Should I even try dating during Covid?

After 13 long months of intense dry spells and enough tinder matches to overfish in the small population of South Western Ontario, I decided to go on a date. Many dates.

I guess you could say that I am in love with the idea of being in love. No matter how many bad relationships and silly dating habits have surfaced in the 21st century, I have come to release that a girl's gotta eat. Get her fix, if you will. What I didn't release is how to balance my terrible self-control and clinginess when it comes to the person I am interested in.

First I should start by saying that I am bisexual or 'sexually fluid' which means that I am attracted to all genders and should be able to have endless possibilities. Right?

I'm a the ripe age of 20 with only one year left of university and in theory, should be experiencing some of the best years of my life. For love, sex, and youth, no money but there isn't much to spend on anyway. Of course, the Covid pandemic hit me in my 'prime' which meant that everything I knew about meeting people and building a meaningful relationship was completely gone.

Luckily, I have had years of experience playing on the 'dating' app Tinder and knew that if I wanted to find someone to spend my time with I could. Once again, in theory. This did mean that I had the potential of meeting someone that was potentially awkward or even dangerous. This did not happen to me but I did experience many weird encounters that I just can't shake off anymore. It has left me to question if I should just wait out the pandemic to seek love and affection. I know it sounds dramatic but you have to read to the whole story.

Being that my love language is physical touch... messaging of any kind on social media gets extremely boring over time. This meant that I had to see and spend time with these women and men and well let's just say that the Ontario government officially has me wanting to jump from my 12 story apartment window. Tiktok has surprisingly kept me sane and secure as I know I am not the only one appalled at this foolish government. The opening and closing of small businesses every month have a detrimental impact on the single and ready to mingle world. On some dates, I was able to meet at a coffee shop and others left me no choice but to have them over.

If you have not discovered what your love language is I highly recommend checking out this link! https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/

To give some backstory as to what my love life looked before the pandemic let's just say that I was a serial dater. Those are not my words and I guess you could call me a hypocrite because I hate people that go in and out of relationships like Taylor Swift.

When the pandemic hit, it should come as no surprise that I was in a relationship. A long-distance relationship with a man from Greece that I have come to despise with every fibre of my being. But that's a story for a different day. He broke up with me in early July 2020 after returning home from Canada as he realized that I was of no use to him anymore. Just a shelter to ride out the shock that the pandemic had on the entire world.

This man did teach me a lot about myself and how I should not let a pretty face into my life that doesn't have feminist morals, self-confidence, or an ability to comprehend mental health. But I thought that when a man hits the bare minimum you have to take it.

After recovering from what I would say the worse betrayal of my youthful life, I reached out to friends and family that I had distanced from due to my complete attachment to the relationship. One of my many bad habits that I have come to develop through the years. I would say that I am working on it but I am still debating on if it's that bad.

This 'badish' habit had made me realize that keeping a close circle with friends and family was better for my mental health than any relationship could be. This did not stop me from pursing the attention of a signifigant other but it did change how often I would spend my time with them. I am a strong advoacte for a not so elegant girls night and well being 20 in a pandemic leaves lots of room for girltalk.

If it wasn't for the love and support from my girlfriends, I don't think I would have the strength I have today to not tolerate the language and treatment that comes along with dating. The Greece man somehow came back to Canada amist the pandemic and tried reconnect but I was able to stand my ground and completely execute him from my life. Something that I still stand for to this day.

After this unpleasant situation, it left me to survive in the online dating world.

I came up with unique bios that read "let's get coffee first"; hinting that in order get anything, please just take me on a date first. As well as at one point I included the infamous quote from Shrek "Our first bachelorette is a mentally abused shut-in from a kingdom far, far away. She likes sushi and hot-tubbing any time. Her hobbies include cooking and cleaning for her two evil sisters. Let's hear it for Cinderella!" Being the bubbly blonde haired blue eyed woman that I am, I found it quite pleasing to add the Princesses Cinderella comparison. Although I did not get the reactions from the women and men of Tinder that I was hoping for. They were mostly interested in the hot-tubbing part... particularly the men.

