Corona dating is not going well for me. Since the beginning of lock down I have had multiple fans of The Dater Analyst get in touch to ask if I am going to try video dating (when I say multiple fans I mean the topic came up naturally in conversation with two friends). The truth is, I find the concept of video dating far more terrifying than normal dating. It's a new phenomenon; there are so many unknowns. I feel like I've gone back to the early days of the blog. I started this blog when I was living with my parents so that I would be free to date without being under their close scrutiny, as well as aiming to find solace in terrible dates through writing about them for the entertainment other people. Dating, as a whole, seemed incredibly grown up and a far cry from a drunken dance floor snog, which was how most relationships started at uni. Dating was scary and the prospect of my parents knowing I was doing it and insisting on a blow by blow account when I returned home made it all the more terrifying. With the blog though, the rest of the world found out about the date as and when my parents did which somehow managed to make it feel less intimate and less intimidating.
I think it would be pretty fair to describe myself as a seasoned dater by now but, finding myself back in Cumbria once more, the old fears have returned. Admitting to your family that you are going on a date when you leave the house is nerve-wracking enough but having the date IN your house is even worse. Imagine sitting in a pub on a first date and looking up to see your mum walk in. If you’re on a video date there is a very real danger of this happening, any or all of your family could wander in and join the date whenever they fancied. I am sure ours is not the only household that has found attempting to set some boundaries around work video call etiquette challenging to say the least. Video date etiquette is another kettle of fish altogether.
Then there is the issue of what to wear. Since the day I moved back to Cumbria I haven't warn any make up and have lived in a uniform of leggings and old jumpers. I did confess to my colleagues the other day that the regularity of how often these are changed is entirely based on my calculations of how many days in a row I have appeared on work calls in the same outfit, when my co-workers might notice this and when they would deem it revolting. Part of me believes that if I don’t want to wear make up I shouldn’t feel the need to put it on for dates. I should be authentic and comfortable with myself. Yes, but when I’m on a date I also want to give myself the best chance of success, I want the other person to be attracted to me and if a lick of mascara makes me feel a little more fanciable then I’m all in favour. For any normal date I would happily wear make up but something feels both ridiculous and a little bit depressing about getting fully dolled up purely to sit alone in the confines of my bedroom staring at a computer screen. A full face of make up might also raise alarm bells and make my family suspicious about what exactly it is I am up to in my room with an armful of gin and copious amounts of lipstick.
So you get past these hurdle, firmly lock your bedroom door, perfectly plan your outfit to look like you've tried a bit but not too much and lined up what looks like just the right amount of gin and tonics to keep you going throughout but not make it look like lock down has turned you into a raging alcoholic. You choose your technical platform of choice and happily chat away but then comes the next issue; how do you end the date? There is no danger of missing the last tube, you can't invite them back to yours, and no one is going to call last orders. I am yet to figure out a suitable reason for escape and until I do I will not be partaking in a video date.
As you can imagine, I therefore have little to report on the dating front from the last couple of months. In fact, the closest I have come to any form of dating or sexual encounter was a Facetime bra fitting. I can imagine the set up is vaguely similar to shooting a home porno. I had to find somewhere to balance my phone then stand awkwardly in my underwear whilst a stranger instructed me to put my fingers in various locations. The outcome of this may not have been sexual gratification for anyone involved but I do now have an exceedingly smart and well fitting bra. Fear not though, others have proven more fruitful in their hunt for love in the time of Corona and have been very selflessly sharing their exploits for the good of the blog. If anything vaguely romantic happens to me you all will be the first to know but in the meantime I bring you the tale of my friend Jack.
Jack lives in Edinburgh and has been doing a solo lockdown in his flat. For the first month of lockdown he gave us relatively regular updates on how this was going. He started practising his singing, he took up watercolour painting, he sent videos recreating the Queen’s I Want to Break Free video with his hoover, and he agreed to be the nude model for a Zoom life-drawing Hen Do. Then suddenly he went rather quiet. We couldn't work out what was going on. Eventually the story all came out.
