LAURA STASSI: This is “Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships.” It's Season 4! I'm Laura Stassi, and I'm having trouble remembering the Before Times. You know, back when coronavirus wasn't in the vocabulary.
Not that I'm counting. Okay, I am counting. As of this episode day, it's been two years, six months and 24 days since the World Health Organization declared COVID 19 a pandemic. Of course, vaccines and booster shots have slowed the spread, and they can offer protection against serious and even deadly illness. Still, this highly contagious virus has shaken up all aspects of our society.
COVID-19’s impact on romantic relationships -- that's what we're exploring on this episode, “Love Sick.”
I was clicking around recently, and I came across a study by the Pew Research Center. It said the majority of uncoupled American adults were unhappy with dating. And that was back in 2019. No surprise, the pandemic has made things worse. Sixty percent of singles 50 and older tell Pew that dating has become harder since COVID-19. And 72 percent said their dating lives were progressing not too well, or not at all well. In fact, the majority of single adults of every age said they'd simply dropped out of the dating game.
That's not what happened with an oncology nurse we're calling Carrie. She's 63, divorced, and lives in the Midwest. And initially, after ending a year-long relationship in 2019, Carrie was in no hurry to jump back into the dating pool.
CARRIE: But then when COVID hit in March of ‘20, you know all my distractions, all my -- you know, dinner dates with girlfriends, or I have a meditation group that I get together with. And all those, they all went away. And I realized that by -- it was like about June or May, I was really starting to feel like geez, I'd really like a hunkering down, buddy, you know.
LAURA: Yeah.
CARRIE: So there was a, you know, it kind of -- we had a little bit of a break in the early summer of 2020. And so I got back on Match and met somebody,
LAURA: Can you be more specific: What was it about him that really attracted you and appealed to you?
CARRIE: He loved the outdoors, and I loved the outdoors. He had never been married, though, which was a little worrisome to me. But he had been engaged, had been in a long relationship. And we really made each other laugh. We had, we had such a fun back and forth, you know, even just texting and talking. It was a lot of joking back and forth. It was very light-hearted. And he was very content. He had worked in a private school, so it wasn't like he had a big pension or anything. But he was very thrifty. He had traveled the world. And he liked to read, and I liked to read. And so there were a lot of good overlaps.
LAURA: You all lived in different towns, is that right?
CARRIE: Yes. We were about 45 minutes apart.
LAURA: And did that give you pause, especially like during a pandemic?
CARRIE: It did give me pause in that my relationship before that, we had been two hours apart. So there was, you know, this back and forth on the weekends. And so, you know, when I started driving to his place, oh, brother, here we go again. But, you know, 40 minutes wasn't too bad. I listened to podcasts, like Dating -- I'm not kidding.
LAURA: Sounds like it should be in a commercial.
CARRIE: I know. But, you know, he didn't even hold my hand for like three days. So, you know, we went slow, but it was, you know, once you know --I mean, it was, it worked.
LAURA: You know, I'm remembering back to the CDC guidelines about oh, yeah, the safest way to not catch COVID, blah, blah, blah. Did you all talk about your, you know, did you all talk about that? Like, are y'all being safe when you're not seeing each other and, you know, that kind of thing?
CARRIE: You know, he was definitely -- probably more on the safe side than me because I was going to work every day. I mean, I was using, you know, whatever PPE we had. But I was probably more of the wild card. And I don't think we viewed it so much -- I mean, once you're in close proximity, it really doesn't matter what you're doing, you're exposing yourself in one way or another.
LAURA: Yeah, you might as well just take everything off.
CARRIE: Yeah. That was more discussed as far as you know, like, you know, what are we? You know, what are we doing here, and what does this mean?
LAURA: You talked about the things that you appreciated about him. But you also said that there were some -- I don't know if you would call them red flags, or just things you didn't see eye to eye on, like spirituality. Was there anything else that you thought, oh, you know …
CARRIE: Well, we had different relationships towards money. He was very, very thrifty. You could call it cheap. He didn't -- he owned it proudly. If we went out to eat, we were always sharing a plate. Everything was split. So it got to almost feel like -- it almost felt, I don't want to say a business deal. But it took a little bit of the romance out of it. And it what really tied it up at the end for me was -- and I was already, COVID was kind of lifting. We were out to eat. He didn't want to go out to eat, but we were out to eat at a brewery. And he wasn't hungry. So we had just ordered two appetizers. And then I saw one appetizer had a – like, a sauce on it. And so I'm like, “Hey,” to the waiter. I said, “Could you put the bread service on, add the bread service?” It was $6.50 Now mind you, I was drinking water. He was having a beer. And he like, scolded me in front of the waiter saying, “We didn't agree to that.” And then went on to tell me after the waiter left, how much he had spent already for that day. And I'm thinking, “We haven't gone anywhere for like six months!” So it was just like a lightning bolt to me, that he is a nice guy but just, we just did not. -- we weren't compatible, really.
LAURA: In the email, you told me -- you said you felt like you kept talking yourself into staying?
