5 Reasons Why Your Dating Anxiety Is High During Social Distancing
Dating anxiety is higher than ever right now. But why?
Getty During this period of quarantine and social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic, it's normal for your dating anxiety to be ramped up high.
Many people already suffer from dating anxiety, and adding all the stress of the coronavirus makes things even scarier and more difficult.
Dating at a distance can take your anxiety to a whole different level.
Here are 5 reasons why your dating anxiety is so high due to quarantining and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic:
1. You aren't able to meet face-to-face and get a feel for someone.
In my experience, I've found that one of the most difficult things about online dating is that until you actually come face-to-face with someone, it’s hard to really know how you feel about them.
When I was dating — before I knew better — I would spend weeks talking to someone I connected with online. And as time went on, I found myself becoming attached to them. But then when I met them, the attraction just wasn’t there.
I hated that. I really liked this person before we talked, and for whatever reason, once we met I just didn’t feel it.
That is the theme around dating right now. Unless you met your person before this all started, you don’t really know them and can’t go with your gut.
On the other hand, you may have met someone before the lockdown and thought you liked them, only to find yourself questioning that attraction the more time you spend apart from them.
This may make your ability to connect with them feel strange or difficult.
2. It's a strange shift in dating traditions.
No matter if you're 25 or 55, you've most likely been on a date before. It usually includes meeting up for a drink or dinner, small talk, perhaps a walk, or a movie.
If things go well, you make plans to do it again. And hopefully, again after that.
These days, dating has been turned on its head. The things we've always done can’t be done anymore. As a result, the actual process of dating has become uncomfortable. As if dating wasn’t difficult enough.
Not only do you need to deal with getting to know someone, but you also need to create new ways of doing so. FaceTime movies and drinks, walks in the park six feet apart, or maybe binge-watching a show together.
And hardest of all, trying to find something to talk about that’s not the coronavirus.
So, if your dating anxiety is high, the uncomfortableness of the new normal of dating could be why.
3. You feel a sense of hopelessness.
Maybe you're talking to a number of people, none of whom you've met yet. And while talking to them helps pass the time, you might ask yourself, "What's the point?"
For many people right now, you just don’t know what the future looks like. You don’t know when and how this craziness will end and, if it does, what life afterward will look like.
Will you have a job, money, your health, your families and friends? You just don’t know.
That "not knowing" makes it really hard to imagine having a future with someone.
How can you picture and work toward a "happily ever after" with someone if you don’t know if there is going to be an ever after?
For many people, hopelessness in life and love equals dating anxiety. It’s even worse right now.
4. Emotions are running high.
For some, the biggest challenge is to "contain the crazy."
We are all to some degree or another very emotional. When you first start dating, you try to contain that emotion somewhat so that you don’t scare your person away.
I'm not saying you aren’t being yourself, but that you might try not to let your emotions get the best of you.
In this day and age, your emotions are running high. With the news and the lack of social interaction, the boredom, and the monotony, many people are living on the edge of insanity. When you're dating, the edge of insanity is not a good place to be.
For one woman, for example, a man she had just started talking with is normally a clinically depressed person. He's been treated for it and generally has it under control.
Right now, however, he is really depressed and is having a very difficult time managing it. She feels bad, but she knows that she doesn’t want to be in a relationship with this guy because of the way he is.
In regular times, this man’s depression might not have reared its ugly head so quickly and so dramatically, and she might have gotten to know him and love him and understand that depression is just part of who he is.
5. People are looking for commitment much sooner.
One of the most interesting things happening right now is that many people who are newly dating are looking for a commitment unnaturally early.
For those people who are social distancing alone, not having a partner can be especially painful. The idea that everyone else is out there quarantining with their person while they are alone is just too much.
As a result, they seek to create a committed relationship out of something that isn’t there yet.
For instance, you might have been talking to someone for about a month. You talk on the phone daily, and sat at least six feet from each other a few times, but that's it. You haven’t been able to touch, go out in public, or meet each other’s friends.
If that person turned around and asked you to go off dating apps and be in a committed relationship and to stop talking to your old flings, you may feel overwhelmed and off-put by the idea.
In the normal world, this whole scenario most likely never happen.
The human need to be coupled up is a significant one — especially during these difficult times. That need to connect is a big reason why dating anxiety is so prevalent and so extreme right now.
Dating is hard, and dating anxiety has always been a part of it. But because of the coronavirus and social distancing, that anxiety is going through the roof for many people.
The new normal of dating and not knowing the future is so uncomfortable. Managing the politics of being single makes what has always been a thing fraught with stuff something even harder.
I know that it’s hard, but I would encourage you to take stock of your dating anxiety and persevere nonetheless. This will be over someday, and when it is, wouldn’t it be nice to find love again for the summer?
You can do it!
Mitzi Bockmann is a NYC-based certified life and love coach. Let her help you find, and keep, love in this crazy world in which we live. Contact her for help or send her an email.