Love in Pandemic Times - Entry I: Pocket Pen Pal

graphic by Lauryn Alejo

Quarantine appears to have caused a massive phenomenon to occur: an incredible increase in dating app users. People who wouldn’t usually be on dating apps, are flocking to them out of isolation boredom. Download one for yourself and count the number of bios that state some semblance of excuse for creating a dating profile in quarantine times!

*Names changed in the interest of protecting the interviewees’ privacy*

My friend, Sarah, who has been an on-and-off app user since she moved to Toronto, told me that her first two weeks of self-quarantine were spent very monotonously with her roommate. When the days started  to blur together, she opted to download Tinder after a few months’ hiatus, in hopes of adding “another player” to the game of passing time. The apps she used before quarantine appeared to continue functioning the same. She still swiped through profiles and selectively replied to messages, but at the end of each exchange, she knew she wouldn’t end up meeting them in person. Not to say that she didn’t encounter people who tried to persuade her. In fact, more than one message thread ended with a cold response at the other’s suggestion of breaking quarantine for casual sex. Perhaps Tinder’s notoriously easy set up enables the same emotionally detached individuals to pervade the app during a pandemic. After all, I don’t think there’s a significant difference between a person who says they don’t want to use a condom, because “it feels better that way” and a person who disregards social distancing in the interest of a hookup. Fortunately, after a few dead ends, Sarah met a guy that she really liked, Ben, and they shifted their correspondence off the app. The downside was that he had just moved back home to the East coast, and she was going to live with her parents on the West; a 4-hour time difference. Despite the obstacle, the following week gave way to frequent texting at all hours of the day, and she quickly felt so comfortable with the exchange that she built up the nerve to ask him to FaceTime. The date lasted an easy four hours, though a week earlier she never would have foreseen herself confident enough to video chat with a stranger. On their second FaceTime date, having established that they both thoroughly enjoyed talking to each other, they playfully decided to make a list of activities that they could share, virtually. They started by presenting each other with PowerPoints about their lives and by their third FaceTime date, Ben wrote her a choose-your-own-adventure story. It was based on the scenario of their first in-person date, beheld by the hope of their future and imaginations. Now, they continue to text and video call regularly. In Sarah’s words, Ben’s become her “pocket pen pal,” someone who she can share anything with, the moment it happens. It seems to me that the absence of physical interaction opens a door to alternative ways of getting to know someone. 

When I’m seeing someone in person, I wouldn’t dare to let myself send more than two texts in a row, let alone FaceTime them after a week of acquaintance. As you may have guessed, the pandemic has altered social norms. Visual exchange is warranted by physical absence and Sarah tells me it’s made for a bunch of interesting conversations between her and the boy on the other end of the phone. Sarah says that sometimes, a response to a question is more effectively elicited by an audio or video message, rather than a simple text. Additionally, when she’s feeling the rhythm of a back and forth exchange, she doesn’t feel the need to edit the paragraphs that eagerly flow out of her fingertips because he sends equally long messages back. When I asked her if she felt that she could build intimacy with this person exclusively through virtual interaction, Sarah told me that she actually found it more intimate in a way, because she was sharing so much of her life with him. To her, their text thread feels like a diary entry: recounts of her days combined with funny and embarrassing anecdotes. There’s less need to hold back because he’s so far away. 

That’s when I realized, one of the fundamental differences about interacting with someone you’ve never met is that to a certain extent, they are yours to mold. I know that sounds a bit delusional but I also think it’s an inevitable fact of virtual interaction. Both parties are filtering themselves through technology. When you’re not there to witness the everyday stuff, like how they talk to other people or how they chew their food, you instinctively fill in those gaps on your own. Sarah knows this and her biggest fear remains that the perception she’s built up of this other person won’t meet the living expectations. Of course that future meet up is dependent on various factors, including quarantine lifting to some extent. In the meantime, she feels confident that she can attest to his personality over text. Sarah describes Ben as creative and comfortable with himself, and if it weren’t for those two traits, she doubts the exchange would work as well. As you know, there are bad texters and good texters. She tells me, “he and I are good texters and I think our personalities read through in our conversations.”

As for the nature of those conversations, I wonder, are they flirty? Do they ever become sexual? Sarah tells me that there’s moments where she describes theoretical ‘in person actions” to him, saying something like “Ah! Right there, that’s when I would’ve kissed you.” It’s all very playful, but sex remains a boundary she’s not comfortable crossing virtually. She doesn’t mind it being absent though. In a way, this exclusive use of technology paints their developing relationship with an ironically romantic homage to the pre-technological era of written letters and courtship. It’s allowed her and Ben to get to know each other sooner yet more in depth than she might have had the time for in person. In all essence, he’s a pen pal readily available in her back pocket, whom she also has a crush on. He’s gotten her through the hardest times, by providing her with the correspondence and companionship she, like so many of us, has been craving in her months of self-quarantine.