. A sense of control is important now more than ever.
Especially make your environment presentable before you take the step from messaging to a video chat. The goal is not to revert to leading with your appearance, but rather to present yourself in such a way that there is no distraction from your other communications.
Reach Out To New People
Once past the basics, the thing to do in this situation is to reach out to new people. This is a time to expand the pool of people you are willing to approach. Just like you are going to be leading with your mind and character, you should broaden the range of people you are going to be talking with.
Take your list of deal breakers and “ I would never” items and consider how many of them matter if you knew you were going to get sick next month. The most gorgeous person in the world is not going to do much for you in isolation if they cannot communicate; were you going to spend all day looking at her Bumble photos?
Perhaps this is also an opportunity to realize, belatedly, that the way someone is, not the way someone looks, is what is going to make them that companion that you want. Even when restrictions against social activities are relaxed, a beautiful person with no ability to carry on a conversation or engage emotionally might be worth reconsidering.
Leverage Messaging on Dating Apps
Take the time to actually write out your messages on dating sites; your recipient has the time to read them and the goal here is to begin a dialog. Tell them what got your attention about their profile and remember that you are leading with your personality and conversational skills.
Explore honesty and be complimentary without being overly flattering. Be sure to ask questions that show you read their profile; while we do not want to interrogate people, it shows legitimate interest to ask questions.
Before everyone was shut in with nothing to do, it was entirely acceptable, even successful, to get one response back for every fifty messages you sent; right now with cities full of bored people you can get a response rate ten times better.
You might think about some topics in advance because once you get past “what do you do for a living,” which is the more adult version of the equally vapid “what’s your major,” you are going to need some things to talk about. You might also want to think about whether the pandemic is a topic you want to discuss at length.
Making Mistakes Is Real, Perfection Is Not
People are already awash in pandemic news, social media feeds are almost nothing else these days, and it is hard to spin body counts into something positive. You want an emotional connection, not to just provoke emotion.
What you might want to focus on more than the mere statistics of the pandemic is how it has been stressful and what you have done to handle the stress. What have you done that is interesting?
What artifact did you find when you were taking control of your environment? What have you tried that you did not have time to try before? If your quarantine bread was a disaster, then say so because there is honesty and vulnerability in error; making mistakes is real and perfection is not.
Was the Old Normal Worth the Effort?
The lesson from this is that the current moment does not have to be exclusively tragic and depressing. While there are awful things out there right now, the decision as to how to proceed is entirely yours.
With so little in our immediate control, this is the most important thing we have left to us. We can place our old lives on hold and hope that one day everything will come back to being just like it was before this year.
Even if you wait a long time, there is some realistic chance that if you just wait long enough you can return to the old normal. You can also decide that the old normal wasn’t worth the effort you put into maintaining it.
No one is suggesting you quit your job and become an itinerant mime, (unless that’s the dream you’ve been denying yourself), but maybe instead of working to afford things, that you work to afford experiences and that you put an emphasis on having someone with whom to share those experiences.
If you go through one of the worst human disasters in the last hundred years and come out unchanged, then you have missed a chance that does not present itself too often in life; the chance to reorganize, refocus, and reinvent yourself.
