Looking for Love! dating during covid sounds like one big fucking mess.
When I thought about dating again back in February I thought “well I would like to sit next to another person and exchange life stories and I would also like them to fuck me to my grave.” Sometimes I thought “well maybe I want a partner” and that felt odd too. Then I just felt anxiety and worry and wondered “who the fuck would I actually meet?” and then I just let it go and forgot about it.
birthday, bitch. self portrait by mo Santiago
In the time of covid, meeting new people was just too big of a risk for me and a lot of other people and that’s ok! That is an ok feeling! While people are getting vaccinated, we’re still living in a pandemic and the precautions I take with my everyday life are applicable to my sex life. But I’m human, I crave to be in contact with other people and see them and talk to them and hug them, I miss hugs damnit!
As an ambivert I was completely (and still sort of am) out of balance! The extrovert in me has been deprived of physical, emotional and mental connection while the introvert is just drowning in herself. I keep a small circle of friends while connecting with my communities at work, in school and around Chicago with the artist community and this has always kept me healthy mentally and emotionally. I’ve always felt fulfilled and always knew when I needed to be around people or be away from them to have some me time. But thanks to covid I was running Criminal Minds marathons four times a week with the cat four times a week trying to see if I’d match with any friends on Tinder wondering if I should just hop into their DM’s. From Thanksgiving to Valentines Day. And even swiping through Tinder had proved to be a huge turn off when the thoughts of meeting new people and having to get back into that casual-ness crept in.
In conversation with a community member she said to me “I feel like dating apps were already hard but are even harder now because you have to really decide if you’re willing to continue and meet this person and if they’re really worth your time.” After I felt good enough to jump back into the dating scene I immediately turned to tinder and hinge but left shortly after because I kept getting ghosted or while I felt connected to one or two people I couldn't bring myself to further the relationships. My anxiety became too overwhelming and I just felt that any connections I made wouldn’t lead to anything real or safe. I felt I wouldn’t find what I was looking for and I wasn’t even sure what that was.
“I feel like dating apps were already hard but are even harder now because you have to really decide if you’re willing to continue and meet this person and if they’re really worth your time.”
A couple months ago I was laying on my floor somberly, as one does, and I just said outloud “I don’t want to have casual sex” and that really surpised me. I reached a point where I just don’t care for one offs or late night fuck buddys. I wanted connection and I wanted love! More on that next time but for now in this essay I want a good relationship! Let’s take it back a moment and remember that a relationship is a connection between people. Not just people who are partners. How they define or label that relationship is up to them. I wanna catch-up and hear about how you have been and cook you a nice meal and watch movies and hang out and have great sex. In a lot of ways, I want a sexual friendship. I have always encouraged having sex with your friends because, why not? You like them, they like you, sex doesn’t mean you’ll start dating just that y’all are that comfortable together. That's where I’m trying to be.
By the time April rolled around I thought to myself “another few months like this really is gonna drive me up the wall and not in a sexy way.” More like “I think mo’s lost her fucking marbles and needs serious help” kinda way. Being in quarantine alone can take a huge toll on your mental and emotional health and again, we’re human beings, we need connection and contact and community. I needed connection and contact and community and yes I did have my very small circle of people I was seeing and as much as I love those four folks, I do not want to have sex with any of them. I wanted to see some people I’ve lost touch with, friends who I took for granted those five minutes of conversation, someone I should’ve just said “let’s hang out, you and me.” That feels like the direction I want to step into and it feels like I’ll find some real balance that way. Meeting someone new and starting that process over feels like I’m sitting on one side of a seesaw and they’re gonna throw a rock on their side and I’ll be sent flying into the abyss. Yeah, no thanks.
“remember that a relationship is a connection between people. Not just people who are partners.”
On top of that, I’m at a point in my sexual journey where I know what I like: what gets me off, what my fantasies are and what works for me. A major factor of my sexual experience is being comfortable and having open communication. Of course I’m always communicating, I highly value it and can’t imagine having an unenjoyable sexual experience because I didn’t want to say anything. With new partners, and new people in general, there’s a barrier of having to get to know them and sharing those deeply intimate details of myself and that’s scary. With online dating, there is that hesitation no matter who you’re thinking about seeing but I trust someone I already know more than any Garret, Jeff or Daniel, you know?
And let’s be honest for a moment and acknowledge that intimacy can be just as scary and challenging with friends too and it doesn’t always turn out how you think it will. I’ve only stayed close with one of my friends I’ve had sex with and I feel it was because we were very clear in our communication. While I believe that a friend and I could have a sexual relationship, a lot of them did not and pushed too hard for more or pulled away. What I do know is that at my core I’m looking for comfortability, safety and intimacy. To allow yourself to become vulnerable with anyone always feels like a risk but I think we all feel some sense of relief and joy once we put ourselves out there. Now, will I find that in an old friend or will I make a new one? Next time on “mo does something weird” just kidding, this is the end of this essay.