Reinstall Tinder, or, If That Doesn't Work, Join a Virtual Sext Bunker

COVID-19 is like the trip-to-Ikea litmus test for relationships.

- By Allison P. Davis

SOME THINGS ABOUT the human spirit persist, even in crisis: namely, our hunger for one another. Lauren, an editor in Austin, started seeing someone a month ago, and by date three, they’d declared their exclusivity—dating only each other and hanging out in close quarters only with each other—largely expedited by the desire to keep their coronavirus-exposure pool small. “My criteria has totally changed,” Lauren explains of dating in the time of covid-19. “All the bullshit you kind of go for usually—none of that fuckboy stuff is going to cut it.”

It’s a different sort of contract now. “It’s like, can he play cards (yes), can he bake bread (yes), does he take social distancing seriously?,” she explains. Already, they have settled into the worn-in part of a relationship. They go on walks and hikes and drive to each other’s houses while they still can. “I don’t know how it would work necessarily in New York,” she tells me, sad for me here in the city. “There’s this jokey but real undertone now, like, ‘Oh yeah, better wash your hands after you go to the grocery store. You’ll compromise this union.’ But I’m actually pretty serious, I guess. He sent me a picture from the grocery store, and it was clear he wasn’t six feet from someone. And I actually felt, like, momentarily betrayed. I was like, Hmm, if he’s doing that, like, what else isn’t he doing?”