Quarantine Wolf

I’m a guy in my 30s. Before COVID, I used Tinder to hook up with different women a few times a week. I don’t recognize myself anymore. Yesterday, I was on a date, and the girl was really hot and wanted to go back to my place to have sex. I was weirdly turned off by the idea and called her an Uber home. This isn’t like me, but it keeps happening. Why am I suddenly like this?

— Worried

If we hadn’t gotten vaccines,

we might’ve seen a whole new category of lingerie, a la Victoria’s Crotchless Hazmat Suit.

Our body’s immune system protects us by mobilizing warrior cells to fight off invaders like bacteria, parasites, and viruses that cause infectious diseases. However, war is costly — whether between nations or inside us.

Psychologist Mark Schaller notes that our body’s effort to surround and kill “pathogenic intruders” sucks up calories needed for important bodily functions. It can also be “temporarily debilitating” due to “fever, fatigue, and other physiological consequences of an aggressive immunological response.” (You sometimes have to boil the village alive to save the village.)

To avoid these costs, we need to avoid being exposed to disease in the first place. Helping us do that is the job of our “behavioral immune system.” This is Schaller’s term for a suite of psychological mechanisms that function as our early warning system, helping us identify signs of pathogens in our social environment and motivating us to feel, think, and behave in ways that keep us from getting invaded by the buggers.

For example, social psychology grad student James B. Moran and his adviser, social psychologist Damian Murray, find that reminding research participants of the looming threat of infectious disease puts a damper on the appeal of casual sex and their inclination to have it down the road.

Chances are this response explains your own psychological and behavioral shift: stud-turned-monk of COVID19. There’s no clock on exactly when you’ll be back to your sexual-Wild West self. Should you get nostalgic, keep in mind that you can still dip into some elements of the hookuppy old days, such as “the walk of shame” — though, these days, that’s what we call it when you get yelled at by the old lady down the street for taking out the trash unmasked.

For pages and pages of “science-help” from me, buy my latest book, ”Unf *ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.” It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.