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I’ve been feeling a lot for single people during lockdown.
What do you do if you’re single and looking for love during a time when even leaving the house is frowned upon, and meeting up with strangers is flat out forbidden? What about if you’ve started chatting to someone online and have made a connection, but can’t take that next step? Are you meant to carry on the conversation indefinitely, without knowing whether or not that spark exists in real life?
Finding love during lockdown is tough for sure.
I was talking to a friend about it recently. She was in the full swing of single life when coronavirus hit, meeting people online and going on a couple of dates every week. For her, chatting online is a tiny part of the dating process. ‘You just can’t really know someone in any way until you meet them,’ she told me, ‘you have no idea of what the chemistry is going to be like until you’re face to face.’
For her, lockdown has meant putting her dating life on hold indefinitely, which has left her anxious about the future and the prospect of meeting Mr Right anytime soon.
What will dating look like for single people though as we move out of lockdown and into a potentially new way of living? If you’re a free dating site then perhaps you’ll thrive as more and more singletons look online for love. I’m sure sites like welovedates will have been seeing a mixed response, as some people look online as a way to combat loneliness and others, like my friend, give up completely.
Will video dates become a thing? I personally think this is unlikely – video chats are hard enough even with people you know well, for me at least, and I can’t see that trying to make small talk with a half second delay is going to be any easier with a stranger than with your mum.
I actually started a new relationship just a couple of months before coronavirus changed the world forever and that has come with its own set of challenges. I freaked out to start with for sure, terrified of any contact, but equally terrified about the lack of it and what that might look like.
Navigating the learning curve that is a new relationship is hard enough at the best of times, but with the added pressure of social distancing and government guidelines on who you can and cannot see and what you can and cannot do… well, it becomes almost impossible. I’m lucky though, my new relationship is a wonderful one, and we’ve managed to navigate the tough times and come out the other end.
Who knows, perhaps the new world perspective will bring about a new ‘quality rather than quantity’ approach to dating, where random hook ups become less appealing and people are prepared to invest more time in getting to know someone and forming a genuine connection? We can hope at least.