Episode 25 - Dating During Covid

Transcript

David: 0:07

Hi, I'm David Peña-Guzmán,

Ellie: 0:09

and I'm Ellie Anderson. Welcome to Overthink,

David: 0:11

The podcast where two friends,

Ellie: 0:13

who are also professors,

David: 0:15

put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.

Ellie: 0:18

Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

David: 0:30

This is the second episode in a three-part series on how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed relationships.

Ellie: 0:37

David, what's your dating life been like during COVID?

David: 0:41

Barren. Dead. Non-existent. As I've mentioned before, I'm in an open relationship, but it just seems like so much work to date during COVID, so I have defacto become an honorary monogamous person out of sheer laziness, and what I've been hearing from all my friends who are dating is that it's shockingly complicated.

Ellie: 1:04

Yeah. I mean, I feel like COVID dating has caused all sorts of new problems to arise. Like how do you date when social distancing is required? How do you communicate effectively during a pandemic when distancing is required? What happens if you start dating somebody and it causes drama with people that you're living with because of COVID safety? But then at the same time, I've also been hearing people complain about the very same problems with dating that dating usually has outside of a pandemic, right? People are ghosting and getting ghosted.

David: 1:36

Listen to our episode on ghosting.

Ellie: 1:38

Yes, for some insight there. You know, and some people are getting into relationships, others into situationships, and still others are finding themselves dating for the first time in years after they had a long-term relationship go sour during COVID.

David: 1:52

Yeah, yeah. A lot of sourness happened during COVID when people suddenly had to live with other people and then realize like, we're actually not a very good match and we hate the sight of each other and we wish person wasn't breathing all the time down my neck.

Ellie: 2:07

Although I actually think that that has caused a lot of people to become single who weren't previously single, but who are actually amazing potential partners for other people. So I think it's liberated some folks by giving them a chance to finally get out of a relationship that wasn't working by seeing how starkly it wasn't working and then open them up to new possibilities.

David: 2:27

Yeah. But it's also kind of an unfair standard. If you lock people in a room without any exit, I'm here thinking about Sartre's we glow, where you're just trapped with-

Ellie: 2:37

Hell is other people.

David: 2:39

You know? And so, I don't know. I think it's any kind of relationship that is objected to those kinds of external pressures will eventually collapse if there is not some kind of release mechanism to let out some of the steam, but yeah, you're right that a lot of people are suddenly single, but not really ready to mingle because you know, you can't mingle now. But I'm curious, Ellie, what's your experience been?

Ellie: 3:05

So my experience of dating during COVID went from being really rough and yeah, totally barren to being honestly incredible. So I have a disgustingly cute COVID love story. I was single when the pandemic started and I found myself super lonely for the first few months, and that was a bit of a new experience for me because I really liked being single. Um, you know, I'm happy to spend time by myself. But during COVID, the level of isolation, inability to hang out with friends or even to just kind of casually date while being single, was really rough. So then finally in summer 2020, I went on my first in-person date, which was a social outdoor date. And I brought my own lunch box with like a happy hour cocktail I had made at home in it.

David: 3:54

Like a plastic cup.

Ellie: 3:56

It was like a plastic wine glass, but in any case. Yeah, we totally hit it off, discovered that we had all of these connections. We'd gone to the same elementary school. We had a bunch of mutual friends and then the rest was history. And my experience of the pandemic totally changed and became actually exciting and joyous.

David: 4:15

Oh, well, I'm happy that your experience with the pandemic was joyous and that part-

Ellie: 4:19

At least in terms of the dating, sounds there have been many other that has been absolute- sorry, to clarify.

David: 4:24

No, of course, but it's nice to hear that there are COVID dating success stories because, whether we want to admit it or not, COVID has totally transformed the way that people date. And I think digging into the dynamics of dating during a global pandemic can reveal to us some of the dynamics of dating that have emerged, and also some of the ones that were there before, but that we took for granted.

Ellie: 4:49

For sure. I'm super excited to talk about this with you today, David, because dating is a bizarre and relatively new practice in American society, and it's worth taking a closer look.

David: 5:01

Today, we're discussing dating during the pandemic.

Ellie: 5:05

How has socially distant dating brought people together?

David: 5:08

What can attachment theory tell us about the dynamics of dating and romance?

Ellie: 5:13

And how does the history of dating inform our understanding of the current moment? David. Let's talk about socially distant dating.

David: 5:25

It sounds terrible. Let's just begin there. You have to meet somebody outside, always, in public, always, and you have to be six feet apart. And I guess if there is a silver lining here is that it's free, right? You don't have to go to fancy restaurants, you don't have to buy expensive drinks. But there are also some downsides, you know. You can't really have the kind of flirtation that is typically made possible by like getting closer to somebody, the occasional kind of like wink here, wink there, all those nonverbal cues that we tend to rely on as a way of expressing interest in the person that we are going on a first date with, and so a lot of the ambiguity around physical touch and personal space, and seeing if there is a mirroring of behavior, all of that is eliminated.

