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Is It Possible to Fall in Love During a Worldwide Crisis Like a Pandemic?
This is just something I’ve been musing about.
Lately, I’ve been researching the effects of the pandemic on popular societal rites like dating. Perhaps not researching in a really serious, detrimental sense — but more that I’ve been reading articles and anecdotes about how the pandemic has shifted dating dynamics for better and worse.
At the back of my mind is this: is it possible to really, truly fall in love with a worldwide stressor like the pandemic ever-present in our thoughts, affecting how we tackle our daily lives?
The main spark for this mind trail was my coming across the book Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales. I haven’t read the whole book yet, though I’ve been intrigued by the excerpts I’ve come across— particularly those pertaining to early pandemic life in 2020 and those beginning days where everything was truly a consideration of life or death.
Sales paints a clear picture that dating shifted in its axis for many in those uncertain times that plagued us from March 2020 onward. Lockdowns became a breeding ground of the opportunity for dating app users (particularly men, it seems) to look for “pandemic partners” who could chill with them at home until life…
