2021 Dating Life Wrapped
Your top artist was: BEING ALONE
This tends to be an unpopular opinion, but New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. For starters, it’s not a family celebration and this child of divorce loves a holiday free of navigating parental tension. On top of that, the elements of NYE are just BUILT for a Nora party: glitter, fun outfits, nostalgia, with some built in intention- and goal-setting? And I get to spray champagne?!
Part of the reason I love NYE is I loveeee reflecting on a year of change and growth, and giving endings a nice little bookmark. I’m especially feeling this after the series of finale of Insecure; my ex girlfriend and I watched Season 1 together back in the day and seeing it come to an end felt like the end of an era.
It took me a few years post-breakup (the same year Insecure premiered) to even consider dating again, especially since my ex was sort of Queen of the Queers in New Orleans. Moving to Chicago was the reset I thought I needed to be able to re-enter the dating game. This lil pandemic definitely put a damper on things, but nevertheless she persisted, amiright?? My former co-teacher/work wife is Dr. Fauci’s daughter (and a LoveNotes subscriber!! You didn’t realize this blog was *elite*!) and when I saw her last summer I told her that her father would not be happy with how many first dates I’d gone on during a global pandemic. Tbh my own father, who knows nothing about public health, wouldn’t be happy either.
Despite the public health concerns, I was able to rationalize dating in 2021 - I had figured out how to do outdoor first dates, I got vaccinated in March, and (most importantly) desperation was at an all-time high (if only April 2020 Nora knew what was coming). As I’ve been looking back at the last year, it really struck me how markedly different my dating life was in 2021 than it had been before. You know my Cancer self loves a retrospective, and my Capricorn rising LOVES a spreadsheet - combine that with a deep need to distract myself while home for Christmas and you have all the ingredients you need for a deep data dive. I present to you - Nora’s 2021 Dating Life Wrapped:
2021 Dating: By the Numbers
Overall, I went on 34 dates with 14 different people. Of those 14 people, I went on second dates with 6 of them (43%). I made out with more people than I went on second dates with, love that for me.
I think of myself as a die-hard Tinder user, but actually met more people through Hinge this year:
Earlier this year, after the umpteenth time I’d complained about the terribleness of dating apps, one of my friends who has been with her partner since pre-Tinder times told me, “You know, Nora, I just don’t feel like dating apps are right for you.” Which, hard agree, and wouldn’t that be nice, but the reality of a pandemic is that it’s shocking I even met two people out in the real world (and both were from rugby, which is basically a live dating app for queers). More on my disdain for the apps later.
Qualitative Deep Dive
My favorite part of this endeavor, aside from allowing me to relive some of my cringiest text message exchanges from the past year, is I get to flex my sociology training from undergrad - and people told me my degree was useless!!! The numbers tell one story - 14 people in 12 months honestly seems low given how exhausting the year has felt - but the stories that are attached to that number also reveal a lot about what it meant to date in 2021.
In a lot of ways, there were upsides to dating this year - I got treated to some really nice meals (downside: she was freshly out of a 4 year relationship), I learned a lot, like hearing all about this person’s job as an FBI crisis negotiator (downside: she was scary), and I got so many sweet gifts and treats (downside: I had to accept the fact that I am the princess in relationships). The chaotic aspect of dating apps is that you get to spend intimate one on one time with people who you otherwise might never meet - which can cut either way, really. So many of people I met were little windows into lives that I had zero context for, so it was fun to learn all about being a negotiator, working at tiktok, building tiny homes, recording albums, etc.
Despite the cute moments, the downsides of dating tended to outweigh the upsides. The pandemic was ever-present (duh) and quite the buzzkill. One of the dates I was most excited about was a pop up show Hannibal Buress was putting on (I mostly wanted to go because my online friend-crush/weed influencer idol Ashley Ray was supposed to be performing). Halfway through Hannibal’s first set he talked about how he was unvaccinated. I think I was already feeling over the person I was with (she was the first person in months to make it past my “three date curse” - this was our fourth), but hearing a man on stage making fun of vaccines felt so gross and emblematic of a much bigger, very unsexy, issue. One of the silver linings of all this dating is I’ve gotten very good at boundary-setting and had no issue sending this (so kind but so wrong for me) woman home after the show - it’s hard to want to make out when you’re thinking about how we’ll be trapped in this pandemic forever.