Ellie: 6:19

And a lot of people on their first dates are even wearing masks. And so you can't even see much of their face either. And that makes the nonverbal cues even more challenging than also the fact that you're socially distant and you have no chance of touching if you're trying to be safe. Although this is maybe presuming that like people are actually socially distant dating and there are also a lot of folks who maybe are just going for it and not worrying about this

David: 6:43

There- yeah. There are a lot of people who are going for it.

Ellie: 6:48

I mean, luckily by the time this episode comes out, like a lot of us are vaccinated anyway. And so I actually think this is a super interesting time to be thinking about dating during the pandemic now that many of us are actually able to resume normal dating practices. But I think, you know, one of the super interesting things that came out in dating during COVID has been this point at which you have to have a conversation with the person you're dating about who you've been with, whom you broken social distance with in the past two weeks, right. I think it causes people to have discussions way earlier about whether they're dating other people, and it also causes people to go into default monogamy much earlier because like usually, you know, you'd probably be dating a few people at a time if you're just starting something off or there would be the expectation that you might be doing that. And now it's like, "Oh no, if I'm planning to break social distance with you, maybe I have to know that you're not breaking social distance with anybody else." And a lot of people have drawn an analogy here to discussions about STIs before having sex, which especially emerged in the wake of the AIDS crisis and became much more normalized, I think, in gay and queer sex, than in straight sex where, you know, prior to a sexual encounter, people would say like, "Here's who I've been with or here's my risk. Here's the last time that I was tested."

David: 8:07

Yeah. And I think that making explicit of what was previously ambiguous can seem very alien to somebody who is not used to doing that. And the thing that is bizarre about COVID is that you're basically asking people like their body count, but not really about sex. It's like how many people are in your pod? Who last came into your house? Did you go into a restaurant without a mask? And so these things that we typically don't think of as high risk behaviors that now entail a level of risk and sudden you have to justify, or at least explain, your choices to somebody that, especially in the early phases of dating, is basically a stranger. So you can feel you're under the microscope. Like, I swear, I'm fine, but yes, maybe not perfect.

Ellie: 8:53

It's like, here are the exact details of the interaction I had with my mother.

David: 8:57

And then there's a second step to that which is what is your mother's set of practices COVID, right. So like your entire social network is implicated. And- and so it seems that COVID has definitely eliminated a lot of the ambiguities that typically go with dating, especially around personal dynamics and-

Ellie: 9:16

Those ambiguities are fun.

David: 9:17

Like the flirtatiousness of like, are they going to follow the game? Are we kind of getting closer in all these ways that are not put into language? And maybe we can mourn the loss of some of those ambiguities, but it has also introduced new ambiguities and one new ambiguity that I find quite fascinating about COVID has to do with class. I know a number of people for whom somebody else refusing to give that second degree of separation information is a deal breaker. So not only do I need to know who you been with, who you've been hanging out with, what you've been doing, but what everybody else who is within one degree of separation from you is doing, and all those class filters that are typically baked into our dating practices, but that we don't think about. You know, when you chat with people on an app, you start asking them all kinds of questions that, intentionally or unintentionally, dig information about somebody's class status and class standing. Like, what do you do for a living? What neighborhood do you live in? And so you start creating a mental profile of that person and getting a sense of whether they're, um, working class, whether they are filthy rich, and so forth. And then as that advances, think about something like a first date. There are all kinds of signs that have to do with class. So if somebody invites me on a first state and they take me to a very fancy cocktail bar or a super expensive restaurant, that tells me something that they probably want me to know. Similarly with like the first time when they invite you over to their house, um, which definitely has never been on the same day as the first date, um, I just wanted to clarify that our listeners.

Ellie: 11:05

We don't slut-shame here, purity culture.

David: 11:10

I am a very hard core proselytizer of impurity culture, right. Um, but think about something getting invited to somebody's house, right. You then get to know something about their income level and again, their class status. In San Francisco, just to give a very concrete example, because the cost of living is so exorbitant, when somebody says, "Hey, do you want to go over to my house," then you might ask, "Oh, do you have roommates?" And if they say no, then you're like, "Oh my God, this person lives alone. They must be filthy rich," because in San Francisco that cost of a one person studio will run you $2800 to $3,300 a month. Um, yeah. A studio or a one-bedroom apartment. So, you know, like, even if you're a young professional, like a doctor or a lawyer or a philosophy professor, you don't live by yourself. And so when somebody lives alone, it tells you something about how much money they have.

Ellie: 12:11

Okay. So I want to dive into that a little bit, David, because that's super interesting about the class dimension. I totally hear you that it's more ambiguous in terms of what kind of first date you're doing, right. And that it's also more ambiguous because on your first date, you're probably not going to end up by going to a person's house, right. At the same time, like you still have the, what do you do for a living conversation on a dating app, presumably. You still will see that person's house and/or they will see yours if you continue the relationship, right. So do you think it's just more of a matter of, oh, it's the first date that has more ambiguity around class? Or do you think that there's really like a more lasting class ambiguity that COVID presents?

