Struggles of the Single Life

Mar 25, 2021 | Life and Culture, Love and Romance

This past weekend, Melanie Notkin of the New York Post chronicled the dating “hellscape” that New York City has become since the start of the pandemic last year. Masks, social distancing, curfews, and other restrictions have made it nearly impossible to meet new people, let alone meet friends and acquaintances in person. While many singles have turned to online dating, others worry that they have lost “a full year of finding love and marriage,” as one 30-year-old Brooklyn woman lamented. In a city where about 56% of its residents are singles, it is frustrating to think that a large portion are struggling to find people to date. However devastating the pandemic has been, it is not the only reason dating in 2020 was so challenging.

NYC: A Microcosm of American Dating

Although New York’s singles felt as though the city’s dating scene had evaporated overnight, the pandemic has merely amplified existing American dating trends from the last decade. According to Pew Research Center, nearly half of U.S. adults say dating has gotten harder for most people in the past 10 years. A lot of this has to do with shifting expectations and societal turmoil. Though online dating has expanded options, it has also significantly altered the mechanics of dating and communication. Many people in the younger cohort possess large amounts of debt – an oft-cited turn-off – and living far apart was enough to prevent someone from pursuing a relationship. Meanwhile, the tense political landscape and influence of the #MeToo movement placed an even greater strain on searching singles. Roughly 53% of people struggle to find someone looking for the same type of relationship (mostly women), while 46% find it difficult to approach people (mostly men) and 46% can’t find someone who meets their expectations (again, mostly women).

The Pluses and Pitfalls of Online Dating

While online dating offers another means of finding someone to date or marry, many people (especially women) would like to avoid being harassed, catfished or ghosted – common occurrences on such platforms. On the other hand, online dating during the pandemic has also had its advantages. For some, this has opened up opportunities for personal deliberation and taking it slow in a new relationship. For instance, many people have felt encouraged to slow down and sort out their priorities before becoming physically or romantically intimate: Am I looking for a fling or a spouse? What sort of person am I looking to date? Who is worth my time and emotions? Would this person be a good spouse for me?

COVID Heightens the Pain of Loneliness

Between Zoom burnout, touch starvation, and loneliness, singles looking for someone have faced even greater struggles during the pandemic. Human beings need each other, especially in these stressful times occasioned by anxieties surrounding public health and social distancing. Whether friends, family, significant other, spouse, or kids, their presence or lack thereof can make all the difference. Social distancing has placed an incredible strain on everyone, but especially those without close connections or who desire a spouse and family of their own. Those of us who have been locked down with family, friends, or roommates may feel like we’re going crazy, but we can count ourselves lucky that we have people we can take care of and who can take care of us. But for those of us who are single and exhausted, we should continually strive to make the effort to stay involved in our communities, even if remote. Soon we will be able to throw open our windows and welcome the arrival of springtime, when outdoor dining and activities will hopefully make their reapparance.

Latest Posts

Monogamy Needs No Cure

Monogamy Needs No Cure

In recent years, ethical non-monogamy has increasingly been promoted by organizations and institutions as a legitimate alternative to monogamy. Despite the United States’ long-standing legacy of monogamy and the limited influence of individuals engaging in behaviors most would have categorized as promiscuity or infidelity, today’s proponents of ENM claim that romantic, sexual, or intimate relationships with multiple people can not only be normal, but ethical. Contrary to the foundational Judeo-Christian understanding of monogamy as natural and religiously ordained – as well as the understanding that human beings are creatures with souls, free will, and the capacity to make moral choices – the sole ethical foundation of ENM is consent. Through the lens of consent, sexual morality is reduced to a single calculation in a contractual exchange – my “enthusiastic yes” for the satisfaction of your desire, regardless of its objective moral dimension. 

Phubbing: A World of Distraction

Phubbing: A World of Distraction

In the 21st century, there are few technologies that match the smartphone. With the world at our fingertips, it seems that there are few limits on what we can learn and achieve – the sheer amount of knowledge, communication, and entertainment available online is staggering. However, as many of us have experienced, the downside of this great tool is distraction and information overload, particularly from the parts of our lives which depend upon our dedicated attention – our family and friends.There is only so much our brains can handle at once, and yet the goal of social media is our unceasing attention and engagement. Powerful algorithms curate content which makes us feel as though our desires are uncannily met, if not influenced without our prior knowledge or consent. Setting aside the powerful rewards systems vying for our attention, smartphones also absorb our time because of the digital alternatives they offer to analog utilities, such as real life books and notebooks, music libraries, calendars, and maps. Though the smartphone lightens our practical load in many ways, it increases social dysfunction in real life.

What Is Sex Realism?

What Is Sex Realism?

A new publication called Fairer Disputations, part of the Wollstonecraft Project initiative of the Abigail Adams Institute, has as its goal the articulation of a new form of feminism “grounded in the basic premise that sex is real.” Gathering a group of scholars and writers who abide by the 18th-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft’s “understanding of rights grounded in responsibilities,” the project seeks to facilitate the study of issues affecting women’s dignity and rights in the contemporary world. Today, there are countless instances where popular feminism has adopted a corporate, overly politicized framework which fails to address the real life-concerns of women – and alienated those who do not share the belief that gender is a choice. 

Dating Doesn’t Stop Once You’re Married

Dating Doesn’t Stop Once You’re Married

Dating doesn’t stop once you’re married. In fact, according to figures from a new report by UVA’s National Marriage Project, dating well grows even more crucial as you navigate life’s mountains and valleys together. Of the 2,000 U.S. couples surveyed about their dating frequency, 52% reported “never or rarely going out on dates.” while 48% reported regular dates “at least once or twice a month.” As Alysse ElHage at the Institute for Family Studies explains, those couples who made time for regular date nights were “14 to 15 percentage points more likely to report being ‘very happy’ in their marriages compared to those who reported less regular date nights.” Far from simply taking a “night out away from the kids,” regular dating in marriage would seem to indicate greater intentionality and thus stability in the marriage itself.

Marriage Is a Crash Course in How to Love

Marriage Is a Crash Course in How to Love

In the New York Times, on February 9, 2023, journalist Michal Liebowitz draws a fascinating parallel between the mutual identification of twins and that of spouses. After briefly recollecting her youthful impatience for adult couples who used the royal “we” – we liked that show; we love that restaurant – Liebowitz explains how her husband’s relationship with his twin brother taught her to accept a certain level of boundary porosity in her marriage. Contrasting the idea of the “pure relationship” with a “past vision of romance,” Liebowitz concludes that “surrendering one’s ‘I’ for the sake of the ‘we'” is the best antidote to the sickness of modern individualism.

Communicate Love, Not Therapy-Speak

Communicate Love, Not Therapy-Speak

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that 21.6% of adults received mental health treatment in 2021, up from 19.2% in 2019 – young adults between the ages of 18 and 44, particularly women, were more likely to have received treatment. Back in 2018, NBC News reported results from a survey by the Hopelab Foundation and Well Being Trust which found that “90% of teens and young adults with symptoms of depression said they had gone online for information about mental health issues, compared with 48% of those without any symptoms.” Big Tech and social media are knowingly responsible, as Brad Wilcox observed in the Institute for Family Studies blog, for the rise in young adult anxiety, depression, and suicide, “among other pathologies.”