Love during lockdown: How has the world been dating during the COVID pandemic? – Euronews

Dating, like everything else we used to take for granted, has been altered beyond recognition since the COVID pandemic took hold.

Gone are the days of holding hands in the cinema or sharing a spoon to eat an ice cream in a restaurant — ok, that may be a romanticised vision of what going out with someone was like — and has been replaced by socially distanced walks and messaging online.

The pandemic has rewritten the rules of dating and while some have found love and even got married in the throes of the virus, others are struggling, with some even identifying as “lockdown Incels” (a portmanteau of “involuntary celibates”).

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner — here are the Euronews audience’s experiences of love during lockdown.

‘We locked down together just after meeting’ — Natalia, France

Full disclosure: Natalia is a journalist for Euronews. Her story had me and others in the newsroom hooked, so I asked if she’d mind sharing it with you.

She met her partner on Tinder in January 2020 and they went on a few dates, but their relationship started off as “nothing serious”. When the first lockdown was announced across much of Europe, including France, he found himself without a flat after the friend he was going to live with got stuck in Morocco due to COVID restrictions. One of Natalia’s two housemates had gone to live with her parents, leaving her and her sister with a big flat, so she offered for him to come and
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