David: 12:55

It's a more lasting one because what I'm hearing from a lot of my friends who are actively dating during COVID is that they go on a first date and then they go on a second date and then they go on a third date and they all look the same. And what does that date entail? Sitting on the ground and eating on the grass at the park. Um, and so yes, you certainly will have some class information that is already shared, consciously or unconsciously, but I just wonder whether now when all the dates are happening in public spaces, especially like parks, right, which historically have been racially marked, so it's changing the race and class dynamics of these spaces.

Ellie: 13:35

Although I think there are tons of ways that COVID dating still involves class markers. Like where are we getting takeout from? Which park are we meeting in? Like, which neighborhood, that type of thing.

David: 13:49

But some other markers of class, like how you spend your time, the sorts of places that you frequent, I think a lot of that is more ambiguous now. I'm not saying that it's not there. Um, in fact, people who want others to know their class status will make sure that others know their class and they are very effective at doing that, but it has pushed dating into a public, less obviously class marked, environment.

Ellie: 14:18

Yeah. Well, I'm also thinking about the way that COVID has caused a lot of people to be far less judgmental about employment and housing status. So I live in LA, a lot of people are in the film industry. Usually you try and get sort of signs of a person's success in the film industry by asking them what they're working on right now, right. That was basically impossible for many months during COVID, right.

David: 14:41

What are you working on? Not crying every-

Ellie: 14:45

Not-

David: 14:45

day.

Ellie: 14:46

Well, because a lot of people were suddenly unemployed was no judgment around that, right. And, um, not that there necessarily even should be anyway, but I think there is. And then in addition to that, a lot of people moved home. A lot of people of our generation moved home who might otherwise not have. And so it suddenly became not kind of a thing to say I live with parents.

David: 15:07

Yeah. And I want to add to this discussion, that cultural markers of class, so all those things that we associate with dating, the things that we want to do when we want to impress that special somebody that we met on insert your favorite dating app that are marked as cultural and artistic. So, you know, when you want to impress somebody, you take them to a museum, or you take them to an art gallery, or you invite them to the symphony or to the opera.

Ellie: 15:33

To have an experimental dance show in a random warehouse.

David: 15:38

We want to mix class and hipster status. And all these things are markers of class, and this reminds me of the work of the historian, Lawrence Levine, who wrote a book called Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, and in it, he talks about how all these things like museums, galleries, the opera, the theater, they used to be, in the 19th century, accessible to the lower classes. And it's in the late 19th century that the norms around these spaces changed as a way of policing class. In the early to mid 19th century people at the theater would just get shit faced, and was okay to be loud and actually throw food at the performers. And, uh, people loved it. You know, like the so-called rabble was always at the theater and that's inconceivable now. Same thing with the opera.

Ellie: 16:35

No, it's like you go, you get super dressed up. You buy your hundred dollars ticket.

David: 16:40

To your seats. And he does this kind of analysis for all these spaces, like museums. It used to be okay to bring your dog, and just sort of set up a picnic while kind of looking at paintings.

Ellie: 16:51

That sounds amazing.

David: 16:52

Now it's a much more policed environment where you have to know the right kind of behavior, or how far do you stand away from the paintings, how to interact with other people who are looking at the art, and all of this, he says, is tied to the sacralization of art, the rendering sacred of art, which we tend to think of is like, "Oh, a marker of our humanity." But he says, no, it's the rich people trying claim for themselves culture and art, and literally robbing it from the lower classes.

Ellie: 17:24

David, that is fascinating because it shockingly parallels the history of dating in the US. So basically a similar phenomenon happened with dating, which is that dating started around the turn of the 20th century in the US, and it started among working classes. Basically, around the turn of the 20th century, a bunch of women in particular started to flood into cities to become workers, especially domestic laborers, but maybe they worked in factories and stuff like that. And they would often cram into small homes of extended family members. That coincided also with a huge influx of immigrants, including Italian and Irish immigrants in the US, who settled often in tenements. And, you know, you had a lot of people living in a small space. Once that happened, there were all these young people who needed to find partners and who were interested in flirtation and romance and-

David: 18:21

Young women in city!

Ellie: 18:24

Exactly, but who didn't have space in the home in order to do that. And so, the working classes started to date by going out into public parks, going out to restaurants, going out for drives if they had access to a car, or going out for walks if they didn't. And that was really the origin of dating as we know it, and it was closely tied to public spaces and it was also closely tied to capitalism, a practice of what was known as treating women by taking them out for food or activities and implicitly expecting sexual favors in return.

David: 18:58

Wait. And so is the argument here that rich people didn't date originally?

Ellie: 19:04

Yes. Wealthy people continued a long lasting tradition of courtship, where basically a man would visit a woman's home and try and court her, eventually proposing to her. And so among the upper classes, there was no such thing as dating, there was courtship, and courtship happened in the home. Then what you got is as the 20th century progresses, starting in the roaring twenties, for instance, and then moving on, wealthier people started getting really interested in the very practices that the working classes were partaking in, the practices of dating. And so then dating starts to become spread across a bunch of different classes and eventually sort of similarly to how you described the way that theater going and museum going was pretty democratic and then suddenly started to get policed as a way of signaling class status. Dating starts to be associated with going out to a fancyFrench restaurant, nice cocktail bars, museums, fancy travels, right, luxury. And you mentioned the sacralization of art. We see the exact same thing in dating. Rituals start to get developed around dating as the 20th century progresses.

