Pandemic Dating Diaries
“Pandemic Dating Diaries” is a TBI series that features moments in love, dating, and sex during Covid-19 directly from our readers. Have a story you’d like to submit? Email us or DM us on Twitter or Instagram.
The water pooled around the jerry-rigged washing machine, gently lapping as it approached the basement stairs. Three or four steps up, I sat contemplating — no, panicking — about the decision-making process that had led me to dwell in the basement bedroom of this ancient, sketchy house.
I got up to look for help as the basement continued to flood. I had just moved to the city and couldn’t remember the name of my new roommate, who lived upstairs but whom I had yet to meet.
But then he appeared to help. This is where I met Brian — at first my roommate, quickly turned quarantine buddy, then my rebound, and now my boyfriend.
For me, the pandemic spelled the end of a dream. At the beginning of March 2020, I had just moved to a new city with my boyfriend to live together for the first time. At that time, Covid-19 was still a distant news story — something to know and have opinions about but not to prepare for.
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In mid-March, I got laid off as the country shut down. My boyfriend kept working at an “essential” job he loathed. Our previous issues became unresolvable under the stress of quarantining together, and we broke up and both moved out. I moved to the quickest, cheapest month-to-month place I could find. Cohabitation had been awful for our relationship, doubly so when coupled with the isolation and volatility of a raging virus.
Now I was living in a basement, slowly creeping with water.
My roommate took a glance at the washing machine from the safety of the stairs.
“Oh, it does that,” he said calmly, reassuringly. “Probably the sock filter fell off.”
“The sock filter?” I asked.
Brian explained that because the washing machine drained into the sink, it needed a filter to prevent lint from clogging the floor drain. Nothing a sock and a little duct tape couldn’t fix.
The washing machine kept chugging along. The water puddled to a high point, a wide circle that didn’t reach my room. We sat on the stairs and talked, and we realized we had a lot in common. We had both attended small liberal arts schools, approved of legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and had experienced recent breakups with longtime significant others.
It was good to be single, we agreed.
Along with the restaurant industry, live music, and general happiness, the pandemic wreaked havoc on relationships. Breakups are more prevalent and painful, and dating presents a host of strategic issues: If seeing someone outside your pod, to what lengths do you go to ensure safety? Experts suggest that you are your own safest sex partner, and failing that, your next safest option is someone in your household.
Interesting.
Basically, I nearly instantly had a crush on Brian. We soon made it clear that we liked each other. A lot. And we knew it was a bad idea. We told each other that as the attraction grew.But how bad is one little bad idea in the storm of bad things that 2020 became?
So we made an agreement: Be honest with each other. Be constantly and consistently expressing and negotiating our boundaries and needs. Be physically exclusive but romantically nonmonogamous. Be two people, not one couple. Get through the pandemic together, then see what comes next.
So far, it’s working.
We went hiking together all summer. He showed me ghost towns he’d tracked down. We spatchcocked a turkey on Thanksgiving. I started meeting his friends, from six feet away. The fun became something to look forward to amid weeks of isolation and uncertainty.
When things got worse, we had each other’s backs.
When the West Coast caught fire, we stood by the water together and watched ash like thick gray snow float down from the orange sky. We thought about the forests burning, old-growth choked with soot. There’d be some miniature disaster with the house falling in on itself, and we’d team up to prod the landlord into action. On election night, we watched the votes trickle in, state by state. He got upset about how the local elections swung, and I sat with heavy, quiet relief at the outcome of the national one.
As roommates, we risked being too much a part of each other’s lives, too quickly. But what works for us is the time we don’t spend together. Days go by during which work schedules and personal needs limit our interactions to a morning cup of coffee. Our weekends coincide sometimes, but often not. I really need that time to be mine. He understands.
This aloneness spreads to the bedroom. As roommates first, partners second, we have our own rooms — our own desks, closets, and beds. My desk became my most cherished part of this practice. As two people with a writerly bent, we both benefit from private, specifically organized workspaces. Sharing, I’ve realized, isn’t something I need to work on. It’s just something I don’t need to do. We don’t sleep together often, but the option is always there, which makes the occasion feel special rather than obligatory.
I’ve discovered that actually, I like sleeping alone. Even more than that, I like being alone.
Turning my boyfriend into my roommate put way too much stress on that relationship beyond what it was capable of carrying. Turning my roommate into my boyfriend, I wanted to learn from that experience.
My ex and I couldn’t fix our preexisting problems while trying to negotiate matters of bedroom territory and grocery preferences. In this arrangement with my roommate, we approach things like two people, not one. Maybe neither of us felt ready for another relationship, but love comes as it pleases, friends make the best lovers, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, friends make good roommates, too.
