Lockdown dating from my childhood bedroom

And curing my app addiction

Hello and happy new year! I hope your 2022 is full of love, given unconditionally and received with joy and gratitude.

Thank you for reading The Honesty Box. If someone has forwarded this to you, you can subscribe here. Today, I’m writing about dating in lockdown and how I’ve now stopped using dating apps.

Dating during the middle of the pandemic was bloody weird. I can hardly call it dating, because the reality was I was sitting on my bed, in my brightly-coloured childhood bedroom while I stayed with my mother, talking via Zoom to a handful of strangers - some of whom lived miles up the M1 motorway.

Before settling down for hours of riveting chat on my laptop, I would spend all of five minutes changing my top, zhuzhing my hair and finding a comfortable spot where my video background wouldn’t reveal too much of my purple bedroom wall.

At the time, it felt like the only thing I could “do” to make “progress” in my love life. Swipe right on a dating app, match, message, Zoom, maybe Zoom again, this time in a different top with slightly better lighting. During the winter 2020 lockdown, we were allowed to meet outside, so some of those laptop chats became coffee meetings in freezing parks bundled up in an unsexy duvet coat, while others turned into muddy walks up a hill to look at a view.

One of the more inventive dates involved meeting a guy at a tube station in exercise gear at 5pm on a winter’s evening, running 10k together and then sitting on a wall down a side street eating a rip-off £20 panettone. “Very romantic” said a passerby as I wriggled along the bricks to stop my bum going numb in the cold.

The concept of “doing something about my love life” is a strange one, because all the “doing” didn’t actually do much.

Like many people, having my daily freedoms and distractions taken away during the pandemic served to heighten some of my worries about life, one of which was a sense of poor me, I’m single. When the UK first locked down in March 2020, I felt angry and frustrated that I may never go on a date again while my perception was that “everyone else” was playing happy families or having loads of sex.

I soon got over myself once I realised that many were having a shitty experience, either because they had no space or time - or too much - or were struggling with illness and isolation. I started to be properly grateful for my health, the time I spent with my mum, the green space near her home and the new running and yoga routine I got into.

Looking back, the concept of “doing something about my love life” is a strange one, because all the “doing” didn’t actually do much. None of those dates really went anywhere (aside from random follow-ups such as an odd text lecture about Brexit - him, drunk, to me, at 8.45pm on a Sunday), I just ended up collecting first names in my phone, usually with a nickname surname such as “Detective” or “Newcastle”.

In 2021, I resolved to think differently. Gradually, I deleted the apps and instead put my time into doing things that would usefully contribute in some way or were simply fun to do.

If I want to receive love, I’ve learned I have to give it away in spades.

I hoped to make new connections regardless of any romantic, or other, outcome. I flyered my street, inviting about 120 households to join a WhatsApp group that now has about 35 people in it, which has led to a local litter pick-up and planting in our pocket park; I did an improv course online, and followed up with a real-life course and performance before Christmas.

I trained as a volunteer Covid vaccinator and joined a co-working space. Each day, I now list out loud ten things I am grateful for that have happened in the past 24 hours, ranging from “my legs for running,” to “the woman I smiled at on the street”.

If I want to receive love, I’ve learned I have to give it away in spades. That doesn’t mean I’m walking around professing my adoration for people all day, it means asking someone if they need help, writing Christmas cards with a genuine sense of love for my friends, or picking up litter from outside my neighbour’s home.

I don’t do these things because I want something in return – I try to do them unconditionally. Doing so has made me feel whole, as well as more accepting of myself and others. It’s given me the confidence to write about how I feel about not having kids, to worry less about what other people think, and here, to write about being single and celebrating myself for being me. This is me, and I hope reading this might help other people love themselves, exactly as they are.

Things I like

Abandonment and dating

Modern Love in The New York Times is one of my favourite newspaper sections, and one I aspire to write for. The essay “An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill,” by Coco Mellors, is about dating someone inconsistent, moving on, and learning to be honest and vulnerable. Abandonment is one of a child’s biggest fears, and Coco writes about worrying about a boyfriend not coming back, and how, when she was honest about it, things worked out. It really touched a nerve.

Why apps are so crap

Apologies for the rather crass heading, but they really are. As the writer Shani Silver notes in this piece, dating apps are designed to keep you addicted to swiping, not to help you form a long term relationship. “Don’t let a digital space that’s built to keep you single make you believe that you’re unlovable in real life,” she writes.

Thank you to Alexander Sinn and Unsplash for the image that goes with this post when it’s viewed on The Honesty Box homepage.