David: 20:15

So based on what you've been saying, Ellie, it seems like historically dating has had very close ties to practices of consumption, right? Imagine the figure of the man who takes the woman out and treats her to a meal or an activity or an event. And I'm just wondering if now we can't do any of those things because well, restaurants are closed, can we call what what we're we're doing doing now dating?

Ellie: 20:44

Yeah. It's like, it only counts as dating if we're going to the very specific, super early strand of dating that was taking walks in public parks. But yeah, as you mentioned, I mean, from the origins of dating, even in the working classes, it was very common to go to restaurants and to do other activities that the man traditionally would pay for. There's also this really interesting history of women actually getting arrested for going on dates because they were considered to be sex workers because they were getting treated to- that is, yeah. Yeah, but that's just to, you know, sort of drive home your point, David, that dating has traditionally been tied to practices of consumption. I'm thinking about this a lot, because the consumption of dating, it's not just in the way that we practice it some like gross capitalist thing, although it possibly is but-

David: 21:33

Definitely also is.

Ellie: 21:35

But it's tied to the rituals of dating. The sociologist Eva Illouz, in her book Consuming the Romantic Utopia, talks about dating as involving three cultural and emotional experiences, which are often, but not always, intertwined. The first is the sexual. So she says that the rise of dating permitted sexual pleasure for its own sake to seem increasingly legitimate for both men and for women, right? As opposed to courtship where it's like overseen by the parents, you're never alone et cetera. The second cultural or emotional experience of dating is the ritual consumerist, where basically the sphere of consumption, through the restaurant, through the trip to the beach, to the museum, provides the framework within which your emotional bond is forged. These are leisure, right? So they're rituals, but they're consumerist leisure rituals.

David: 22:30

Yeah. And so it seems like the entry point into our emotional life is a ritualization of consumption practices.

Ellie: 22:36

Exactly. And then the third, which she describes is the rational economistic, which involves the idea that the romantic bond can express interest driven behavior, where you're basically seeking to match your own needs, preferences, lifestyle choices, to those of the other person. And she said that dating seems to demand shifting among these three

frameworks: 22:57

the sexual, the ritual consumerist, and the rational economistic. And it strikes me that the ritual consumerist mode is what has changed most during COVID, because we don't have access to a lot of the places where these consumerist rituals would take place. I'll say though that a lot of my dating during COVID has consisted of mimicking the consumerist rituals. Instead of going out to a restaurant, we order takeout and we make fancy cocktails within the confines of one of our homes. We get dressed up. I'm thinking about how, how has COVID encouraged us to create new rituals around dating and to what extent have those rituals just mimicked the very old capitalist consumers rituals that existed before the pandemic and now are starting to open back up now that a lot of people are getting vaccinated.

David: 23:48

And we're ready to go back to those capitalists rituals. No, but I really liked this trifecta of sexual, ritualistic, and rational economist modes of dating. And I wonder whether there is a fourth one that could be added that adds to our understanding of the relationship between consumption and dating, which is the intersubjective consumption. So dating itself as consumption of potential partners, right? Sometimes we move through dating almost as if people themselves are commodities, uh, looking for the next best deal. The grass is greener on the other side. So there is a way in which we can reduce those people with whom we go on dates almost to objects to be consumed in a different way.

Ellie: 24:37

And I think that shows just the extent to which the consumerist and capitalist origins of dating translate to our very modes of interaction. And one thing that Illouz says too is that consumerist romantic moments are more prevalent than non consumerist ones. And they're also the standard by which we judge non consumerist moments. And I think that's one of the things I'm thinking about here, right? Like I did a pretend club night with my partner. We ordered sushi, took shots, put on early two thousands club mix, pretended that we were at a club.

David: 25:12

Check out our episode on Britney Spears.

Ellie: 25:16

It would, I mean, it was more like Ludacris and Lil' John. Cause those were what we listened to in high school but, um, yeah, it's like that's mimicking the consumerist ritual of going out to dinner and going to a club.

David: 25:27

Yeah. And I think that underscores the extent to which we feel we need it.

Ellie: 25:32

Yeah, exactly.

David: 25:41

Enjoying Overthink? Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Ellie, let's say that you've pushed past the awkward first phase of dating, you know, the socially distant dates, negotiating boundaries around social distancing, not knowing if the person that you're going on a date with does or does not live in a super fancy studio in the middle of SanFran Francisco. So let's assume that we get past that first stage. What happens after that? Once you find yourself canalizing a path for a more serious romantic engagement.

Ellie: 26:24

One thing I've noticed is what I've been calling to myself a greenhouse effect of dating during COVID.

David: 26:32

What is that?

Ellie: 26:34

In a greenhouse, plants grow bigger, faster, because they have controlled conditions. They are contained within a particular space that is conducive to their growth, right? They have the right soil, the right temperature, and the right humidity level. The downside of that is that the plants in the greenhouse are isolated, cut off from the natural environment. And I think this is exactly what's been my experience of developing a relationship during COVID. It's grown bigger, faster than it ordinarily would have been because there's so much time and energy to put into it. And it's happening in this really contained space, but it also means that the relationship is growing outside of one's surrounding context, the office, each other's friends, ability to travel, et cetera.

