My radical love experiment shows there is light at the end of pandemic dating – and it isn’t a laptop screen | Patrick Lenton
I’ve always thought of dating as like a particularly complicated soup – which is perhaps why I was very single for many years.
My theory was that romance is a temperamental, finicky meal that calls for a truly baffling array of ingredients in order to be successful – some kind of five-star French delection that requires everything to be “just so”. Even if you do get all the correct ingredients (two consenting adults who are reasonably attracted to each other, a low-lit smoky bar on a Saturday night, enough alcohol to push through the awkward conversation), it’s still incredibly likely, almost guaranteed, that something will mess up the recipe and you’ll be left with a disaster, an inedible mess.
When you’re dating, you’re essentially practicing radical optimism, just hoping that if you throw enough of the right ingredients into the pot you’ll FINALLY find the right mixture, the perfect recipe. That’s how I approached dating, methodically, fact-based, trying to learn from my mistakes, hoping to work my way towards finding the right mixture of spices and potatoes to find love.
The reason I keep talking about my horrible soup theory is because somehow, impossibly, I’ve spent the entire duration of the Covid-19 pandemic (look it up if you’re not familiar) dating someone long distance across two states in various forms of lockdown, across hard borders. Bellissimo. Pandemic dating is like trying to delicately simmer a sauce while the kitchen is on fire and people are throwing knives at you, and you’re also just really sad all the time.
During the first of Australia’s many lockdowns in 2020, I slid into the Twitter DMs of Eilish Gilligan, a ridiculously talented musician from Melbourne who I was a huge fan of and had never met. Our interactions had been limited to some work emails and a handful of Twitter likes. While I’d had a generalised crush on her for a while (I listened to her music a LOT), I did this without any real expectations or ulterior motive, except to get recommendations on the most efficient way to binge RuPaul’s Drag Race while I was stuck at home. I was in a fairly recent post-breakup stage and conducting a new romance was the last thing on my mind. I’d in fact “given up”, truly believing I was done putting myself on the rack of dating again. I was wrong and stupid, which should be my bio.
By July, realising that Melbourne wasn’t coming out of lockdown any time soon, we decided to do a Zoom date. I was so nervous I wore shoes. It was always meant to be a stopgap measure, something to pass the time before we could meet in real life and do a proper date. Instead, we then settled into five initial torturous months of online dating before we could finally meet in real life, then even more months afterwards of staring into the harsh light of a laptop screen and being absolutely riddled with yearning.
I’m not going to falsely deprecate my way through this – falling in love with Eilish has been an adventure and a privilege, a pinch-yourself stroke of great luck, a once-in-a-lifetime moment of joy. I am so happy. Falling in love always feels rare and special to the people involved – but dating across hard borders during a pandemic was slightly noteworthy in the sense that it was also a dystopian nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else. Unfortunately, we’re now in Australia’s second year of rolling lockdowns, with our two largest cities once again stuck inside. Even for people newly dating in the same locked-down city, there are elements of long distance involved. I’m often asked by people who are similarly trying to date online during the pandemic if I have any tips on how to cook that nice soup during lockdown. I’ve always been unlucky in love, so I wouldn’t ask me for advice about anything, but whatever.
Eilish and I did a lot of online dating things, which felt like doing gluten-free substitutions in the romance soup recipes – it’s never going to be as good as a late-night drink in the dark corner of a bar, but it’s better than nothing. Our first few dates were PowerPoint presentations about ourselves – mine was called “So You’ve Decided To Get To Know Patrick Lenton – Weird”. Hers was called “Eilish Gilligan 101”. We watched films, TV, compilations of YouTube videos for hours. We took it offline, sending letters back and forth, often written in a faux Jane Austen style, as we were aware of the anachronism of actually sending love letters to someone we’d never seen in real life. We sent packages and gifts back and forth. After a while, we’d simply talk and then end up staring at each other for hours at a time, the only sound the frogs croaking in chorus from her house; sirens and the late-night cityscape from mine. I’m not sure if any of those count as tips; they’re just what we did.
One night months into our online dating in the rare silence that a city only gets at 2am, I was staring intently at my laptop screen and the face of the beautiful girl being beamed into my room across the hundreds of miles from Sydney to Melbourne, across hard borders, through lockdown laws and curfews. We were completely silent and had been for a while, the earlier hours of conversation evaporating into what we were always left with after five months of enforced long-distance lockdown dating: palpable and seething yearning, the frustrated desire to simply meet someone you’re falling in love with.
On that night, for the first time, I think the hysteria of it all properly cracked me. Without thinking I absently stroked the back of my laptop like it was her head, and I had the intrusive thought that in real life, her head would be as smooth and flat and as two-dimensional as the back of a laptop. I couldn’t shake it, couldn’t stop obsessing over the idea of this woman having a flat skull that perhaps thrummed with static like the back of a MacBook, and in that dark quiet room after I finally said goodnight and closed my laptop, I started laughing hopelessly about the thought. It would be months still until I would finally be able to prove my delirium incorrect.
I’m thrilled to report that she has a very nice 3D skull. When we finally met in person, it was more scary than a first date, because it came with months of expectation and weight. We were hysterical, babbling, perched on the edge of a couch in an AirBnb, as jumpy as long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs.
I think what this story of hysteria highlights for me is that even with all the hurdles the pandemic placed in front of us, with the longing and the fear and ever-present self-doubt (what if she hates the fact I look like a long fancy greyhound? What if our pheromones don’t match? What if she’s catfishing me for the TV show Catfish?), we still somehow magically persevered. We fell in love (huge brag!!). We celebrated a one-year anniversary. I’m now in Melbourne, and in a few weeks (lockdowns yet again pending) we’re moving in together.
Somehow, it all came together – which I think means that the whole soup theory is absolutely bogus. Maybe that’s not helpful to people, but I think in the end my message is actually one of radical optimism and hope – because perhaps it shows that love can happen anywhere, can grow in the most infertile and unlikely soils, online or offline, it doesn’t matter. There is no recipe, no ingredients, no secret blend of herbs and spices – there is simply a mysterious romantic chaos that you can’t game or predict, that can strike at any moment, and not even the pandemic can stifle. I find that comforting. I find that nice.
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