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Finding love in 2022? During a pandemic?
Yes, you can!
Photo provided by Dawn Worcester
From dating fails to fiancees, anything is possible with some apps, willpower and willingness to meet halfway By Gena Mangiaratti UpCountry Magazine
Online dating apps. Masked meet-ups. Walks on the beach in the bitter cold. This is dating, since the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to maintain physical distance from anyone outside what we have come to think of as our quarantine “bubble.” For those of us who were single when the pandemic started or saw a relationship end in the world of COVID, this bubble consisted of just ourselves, and if we are very lucky, an animal or two or three or four. (Some of us finally adopted our first pet during the pandemic, but that is a separate story.) I put out a call to people in the New England area to share their pandemic tales with me. Here are some of the gracious responses that detail the challenges — and boons — to dating in our current era.
Not many options for a while Kelsy Allan, 32, started seeing her significant other just
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weeks before the lockdown, having met him via the dating app Hinge. Though they were already part of each other’s quarantine bubble, their meet-up options — with her in Guilford and him in Eastern Massachusetts — remained limited.
Mandy McCullock, back, and her fiancee, Bethany Williams, front, met through the dating app Hinge shortly after the pandemic lockdown began. They had their first in-person date, a hike in an equidistant state park, about a month after they started talking. They went on several more hikes, and began officially dating some weeks later. Photo provided by Mandy McCullock
“My ideal date would be going to a bookstore, or going bowling, but these were not options for a while during COVID,” she said. “Eating in a restaurant was also not an option for a while.” Instead, they hiked in very cold weather and picnicked in less-than-ideal conditions. “We were very familiar with all the parks in the halfway point between,” Allan said.
Some of their most memorable outdoor get-togethers included taking his sister snowboarding for the first time, hiking Mount Monadnock (“I got in much better shape from hiking Monadnock many times,” Allan said) and, in its own