David: 27:19

When you said greenhouse effect, I legit thought you were going to make a joke about how it's hot and steamy, like what's with dating during COVID.

Ellie: 27:28

No, I've actually heard from friends in long-term relationships that it's been the opposite.

David: 27:32

Touch. It's like, uh, but like a cooling effect. But one of the things that I like about the way in which you talked about the greenhouse effect is the reference to things growing in isolation from, you know, the space that they normally would be a part of. And that brings with it a particular problematic, which is that if I start dating somebody and that relationship because of COVID, is isolated from the broader social environment, that I normally would have, am I missing potentially a bunch of red flags about this person? I don't really know how they normally spend their time. I don't know who they normally hang out with. I don't know how they behave in public. What if I start dating somebody who hangs out with shitty people that I don't like, but then I've already imprinted and it's too late? Um, know, or what if you date somebody and they tell you early on that they really like going out and that they're super fun. And then it turns out that they're like a crazy party beast who's been momentarily domesticated by COVID and you're like, I would not have dated you if I had seen you act this way at the club. I'm totally playing the conspiracy theory, position here. Like I want know the hidden truth.

Ellie: 28:50

Right. Well, yeah, so I just went on my first ever restaurant date with my partner whom I've been dating for nine months. And I found that he really needs to get to the reservation right on time, which I would've had no way of knowing in the nine months we've been dating. But luckily he's not like an asshole to waiters or weird about the bill.

David: 29:11

Yeah. Like what if suddenly he's snapping his fingers at the staff and you're like, "Ahhh."

Ellie: 29:16

Oh my God, I would die. But you know, the funny thing is I've had a pretty decent sense that he wouldn't do that because even though our relationship has been happening in isolation, it's not as if we haven't been getting to know each other. In some ways, we've still been having our dates, right. I mentioned like our fake consumerist dates, ordering takeout a lot and dressing up, but we've also been really integrated into family life and into pod life in a way that we wouldn't otherwise. In the ordinary scheme of things, maybe I wouldn't have met somebody's parents more than a handful of times after dating them for nine months or maybe not at all, but like I've hung out with Trevor's mom more than I've hung out with a lot of my own best friends during COVID, because he's in a pod with her. And so now I am by extension too. So I do know him in a very intimate way, um, it's just different from how I would know him if we'd had the chance to go to more than one restaurant over nine months of dating.

David: 30:13

Yeah. Still an aspect there that is missing, which is that broader social interaction, right? The full picture of this person's life. But of course, I trust you to have good judgment, to know that you're not like dating some asshole who's just like really rude to the staff at the restaurant, but it seems like you got really lucky and you found somebody that you clicked with, and maybe you would have clicked with him at just as much if there wasn't a pandemic. So it's kind of hard think about the counterfactual here. It just so happens that there was a pandemic when you met him, but some of my friends have not fared so well. A lot of the ones who are dating much more actively describe being torn in their experience of dating between on the one hand, a phenomenology of failure, and on the other, a phenomenology of acceleration where things somehow, at the same time, don't go anywhere from the very beginning. You're just kind of like stuck in first gear. And then if they do go somewhere, they go from zero to a hundred and you cannot slow things down. For instance, I have a friend who said to me that dating under COVID is like being stuck in a never ending first date, right, where it's always just going through the park on repeat. Now, normally there would be a natural progression: park, dinner, spend the night, meet friends, meet family, get integrated into their entire social life and so on and so forth. But right now, there's just no progression. There's only a repetition of the starting point. You go to the park and then you go to the park again, and then you go to the park again, and-

Ellie: 31:57

This with the same person that they're doing?

David: 31:59

Well yes, with the same person and also with numerous people over time. And because of that, it's really hard to know when you're making progress in a relationship with somebody. When do you invite them to spend the night? And if they say no, is it because of a lack of interest or is it a safety concern, right? So there seems to be a hermeneutical problem here, a problem of interpretation of signs, do you know where you stand with somebody?

Ellie: 32:34

Yeah. I mean inventing this kind of new code of dating, even if it's reliant on previous scripts that we had, it sounds like for a lot of people reinventing those scripts is just like too hard, or feels crappy. This phenomenology of failure that you mentioned, David, the question is what is failing or who is failing?

David: 32:57

I think it's a failure of the dynamic to take off in a way that is recognizable, right? Because the way he said to me, it's like, I've seen this girl four times and we go to the park, but what's next? And he just threw in the towel and he's like, I'm out. I'm taking myself off the market completely. I don't want to date anymore, because I can't handle it.

Ellie: 33:18

Yeah. And, you know, I can totally see how somebody would want to put a moratorium on dating during the pandemic, if this had been their experience, because, you know, if it does go past that Groundhog day effect of the park date, and you decide to break social distance with the person and integrate them with your pod, then you're sort of stuck with that person because now they're included in your COVID. I think a lot of people have found themselves stuck in situationships that are really unhealthy for them, or maybe they were already in a really unhealthy relationship, possibly even an abusive relationship, that they've stayed in during COVID because there's so much inertia there. It can be really hard to sort of leap out and make a change, and also tons of disincentives for that because if you break up with this person, then suddenly you might be relegating yourself to months and months without any form of physical touch or any form of intimacy.

