What does dating etiquette look like now in the COVID era? A much more blunt crowd.
new COVID-19 variants.
More singles are also using messaging and video calls to screen potential partners before meeting in person. Over the past two years, Logan Ury, the director of relationship science for the dating app Hinge, said messages have spiked and nearly half of Hinge users have gone on a video date.
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“Pandemics have a way of pressuring people to be more monogamous, because having many partners carries health risks, and because at least some of the potential partners are going to be more cautious,” he wrote by email.
He added: “It is harder to play the field.”
Looking for marriage and kids
First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes, well, the whole shebang. Dating etiquette before the pandemic suggested that stating a desire for marriage and a family, especially early on, would scare the person away. But now transparency about the end goal is no longer taboo on the first date.
“We call it Hardballing,” Ury said, “when a person on a first date will say, ‘I’ve been dating for a while, and I’m looking for something serious. I want to eventually get married and have kids. What are you looking for?’ It’s not clingy but more so says confidently, ‘This is what I’m about.’ It helps people save time by being direct and up front about what they’re looking for.”