Remember the days when swiping left or right was a form of entertainment whilst you were on the bus, the toilet or bored at work? Those days when you could jump from one online chat to another with just your thumb doing all the work. And meeting for a quick hook up during your lunch break. Are you feeling nostalgic for that time when you would meet one person for a drink and another one for dinner and then move onto the club for yet another possible hook up.
Sex is now imagined, fantasised about, and very very monogamous – unless you’re sneaking into your lover’s place for a quickie, Or, as I recently heard, your distrusting new girlfriend made you put her into the boot of your car to take her to your house for a quickie?
Living with a room mate offers some solace and company. And they may begin to look somewhat more attractive to you now as your desire for social connecting grows each lock down day. However the longing for intimacy and sexuality and touch , may be profound right now. It’s a time of creativity for single people. Here are some ideas I have for single people.
The Selfie has been dragged out of the mud and now become an “act of isolation resilience” a way to seduce without touch . Research is revealing that sexual frequency between lock down partners has declined. Perhaps single people are faring better. Maybe you are adapting to a novel way of being sexual, a way to keep your sexual part alive. And selfies is one way to keep sexuality alive, in both the sender and the receiver. It is the whole meal , the only meal you are going to share for a long time.
Consider the selfie as a new art form . With abundant time and technology, selfies are carefully curated by the sender who has posed and posed to get just the right selfie. This is sent to either a beloved locked down elsewhere or a new person recently met on a dating app. No longer are nudes just for special committed partners, but a way of socially connecting in time of pandemic loneliness most especially for single people.It is a way to be seen, to be vulnerable. Selfies entail taking risks, baring oneself at a time when we cannot take risks and cannot bare ourselves to In real Life lovers.
Single people who live alone ,whether in small spaces or larger spaces, palpably experience the emptiness and loss of touch, sexuality, social connection . A choice has to be made : break lock down and risk getting ill or risk the mental health implications that come with loneliness and craving connection. Will enduring relationships surprisingly come out of this time, or will zoom/skype/whatsapp chats once again leave you feeling abandoned, confused, , scared, scarred? An instant deal breaker could be that one person wants to break curfew and meet up and the other is rigidly regarding curfew. Ot the person who wants to meet up too soon . There are new conversations to be had with people online, people you may or may never meet .
Perhaps you are now looking for a different type of relationship. A deeper, richer connection. Not just a hit and miss situation . After all the content of your conversation and your mood is very different during Covid-19 than it was in those heady now seemingly carefree days. Crisis and catastrophes “push us to make our next step in life” , says anthropologist Helen Fisher.
Consider :
Do you feel the urgency for a partner now?
Has your need for intimate connection changed? How ?
How has lock down impacted your sexual desire/arousal?
Has the way that you connect with people online changed? How?
Do you spend a longer time chatting with one person?
Have you increased Selfies ?Sexting ?
Have you broken curfew to spend time with a new person?
COVID-19 GUIDE FOR SINGLES
- Set aside all expectations of a mono-hetero-normative relationship
- Accept that you have no control over how many other people your person is socially connecting
- No commitment but for the moments you are together. You don’t know if you will ever met this person /people In Real Life
- No matter the status of your situation , always treat each other with : respect, kindness, consent, consideration.
- Linger in conversations, go deep, allow yourself to fall into hyper personal intimacy. In other words, this is a great time to become unguarded as you will benefit from deep connection with someone who reciprocates this connection.
- Because you are at home, you feel safer. Be careful to always screen out who feels uncomfortable. Allow your gut to lead you.
- Don’t be surprised when things get deep quickly
- Since you cannot have usual socialised relationship expectations, once you feel safe, be fully present with yourself sexually and send nudes, preferably headless, or with a mask on, if you feel safe.
- Use video formats to chat.. in this way , you get a fuller deeper social connection
- Video courting and dating is a time saver. So you may well want to continue this as your primary form of connection to keep safe and stick to regulations.
- Be creative with physical distancing. Run /walk past her/his/they house and drop off food/flowers/notes.
- When meeting up be sure to maintain the required distance from each other.
- Partner Sex is off the table for now – masturbation is firmly on the table. The risk is just too high
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