David: 34:11

Yeah. And that's exactly what I mean when I say that when my friends describe what dating is like, it seems like being stuck between these poles, which are a phenomenology of failure where it just doesn't seem to move and a phenomenology of acceleration where, when it does, it's just like stepping on the gas and not letting go. And this is by now a common storyline, right? Two people meet during COVID. They're like, okay, something better than nothing. For now, it's kind of good. And then because of the power of spending a lot of time together, they start developing an attachment with a person that maybe they would not have chosen under different conditions. And then they feel kind of trapped in this relationship. So they feel like they catfish themselves into this relationship that now is moving at a speed that they're not comfortable with.

Ellie: 35:05

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think I- I have been so lucky because my dating experience during COVID has, as you said, David, like been was somebody that if I'd met at any time would have been an incredible match for me, you know, it was just like dynamic is undeniably amazing. Um, shout out, shout out Trevor. I know, I said it was disgustingly cute, you know, it's so gross, um, how cute it is, but like, I think it would be so easy, even if that undeniable connection weren't there and you're just sort of like, yeah, this isn't really somebody I'm super excited about, but hey, there's something else going on. It's going to be way too hard to like go through this whole rigmarole with a new person and decide when to break social distance. So I'm just going to stick with it.

David: 35:53

Yeah.

Ellie: 35:54

Yeah, I think that could be really tempting.

David: 35:55

And it's difficult because it's almost as if there is a split between your interests and your sentiments, right. You're- you're thinking, maybe I shouldn't have put myself in this situation, but because I have been spending a lot of time with this other person, now I have some kind of obligation or some kind of feeling, even, towards them and something like this happened to me before COVID, back in 2014. So I don't know if you remember, but when we were in grad school, there was a winter where Atlanta got snowed in for about three days. Everything shut down. Snowpocalypse. Thank you. So I went on a date with a random guy the day that Snowpocalypse began. The plan was that we would meet at my house and we would go to dinner. Now we got snowed in, in my house. He couldn't leave after his date. car wouldn't move. And all the public transportation shut down. He got stuck in my house and I got stuck with him for three days. Like a rando, first date, kind of one of those dates that you're like, ah, this is fine. I'll go on a date because I'm not really doing anything, but I'm not super, super, super thrilled about this. And to be honest, it was horrifying because we got stuck with one another. He had to use my toothbrush cause he had nothing. He had no books or computer or anything to do. So I had to entertain him for three days while I was writing my dissertation. Like, and I remember at the end of that feeling very conflicted where I was like, get the hell out of my house, please. Also, you're kind of cool because now I've gotten to know you better. So I can't really say that. And so I'm torn between feeling trapped by you, but also feeling like it's too late to not give you a second date down the road. Yeah.

Ellie: 37:56

You wouldn't have, maybe, if you hadn't experienced snowpocalypse

David: 38:00

No, because then there was- yeah. So then there was a connection that I maybe didn't want to have, which sounds awful. I know how this sounds, but I think a lot of people during COVID have felt that tension.

Ellie: 38:14

Probably fuck boys, especially. They're like, Oh, I would never call this person back. But now suddenly during COVID I actually have to have ethics and like.

David: 38:22

Well, I doubt, I think the fuckboys are still being COVID ho-vids, just like hooking up all over and lying about it.

Ellie: 38:29

Oh my God.

David: 38:31

Hopefully not, but you can never trust a fuck boy.

Ellie: 38:52

David, the way that you were talking about attaching to somebody during COVID or during Snowpocalypse that you might not otherwise have attached to, it makes me think about the framework of attachment theory, because I actually think that this can really shed light on our practices of dating and romance during COVID. Attachment theory comes from the psychologist John Bowlby, who developed this notion in the 20th century that emotional attachment is essential for human beings because it provides us a secure base. Attachment to a primary caretaker when we are younger, and then to maybe a primary emotional relationship when we're older, usually that of a romantic partner or spouse in our society, allows us this security and the sense of safety, comfort, and home from which we can then venture out into the world, explore, try new things, while knowing that we have this emotional attachment grounding us.

David: 39:54

Yeah. And one of the central tenants of attachment theory is that without attachment, children, especially pre-verbal infants, developed really unhealthy emotional profiles. Uh, you know, if you have a child that is denied care, that is denied love, and that is not made to feel secure, it can really leave very deep scars from which that child never recovers. And so when you deny children attachment, they are not able, as you say, Ellie, to project themselves onto the world. And one really horrifying example of this theory in action was accidentally created by the Romanian government in the 1980s and early nineties. Essentially the Romanian government outlawed abortion. And as a result, uh, the number of unwanted pregnancies went up, because there was no support for women who were pregnant or for their newly born children. A lot of infants ended up in orphanages and so there is this explosion of orphans in the 1980s, and at the time the Romanian government put into place a policy to be implemented in its orphanages, which basically held that the way to create productive citizens was to not effeminate them through emotional contamination. And so they raised children in these orphanages really without any kind of human touch, in complete isolation from one another, without any kind of bonding, and what they found was that these children became unable to process the existence of other people. They couldn't bond, they couldn't develop language. A lot of them developed conditions that prevented them from growing physically in a normal way because of all kinds of deficiencies in their immune system. Um, all of which was tied to the way in which they were raised. And so it provides a clear example of how terribly things can go when the possibility of attachment is taken out of the picture in those early critical stages of child development.