Jack was just leaving his flat one day for his allocated daily exercise when he bumped into his upstairs neighbour, Marie, who was just returning from a dog walk. Marie lived with her husband, Ollie. Jack had got to know them both a bit when he first moved in and had been having issues with his ceiling. They had exchanged numbers to coordinate builders but since then there had been little interaction. Ollie had then got a job in Cambridge and moved down south for a year, naturally meaning he hadn't been around as much. His job was in the hospitality industry so when he was furloughed he headed back up to Edinburgh for lockdown. Marie seemed unusually pleased to see Jack when she bumped into him. As they chatted away there was an unusually extensive amount of hair flicking (from Marie, not Jack. This was in the early days of lock down before Jack’s hair had quite got to flickable or shaveable length). Marie seemed keen to chat so Jack joined her in some socially distant small talk. When Jack asked if Marie was enjoying having Ollie home her response was surprisingly, "No, not really". Not entirely the response he was expecting. Trying to stay two metres away from someone whilst standing in a doorway did not seem like a sensible setting to probe too deeply into the dirty laundry of the state of their marriage, especially when the someone in question was a neighbour you had only ever previously exchanged pleasantries and builders’ contact details with. Jack made his excuses and headed out for his run.
Later that evening Jack received a message from Marie. "Hey, just having a glass of wine. Want to join?". Funnily enough, Jack’s social calendar wasn’t exactly packed and any sort of real life human interaction seemed preferable to yet another Zoom quiz so he headed upstairs. I should probably state at this point that in sharing this tale I am neither condoning, nor condemning Jack's approach to and interpretation of social distancing rules. I am purely retelling the facts as they unfolded. Jack arrived upstairs and was a little surprised to find Marie alone in the flat with no sign of Ollie. It transpired that this was no coincidence. Marie and Ollie had been having issues in their marriage prior to Ollie moving to Cambridge. His furloughing had given him no choice but to return to Edinburgh and being forced to spend long periods of time together in a confined space had not bought about any form of reconciliation. This is fairly understandable; I think many a couple without any pre-existing marital conditions have felt the strain of lockdown. No matter how much you love someone, spending every minute of everyday in the same place as them can test the relationship, even more so when you are no longer sure that you do love them. They had decided to split and Ollie was sleeping on the sofa until the pandemic allowed this separation to be as geographical as it was emotional. All the same, Marie seemed a little vague on where Ollie was at this precise moment. Jack thought it would not look too good if Ollie returned home to find Jack in situ, happily sipping a Sauvignon Blanc with his wife. That being said, he had agreed to a drink and, especially at a time when we are supposed to be minimising human interaction, it seemed rude to turn around and leave again because there were fewer people there than he was expecting. He stayed for a couple of glasses, just to be polite, before heading back downstairs. It was just a few drinks, I’m sure Dominic Cummings would have done the same.
Marie and Jack continued to message and over the following weeks they met up for the occasional dog walk. One such dog walk led to a couple of innocent beers on the steps of their building. Jack left me a voicenote to explain what happened next which I will now quote verbatim as I don’t think any amount of artistic licence or flowery language could describe the nuanced and subtle mating display us humans go through to gauge if someone fancies us any better. “So yeah, we were sitting on the steps having a couple of beers and then she said she needed the loo. She came back down with half a bottle of wine so we drank that too. I had just defrosted loads and loads of chicken so I thought I better invite her for dinner.” Who said romance was dead? Otters woo their mates by presenting them with their favourite rocks, puffer fish create intricate sand sculptures, Jack defrosts a kilogram of chicken. History doesn’t relate whether the chicken had been defrosted with this intention in mind, what he had been planning on doing with this vast quantity of frozen poultry other than seduce his married neighbour, or whether he had any other culinary accoutrements to accompany this meat feast.
His chicken dinner seemed to do the trick though as appetites satiated, they then consummated their adulterous relationship. All with Marie’s husband (I know, they’re separated but for now they are technically still husband and wife) sat on the sofa a mere matter of metres above their heads. All rather risqué, Dustin Hoffman would be proud! The last I heard from Jack, he sent me a message whilst from the warm embrace of his neighbourly lover’s arms. Him and Marie were snuggled up on the sofa and had just launched out on watching a box set together. It all sounded very cosy but something tells me this particular lockdown set up is going to end one of two ways; these two are either going to be struck love sick or in need for the distance between them to be anything but social. Given how contagious this virus is I am hoping that it is the former rather than the latter but only time will tell.