Dating in 2021 also had many elements of … 2021 in it. I went on three dates with someone (one of my faves - they worked at a record store and had major Zoe Kravitz in High Fidelity vibes) in January:
Date 1 was originally going to be a trip to a record store for them to help me build my collection (adorable) but was scheduled for the afternoon of Jan. 6. I was watching the livestream of Congress voting as I got ready (this is a normal pregame for someone in policy school) and when the Capitol police ducked Pence out of view of the cameras and the feed cut out, I immediately texted this person to postpone the date. It’s hard to leave the house when you think democracy might be collapsing! A few hours later, when it seemed like the casual attempted insurrection was “under control,” this person came to my apartment (this was also pre vaccine, so we sat on opposite ends of the living room from each other - very normal) and we spent our first date debriefing what had happened that day, while I continued to play the news from both my TV and my computer simultaneously (I am not joking when I say I was SHOCKED they wanted to see me a second time).
Date 2 was the next week, and they were coming to my apartment where I was cooking dinner for us (I made this delish turkey kale and white bean soup). Ten minutes before they were supposed to arrive, I ran outside to the laundry room to grab the clothes I planned to wear that night (very depression-lite of me to only do laundry when I needed to look nice for a date) and was halfway between my front door and my laundry room when I realized there were at least six cop cars with lights on in front of my apartment and police officers in the middle of the street with their guns drawn, screaming at a man who was on the ground. Instead of doing the reasonable thing and going back inside, I darted into the laundry room and texted my date that they shouldn’t call their Uber yet. After a few minutes the cops were gone and the coast seemed to be clear, so I told them to call their car. By the time they’d arrived, I learned that the police were looking for a man who was on a shooting rampage that started with him killing a UChicago grad student less than a block from my apartment... Despite this grim news, we went to a local record store and had a great night together - unclear if that’s a sign I hadn’t processed the events yet or I was just shockingly numb to learning sad things, but either way not a great sign for the status of my mental health.
Date 3 was also at my apartment (listen - January in Chicago during peak COVID was the definition of don’t go outside) but was the night of the Biden inauguration (this is not to be confused with the day that Biden was declared winner, which resulted in me ending things with the person I was seeing in November because they didn’t want to celebrate the Biden victory… the way the news cycle impacted my love life…). Against the odds, both due to history of our dates and the state of the nation, nothing catastrophic happened that evening. I did, however, drink so much to celebrate our new president that I was violently hungover until 3PM the next day - you haven’t been humbled by a hangover until you’re muting yourself while on the phone with your boss so she can’t tell you’re puking.
And that was just January. Ultimately our third date was our last. They were one of various people I dated this year who had their own primary partners - there was part of me that was really into having relationships with some guardrails on it (yes, also on the list of things to work out in therapy, thanks) and for a while I was really seeking that out (back to the data - 7 of the 14 people I went on dates with either identified as poly and/or had a primary partner). Most of the people I dated who had partners had their situation pretty figured out, but this one got messy and they pulled the plug. A few months later, I was looking for something fun to do on a date (with a new person) and checked the schedule at a bar near my house - my High Fidelity date and their partner’s band was slated to play that night. We went to Hannibal Buress instead - so maybe that date was ill-fated no matter what.
I say all of this to say - other than, if you know anyone who is single and could break my three date curse…hit me up - that being single during this year felt a bit like I was being hazed. On the plus side, it also gave me endless stories to entertain my happily coupled up friends (I didn’t even tell y’all about the 6’2 aspiring tiktok influencer - not to be confused with a different date who worked at tiktok - who smoked me out… in her mom’s car).
My dating resolutions for 2022 (I told you I love NYE) are mostly about chilling the fuck out. All of this data is really illuminating how much time I spent this year dating (there wasn’t one month I didn’t go on a date! Exhausting!). I also have been reading/thinking much more about the importance of friendships (the season of Invisibilia was just recommended to me - I loved this episode about blurring lines in friendships and rejecting the relationship escalator). I think I’m over the apps - it defies what I believe about social networks and causes me to recognize wayyy too many faces at the queer dance parties. One of my friends texted me the other day that they want to set me up with someone they know - who does improv but “not in an annoying way.” If I become a “yes, and” person I give you permission to murder me.
Tune in next year for 2022 Dating Life Wrapped - as I go about dating this year I’ll try to classify each person’s “genre” so that I can really rip off the Spotify visuals.
xoxoxox
n