Ellie: 42:03

Yeah, it's not just affecting your mental health negatively, but it is affecting your ability to develop language, your ability to develop physically, right? And so attachment is absolutely essential for human life. Humans are communal creatures and we thrive best when in close settings with other people, right, intimate settings with people. But I'm thinking here, because I think attachment theory is so hot right now, I hear people talk about it the time in my social circle in LA.

David: 42:31

Is it hot and steamy, like a greenhouse?

Ellie: 42:35

A greenhouse. The in particular what's gotten a lot of uptake recently is the idea that comes from Mary Ainsworth that there are three different attachment

styles: 42:47

secure attachment, anxious attachment, and avoidant attachment. Ainsworth undertook these studies of infants whose mothers would leave the room and then how the infants would respond once the mother came back into the room. And she noticed that babies with a secure attachment would be sad initially when their mothers left the room, but then they would go about and have their independent play, and then they'd be happy once the mother entered the room again. Those with an anxious attachment would be really, really, really upset when the mother left the room and sort of like not be able to deal. And then the anxious attachers, when the mother came back into the room, they would exhibit behaviors that showed that they didn't trust that their mother was going to stay. They were scared that the mother was going to leave again, even after she returned. And the third category, avoidant attachers, when their mother left, would pretend like they weren't upset about it, but through various biomarkers, they obviously were. They had, you know, a higher heart rate or different signals of anxiety, but on the outside, you maybe wouldn't notice that. And then when the mother came back into the room, the avoidant attachers would ignore her and just continue going about their independent play as if she never came back.

David: 44:00

Yeah. And with attachment theory, I like the emphasis that it places on early child development, although some feminists have made the argument that, especially in its earliest formulation, it really conflated primary caretaker with the mother. And so it's sometimes had this like weird blame the mother for anything that's wrong with the child vibe to it. And so the important point, for me at least, about attachment theory, is that it draws our attention to the way in which children develop different styles of attachment in light of previous experiences. So the theory is that children that exhibit a secure style exhibit that style because they've had a healthy relationship with their primary caretaker. The primary caretaker allows a child to grow, to flourish, offers emotional support when it's needed. The anxious and the avoidant attachment styles occur when children have traumatic experiences that lead them to believe either that they are going to be abandoned by their primary caretaker or that the caretaker is going to be a source of harm and abuse for them. And so that's why the children don't know whether to be anxious at the presence of their primary caretaker or to be happy or upset when the parent leaves. Now later, researchers added a fourth style of attachment, which is called disorganized, which is a lot more intense than either anxious or avoidant attachment. And it happens when a child has experienced such brutality in their early formative years that they no longer know how to relate to the primary caretaker at all. And typically they will either fully dissociate or exhibit what is sometimes called freezing behavior. So when there is a change in their social environment, like the mother leaves or the mother comes back, they don't know what to do. The children have been so deeply traumatized that they just are stuck and do not know how to form any kind of attachment. And so it's called disorganized because it doesn't have any logic to it. And so the children will do just random things that don't make any sense in the context. But in general, the takeaway is that our attachment style, which again, we developed through early childhood experiences, shapes our relationship down the line, including with other adults, especially in the context of romance and dating, because of course that's, as you pointed out, all about attachment. And so it would make sense, I think, for us to think about the possibility that maybe people with different attachment styles are just dealing with the bizarre dynamics of dating and romance under COVID in very different ways.

Ellie: 46:42

Absolutely. I mean, I've been thinking about this and just, just to clarify here, I'm a philosopher. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not in a position to diagnose individuals attachment styles, but I do think that the framework is really interesting for thinking about sort of patterns of behavior that we tend to exhibit in dating that go back to our early childhood. And, you know, I've been wondering, um, whether sort of the tendency of anxious attachers to dump emotional energy a bit early into relationships, and to start to really depend on the other person and be worried that the other person might not reciprocate their feelings could have an opportunity to be exacerbated during COVID, right? Because things are so accelerated in many cases, maybe anxious attachers who often find themselves in accelerated relationships anyway are going to relationships for even more security, even more quickly, than they might otherwise be when they would have more chances for a secure base in their life, more opportunities for regulation.

David: 47:50

Yeah, that's really interesting. And in thinking about especially anxious attachers, which are essentially needy people, that's the way they sometimes are described, right. Because they need expressions of attachment- As if

Ellie: 48:03

we don't all need people. This is where it gets problematic to-

David: 48:06

No, but I mean they need more reassurance than people with secure attachment styles because they have abandonment issues that are well-grounded, right. So people have abandoned them in the past, and so they feel that there's a very high risk that when they begin a new attachment, that person is going to bail out and harm them. And so if one of the things that we've described about COVID dating is that phenomenology of failure, the fact that things don't progress as they normally would, which gives you the confidence that, Oh yeah, this person is interested in me because they're moving to the next step and then they're moving to the next step after that, that's really difficult for somebody who is already an anxious attacher because what I earlier called the problem of interpretation of signs, right, knowing when somebody is interested, it's been exacerbated under COVID. So it just makes you even more anxious.

