THE NEW RULES OF DATING
AFTER BEING SINGLE THROUGH THE PANDEMIC, Shamita Kulkarni, a French translator in Delhi, decided to give dating a go again about six months ago. Double vaxxed, date night outfits all set and with masks to match, she felt ready to dive back into the dating pool. What she had not anticipated, though, was FODA—the ‘fear of dating again’. Unsure about her online dating skills, it took her another month to set up her Tinder profile and enter the dating circuit.
It’s a feeling familiar to many in the post-pandemic world. With their love lives Covidated—cancelled or altered by the pandemic—many ended up as Covidivorcees. According to a survey popular dating app Bumble conducted among 2,000 users in India in June, 28 per cent of the respondents said they had broken up during the pandemic. The prolonged hiatus from dating and socialising left many doubting their ability to emotionally connect again. “Before the pandemic, I was a very social person,” says 25-year-old media professional Mrini Devnani. “Now, I don’t feel like engaging in emotional relationships with people.”
TRENDS“VIRTUAL DATING GAINED POPULARITY AMONG ALL AGE GROUPS DURING THE LOCKDOWN. WATCHING NETFLIX ON THE PHONE, PARTY APPS AND VIDEO DATES BECAME THE TRENDY WAY TO DATE”
—ELAVARASAN RAJA Dating and personality coach
Daters today are equal parts excited and nervous about getting back out there, as was evident in media platform Mashable’s confirmed the trend—38 per cent of the singles it surveyed were “nervous about their social skills when it came to dating again in real life”. “It is the same feeling one gets when they stop working or studying for a few months,” says Dr Upasana Chaddha, a Delhi-based psychologist and founder of Mindscape Centre for Counselling. “Circumstances change and you are unsure if you will match the new expectations of workplaces or uni-versities. It’s the same with socialising.”
