How do you find love in the middle of a pandemic? One single woman weighs in

I avoided writing this for a very long time. The logic was: If I put pen to paper for the world to read, it would really be true. There’d be no erasing the declaration that every hunt for a partner this past year has been more futile than my attempts to stay away from Biscoff cheesecake. There was also the nagging fear that the universe would hear—and in a cruel spell of reverse manifestation, give me more of the same (still trying to work out the math for this one).

But you eventually run out of places (and excuses) to hide from your thoughts when locked in. So when I rediscovered Dumbledore’s words to Harry, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself,” they spoke to me too, urging me to face my Voldemort. Hence here we are, calling a spade a spade without any shame. I promise this is not my ‘dear diary’-style license to ramble. I’m simply trying to make some sense of the chaos around me, like you probably are too. The thing that gets me is this: The route to finding ‘the one’ can be as twisted as a pretzel to begin with. Add to that a pandemic and you have a foolproof formula to flatten the curve of one’s love life.

Even for someone who watches one too many rom-coms, it is hard to be the heroine of your own story when you’ve been singled out (pun intended). More so, when you are flailing on a hamster wheel of unaligned stars, while friends and family members continue to find their happy ending all around you. I know I am not the only one bemoaning an unchanging relationship status. “Maybe we didn’t destroy all the Horcruxes?” joked a single girlfriend during a recent phone call. Another has decided to blame Mercury even when it’s not in retrograde. Pre-pandemic, we would have been having these conversations over cocktails at a buzzing bar. Now, Rachel Green’s romantic misadventures serve as the background noise.

“Dating itself can be an intimidating process. A pandemic doesn’t help matters. At a time when the need for companionship has become even more magnified, it’s natural that isolation is challenging for singles,” explains clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Ankita Gandhi Kamath, who specialises in relationship problems, stress management, depression and anxiety disorders. But we’ve been navigating these waters since last March. The abrupt halt in dating isn’t new anymore. Why is it still so hard to come to terms with it? “There was a ray of hope that life would soon resume normalcy during last year’s lockdown. With the second wave, one feels enveloped by dejection. The dominant fear is that the situation won’t change at all,” adds Kamath.

The absence of an expiry date on the pandemic’s warning label is making it harder to shake off the sense of impending doom. “There is a longing to have one’s old life back, where it was easier to mingle. After battling the situation for a year-and-a-half, many singles now feel like time is running out,” adds Shahzeen Shivdasani, a relationship expert and author of millennial dating guide Love, Lust and Lemons. “The deadlier second wave has made people doubly nervous about dating. There is the constant fear of catching the virus, and concern about whether your partner is following COVID-19 protocols. Many are also apprehensive about getting intimate with someone new. It all inevitably leads to giving up and losing hope.”

This is certainly not the same old same old ‘how can I put myself out there?’ convention. As our socially distanced confinement continues, the predicament gets more complicated with deteriorating mental health RSVPing to the party as well. Kamath cites the example of a patient who is guilty about sessions to discuss her love life because the rest of the country is dealing with financial crisis, grief and loss. Another client with caregiver’s fatigue feels lonelier without a partner to share her trauma with. “Emotions can range from guilt, frustration, loneliness and skin hunger to anger, impatience and irritability,” she adds.

So how does one cope when your rose-tinted glasses have left the building, and Dolly Alderton is the only one who really gets you? Step one in surviving this relationship strike is to know that it’s OK not to be OK. “I’ve found that while singles are accepting of the situation, they are not so accepting of themselves in it. The insecurity and sense of lack has led many to internalise their worries, doubting themselves in the process,” elaborates Kamath. “Nurture your relationship with yourself first. Instead of being a victim of your circumstances, own your happiness. Shake up your routine, take a break from social media and be open to receiving help,” she adds. Shivdasani suggests considering dating avenues you probably wrote off in the past. “I know it’s easier said than done, but we need to stop putting pressure on the word ‘time’. All of us are in limbo in some aspect of our lives. Everyone's life is on standstill.”

And when all else fails, simply turn to memes as any bonafide millennial would. Kamath affirms that her clients, both men and women, are prone to making jokes about their relationship status. It helps diffuse the seriousness of the situation, “one that isn’t in your control in the first place”. I too have found comfort in the company of literary leading ladies who are better at making light of their singledom than I am. Pro tip: Read Writers & Lovers, Last Tang Standing, Beach Read and Ghosts now. Thank me later.

If it’s a quick-fix solution you’re after, I won’t pretend to have the answers (just yet). I definitely won’t harp on about self-love. Nor will I peddle pills of toxic positivity with labels that scream ‘when the time is right’, ‘but you have a thriving career’ or ‘trust me, it’s better to be single’. Experience is witness that such generic advice can be spectacularly irksome rather than helpful, even when well-intentioned. But here’s a crazy idea: let’s do ourselves a favour and embrace what is? Which doesn’t mean pretending nothing is amiss or having it together all the time. Just allow the equation to solve itself. I, for one, am no good at math anyway.

The thing we know but love to forget is that life happens. Often not as we envisioned it to. All we can do is keep on keeping on. And why must that be such a bad thing? “Nothing is permanent, not even your negative feelings and thoughts. So by default, everything is possible. The idea is to focus on possibilities, not on problems,” advises Kamath.

As the completion of this feature coincided with my completion of Alderton’s recent novel Ghosts—a positively hilarious and accurate take on dating apps—her closing lines jumped out at me: “I close my eyes and think of all the paths that lie ahead, none of which I can see yet. None of which I can plan for only, only walk towards with faith.” She may be on to something. If we keep knocking on faith’s door, it’s got to answer at some point. Right? 

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