Ellie: 48:59

Absolutely. And that those with even a secure attachment style because of the, you know, extreme anxieties that the pandemic tends to produce anyway, the idea that they might be exhibiting some anxious behaviors too, I think is a possibility because, of course, while attachment styles are sort of imprinted, to use a metaphor, in early childhood, that doesn't mean that we don't exhibit different behaviors over time. For instance, it's a pretty well-documented phenomenon that anxious and avoidant attachment tend to become more secure if they find themselves with secure attachmers. Um, so I think there could be some sort of shifts within as well, right? Maybe some of those with secure attachment are finding themselves exhibiting behaviors more characteristic of anxious attachment, um, in terms of the phenomenology of acceleration that you mentioned earlier, this need to move quickly into a relationship. Now, you know, on the side of the phenomenology of failure, I hear your point, that that can be really hard for anxious attachers, I think that's totally true. My speculation is that what's happening with avoidant attacher is- is that they're probably leaning into this phenomenology of failure. Um, because one thing that tends to happen with avoidant attachers is that they're hesitant to get into relationships at all, to be really slow. They tend to find reasons to back out really quickly. When you're stuck on a Groundhog day park date with somebody, if you're an avoidant attacher, you're probably just going to cut that shit off.

David: 50:25

Yeah then if it goes from failure to acceleration, if you're an avoidant attacher and you find yourself in a situation where the relationship is going faster than you anticipated just because of COVID, then it's going to send your avoidance flying off the roof, right? Like you might play it cool and collected on the surface, but your blood pressure and your heart rate are so intense because you don't know how to take charge of the situation. And so you internalize that without actually expressing the emotion appropriately, and so I wonder whether a lot of people are in that situation of freaking out internally, not knowing how to manifest that behaviorally.

Ellie: 51:10

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, my hope too is by virtue of removing a lot of the scaffolding of dating in normal times, right, um, COVID has transformed the landscape of dating in some potentially promising ways for different attachment types. So I will say just this as super anecdotal, but I have a couple of friends who are avoidant attachers, who have found themselves finally in exciting, healthy relationships during COVID, because a lot of their usual reasons for running, the idea that there are a ton of other people out there who might be a better match for them, the idea that they kind of just want to be by themselves and they don't want to be attached to somebody, have been removed because they're like, well, yeah, I don't want to be by myself all the time. I want to be with somebody part of the time. And there aren't all these other options waiting in the COVID. And you know, like the negative way to take that is to be like, Oh, well, I guess they settled during COVID, but I don't actually think that's at all what's been going on for the couple of friends I have in mind. What's been happening instead is that the weird conditions of the pandemic have liberated them to actually let go.

David: 52:15

Yes. Yes.

Ellie: 52:17

Right. And to just accept being in a good relationship.

David: 52:20

Yeah. And I think that's happened for a lot of people independently of attachment style, that because the rules of the game have been changed and the rug has been pulled out from under our feet in terms of what we think we can expect from our ventures and adventures into dating and romance. Because it's changed so much, people are realizing that they can make different decisions than they have in the past. And sometimes the optics can be weird, as you said, you know, it seems like they're making that choice because they had no choice but that one, in reality, it might just be the expression of a new dimension of their personality that previously was kind of held in check by their emotional profile on account of life experiences that have accumulated. And we are all subject to the accumulation of those life experiences.

Ellie: 53:10

Totally. It reminds me of our interview with Thi and our episode on games and gamification, when he says that sometimes constraints like the constraints of games can actually make us freer. That again, one might say that because the pandemic has caused so many mental health challenges for individuals, most of us are not our best selves during this time, perhaps, COVID is leading to the worst of our attachment styles coming out.

David: 53:38

After COVID, when we all sort of meet back in public space, we're all going to be disorganized attachment styles. We're just going to like freeze and not know what the fuck to do in the presence of other people. So deeply traumatized by this experience that we just won't know what to do.

Ellie: 53:56

Well, I suppose that remains to be seen. I mean, I think one thing I've realized is that I can have awesome dates without spending a bunch of money. So I guess one silver lining.

David: 54:10

Well, and for the dozens of men waiting to invite me on a date after COVID, please know that I expect very expensive class marked dates afterwards.

Ellie: 54:23

David's leaning into the ritual consumerist elements of dating.

David: 54:27

God. Yes. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Ellie: 54:42

You can email us with questions, feedback, or even requests for life advice at dearoverthink@gmail.com, as well as connecting with us on Facebook through our page or group.

David: 54:51

You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter at @overthink_pod. We want to thank Anna Koppelman, our production assistant, Samuel P.K. Smith for the original music, and Trevor aims for our logo.

Ellie: 55:04

Thanks so much for joining us today.