ONLINE DATING
FLIRTY CONVERSATION NOW REVOLVES AROUND: ‘DO YOU HAVE EXTRA LOO ROLL?’
Coronavirus is impacting our lives in unprecedented ways and, for millennials, one of the most unexpected is when it comes to online dating.
You might expect coronavirus to have killed it off altogether, thanks to “social distancing”, but many 20- and 30-somethings are finding the opposite.
The reduction in our social lives means there is suddenly a lot of free time to fill. And, on apps like Tinder, that means people are actually talking to each other again. The website dating.com has reported a surge in engagement, and my social media feeds are full of my peers commenting on the sudden uplift in proper conversation.
Forget the usual wasteland of no replies, silence or painful small talk. Suddenly, we have something to bind us.
The “getting to know you” questions can often lose their nuance over dating apps, but coronavirus has put them into safer territory. Flirty conversation now revolves around “What skills would you bring to my bunker?” and “Do you have extra loo roll?”
Meanwhile, the usual chat about what you both do for work has an additional layer to it – you can ask what impact the virus is having on their day, and whether they are working from home.
I’ve had more conversations with potential suitors in the past two weeks than in some time and, a few days ago, went on my first date in nine months.
At that point, the advice around staying home was unclear (some would say it still is), and when we met at the pub, we hugged – although I did feel uneasy about the close contact, given the potential risks. What if we wanted to kiss?
I needn’t have worried. The date was abysmal: the most memorable bits include him questioning the merits of International Women’s
Day (oof) and telling me he smoked “loads of weed”. But for a brief moment, it felt nice to be doing something normal.
Then, over the weekend, I got chatting to Paul, who lives in the countryside but regularly works in London. We arranged a date for this week. This time it didn’t just feel odd to be thinking of going to the pub, it felt wrong.
So Paul suggested coming to my place – and that presented another problem. If you’re social distancing and dating, does that mean you must now meet directly in each other’s homes? Surely, as any millennial knows, that’s the not-sosecret signal for it being a hook-up and not a date? In the end, I texted and said we should postpone.
Meet-ups are fragile on dating apps, so when you delay, it’s unlikely to ever happen. But something tells me that this may now change, as my generation stops taking our social lives for granted. If coronavirus is showing us anything, it’s that human interaction can be incredible – what a shame it had to take a pandemic to make us realise it.