Welcome to Viral Stories, a living history about the deadliest pandemic outbreak of the last century.
In today’s edition, I speak with Angela, a woman in her 50s who recently jumped back into the dating pool, only to have coronavirus complicate her budding romances. Not that the pandemic is fully stopping her from pursuing meaningful contact.
If you have a story you want to share, email me at JordanZakarin@gmail.com.
The moment I got a Twitter DM from Angela, I knew that I needed to hear more about her story. It did not disappoint. In fact, she’s so open and honest and compelling — even the preface she sent to me ahead of her email was worthy of inclusion — that I’ve just collected what she wrote to me with minimal editing and collating. It’s all below:
I guess the biggest thing I want you to know is that the simple fact that these guys want to have sex with me isn't creepy. We met on sites where that was clearly the objective (Xpal, Adult Friend Finder, and Cougar Life <sheepish smile>). Believe me, the first dating site I joined was aimed at "mature people" and it was a bunch of old white guys looking for their fit, adventurous soul mates. That's not at all what I was looking for. I was looking for fun ... and sex. No way around that!! Basically friends-with-benefits situations (and no, I didn't plan to be exclusive).
This past February, four years after my 20-year marriage ended, I decided to start dating again. I joined three dating websites and kind of fumbled my way through how that all works, since the last time I "dated" was before the Internet. What I decided to do was chat with a TON of men. (I'm a college wrestling fan, which has taught me that in order to score you have to take a lot of shots.) Don't get me wrong: in order to find the men worth chatting with I had to weed through a loooooooot of creeps and weirdos. And dick pics. My God, the dick pics. Dude, you're dick's not special. Oh, it's big? Yeah, I've seen a big dick before. Smh
Anyway. Every morning I'd wake up to like 10 messages that started "Good morning, sexy" or "Hey there, beautiful." My self-esteem was through the roof. I met a few of the guys. I always had a coffee date first and my rule was that the first meeting would be ONLY a coffee date. (That was actually another good way to weed out the creeps, because they would find that completely unreasonable.)
I met a couple of men that I saw more than once. I met a few that just didn’t seem as if they’d be a good fit for me. Others didn’t make it past the chatting phase. You might be surprised how many unsolicited messages I’ve received from men who saw my profile on one of the dating sites, didn’t approach me there, but then found me on Kik. Several of those messages are “Hi.” That’s it. Just “Hi.” Like every day or every couple of days. “Hi.” Other messages weren’t nearly as respectful.
Everyone I talked to about it was like, “Ooh, that sucks. Online dating is the worst.” But I guess what I’m trying to get across here is that the whole online dating scene is a real mixed bag. Lots of weird creeps, lots of okay lonely men, a few gems. And to be honest, I was having a blast. The marriage I had gotten out of hadn’t been happy for many years, as I’m sure you can imagine. And a lot of the men I was talking to were younger (some much younger) than me, which kind of took me back to my salad days. I realized that I was still fun and I could still have fun. It’s literally been one of the best things to happen to me in my life.
All the crazy coronavirus shit started happening March 11 and 12, as I recall. That’s when things started to change. At first it was messages like “Are you still okay with meeting at Starbucks or are you panicking?” and “Well, we can meet in DC next week if my office is still open. Otherwise let’s meet closer to home.” Stuff like that.
Once businesses started closing and people started working from home, everything got more difficult. No more coffee dates. Guys suggested walks as an alternative. That actually seemed like it would work, but I never was able to schedule one before the stay-at-home orders were announced. And that's when everything turned upside down.
The first thing I noticed was that people got BORED. I started getting messages from men I had basically cut off weeks earlier. They wanted to “check on me,” “make sure I was okay.” They hoped I would change my mind when this whole thing was over. In the meantime, maybe I could just send them a few pics?
The other interesting change was people who previously could host couldn’t anymore because they lived with other people who were also always home now. (This is actually my own experience. My daughter was sent home from college so I don’t live alone anymore.) This meant horny men had to start being creative. Only not too creative, because they all came up with the same solution: Having sex in cars. Actual text messages I received:
Only one guy came up with a different idea:
So right now I’m seeing one guy. He lives alone so I “sneak out” and we get together at his place. I’m still chatting with a bunch of other men because it’s fun and, hey, I’m bored too. This isn’t what I thought my dating life would look like, but I’m trying to have fun and make the most of it.