After about a month of using the app I found this STUD of a women that shall not be named and well... Let's just say that if I could rate the pain on a scale of 1/10, it would be a 10. I saved that 10 for the first women I ever fell in love with. I'm not going to say that she is the reason i'm on antidepressants and seeking theraphy today but is there a correlation between being in a relationship with her and accessing these resources.... probably.

The so-called relationship lasted about 3 months total and ended with her getting in a relationship almost right away. I mean, I may be a serial dater but I do take at least some time to process and cope with a breakup before devoting myself to a new human being. All I can say to the new women is goodluck because I did not find out until the very end that she had over $2,000 is debt due to a loan she took out on her ex, a strap-on and harness that had been used with several partners (just gross), and a repetitive language that she uses against every ex.

I think that being bisexual has taught me a lot about the differences between dating a man and women and well, there is great pros and terrible cons to both.

Looking back, as to why I would swipe right on a women that had "i'm depressed but i'm good at sex" in her bio and it's probably because red flags just turn pink when you are a baby queer. It's not that I didn't have any experience with women before seeing her. It's just that everything I had before was not serious and well sexual identity labels weren't as big of a thing back then. By back then I mean when I was in high school because for the first few years of university I exclusively dated men as I have absolutely no game when it comes it women. It's still sad to this day.

This left me to where I am today.

4 months with absoluely no sexual tension except for a few kisses here and there from tinder matches but other than that, I have not idea WTF i'm doing trying to date in the global pandemic. A dry spell with no light.

Being the hopeless romantic that I am, no matter how hard I try to keep a causal friends with benefits it never really works out. I believe the longest FWB that I had was about a month and a half. He said that he wasn't looking for a relationship and I believed that yet, when he got in a relationship a week after one of our night together I found myself crying.... Actually SOBBING in my roommates room on the floor for really no apparent reason other than I was mad that I let myself catch the feels.

Ever since then, somehow my FWB relationships ended up being shorter and shorter. With summer 2021 coming up and vaccinations being rolled out, a FWB wound be ideal considering i'm getting fed up with the pink dildo in my dresser... and a relationship does not seem suitable for this mentally abused shut-in.

My most recent endevour is a Tinder match hockey boy from a small city similar to my upbringing. I am going to refrain from using locations as I mentioned earlier that the population of South Western Ontario is extremely small. So small that the longest FBW I mentioned earlier went to high school with hockey boy tinder match.

Now you may be wondering why I know that?

Well considering the pandemic left me to invite this hockey boy over to my place for an evening of dinner and a movie, I had to STALK this man inside and out. That meant I looked at his Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google searched this man, and even looked at his Linkedin. It didn't take me long to find a photo of him and the ex FBW and find out they went to high school together. The POWER of the internet my friends. Being a single women requires an intense background check because any women knows that it's #ALLMEN.

After I found out this information before even formally meeting this man, I had to tell my girlfriends and roommate. I no longer follow the ex FBW on Instagram or am friends with him on Facebook so I knew that my social media tracks were small. However, to this day I don't know if he knows, that I know, his friend.

After our first 'offical-ish' date at my place, and the exchange of much affection as he would call it. He said at the end of the night that he had fun and was looking forward to seeing me again.... so I took that as good news. I immediately facetimed the girls and told them how it went because obviously they were invested in this encounter just as much as I was. I should mention that before the intense stalk that I completed, he kept saying how excited he was for the date. I did not lead him on and said that I wasn't down for a hookup as I need to get comfortable with a person first.

Hockey boy and I had the "what are you looking for on tinder" conversation.

Both saying that it's hard to meet people during Covid and are go with the flow and see how it goes type.

But I got ghosted.

I am not sure if I am proud to say that usually I am the one to ghost but this hockey boy completely caught me off guard. Especially because my pick up line on Tinder was "On a scale of 1-10 how nice would you say you are?" and his reply being a 8.9. I deducted him to an 8 because of the hockey boy reputation and I'm not any kind of Puckbunny.

After the several encounters I had occured while dating during the pandemic, I believed that asking how nice a person was, would somehow help me in not being hurt. But as always the jokes on me for believing that I could even try to build any kind of relationship during a pandemic.

I'm not sure if his in the end of the story but if it isn't, I hope that I can only go up from here.