CARRIE: Yeah. You know, it may have been pandemic related to some extent, because, you know, who really wants to, you know, be out there dating? And I don't want to say that it was, that he was like a fallback man, because I did enjoy his company. And we had some really lovely times. I was really just, I just wasn't really very -- I realized I wasn't very excited about it. There was something missing for me. And I think -- I don't know if it's baggage from my marriage, where I had a pretty challenging person that I was dealing with in my ex-husband.
So you think, you know, am I -- can't I just be happy with a nice guy? But there's more to it than a nice guy, so much more to it. We had talked about being together long term, and I said, you know, “If we're going to do that, we're going to, we have to start fresh. I'm not going to move into your place, and just insert myself in your life, I don't want to live in your house.” And you know, he was attached to that house; that's probably the biggest commitment he's ever made. And his animals, and I felt, I felt like he really cared about me, but I wasn't like, “This is a love of my life. I'm willing to risk it all, and start with you.” And I'm not going to settle for less than that, you know. I'm not going to just go live your life.
So it's an -- I don't know if I finally grown up or gotten, you know, independent. But I feel like I've given myself up in my other two marriages. And I'm not going to do that this time. And if that means that I have to leave a relationship for my own integrity, then I'm willing to do that. We found a nice middle ground for the -- for what we could do. And I tried to look at things from a positive point of view. And I'm grateful for that time. And I believe not all relationships are meant to be like a forever relationship.
LAURA: I agree.
CARRIE: You know, he was a great companion for that time. And I learned a lot about myself. I hope he learned things about himself. And I will approach relationships differently, you know, as a result of it.
LAURA: And do you ever have any moments of regret, like you wish you'd been able to work it out? Or was he just pretty much not going to compromise at all?
CARRIE: It was a hard loss for me. My friend said I was crying more about him than I was when I got divorced. But it wasn't just crying for him. It was a lot of, I think a lot of old grief that I was letting go of. And while I was very sad to lose him -- and lose the friendship, really, not so much the dating part of it but losing the friendship was hard. But what I recognized within myself that the friction that I'd been pushing down all along was gone. And so you know, the loss you get over. And you know, who knows what, what's ahead.
LAURA: A hunkering down buddy -- I love that expression. Carrie told me she was hoping to stay friends with hers. But he refused. They canceled their hiking trip to Utah, got their split deposits back, and Carrie decided to take a dream trip to India. And shortly after their breakup, Carrie went out to dinner with her son, and she noticed how great it felt to order her own plate of food. No sharing.
So what happens when out of the blue, you fall madly in love and change your entire life? And then out of the blue, the entire world changes?
BETTY: Yeah, my daughter, my daughter jokes -- you know, jokes but doesn't joke when she talks to me on the phone. She always says, “Blink twice if you're being held hostage.” Because I haven't been myself. I think everyone has noticed and is wondering. My son said the other day, “This is unlike you.”
LAURA: Uh-oh. That's a woman we're calling Betty. We first talked with her during Season 2, when she told us all about getting bitten by the love bug. We'll get an update after the break.
BREAK [12:39]
LAURA: Betty is now 71, retired from a big career, has two adult children. She was living in Georgia when she took a vacation to Arizona. That's where she met a friend of a friend. He was a widower, no kids.
BETTY [FROM SEASON 2]:
He took me out to dinner. We close the restaurant. And then he drove me back to our hotel. Neither one of us wanted to get out of the car. So we sat in the car for about two or three hours, talking and talking and talking and talking. When I got home, we started emailing. We started calling. We found that we were talking on the phone until 5 in the morning, like teenagers; waking up the next morning wanting to call him again.
LAURA: That was in February of 2020. And we all know what happened only a few weeks later: the pandemic lockdown. Betty managed to get away to see her new love again. They kept the hot and heavy phone calls and emails going. And within five months, Betty left Georgia and moved to Arizona. They bought a place together in an active 55 Plus community. I asked Betty for an update.
BETTY: Well, the first thing that came up that kind of raised a red flag was my sister and her husband wanted to visit. And this was when the vaccination had just come out. And everybody was looking, where can we find a vaccination? And we were -- we were with the rest of the crowd. And we were following leads and getting phone calls and watching the newspaper, trying to figure out where could we get a vaccination. And we drove to a little town that was about 60 miles out to make sure we could get our shots. And then we drove back to get our second shot. So we were being very conscientious.
My sister and her husband said -- I'm sure 70 percent of the reason was because they were stir crazy too. And they said, “We're gonna come out to visit,” and that created a problem. He kind of expressed it as my willingness to expose us to COVID, and as if it were kind of a test of my commitment to keeping our new family COVID-free.
LAURA: How did you resolve it?
BETTY: She came. He was pleasant, but it wasn't pleasant for me. It wasn't -- it just wasn't a pleasant overall experience, because I saw it as a family thing. You know, we hadn't seen each other, I believe in almost a year. We had both taken precautions, I wanted to see her, she wanted to see me. And she's my sister. And he saw it as a risk. And he kind of couldn't see beyond the risk of it all. And he saw me in a different light because he saw me as a person who was willing to put our, our relationship or our family, so to speak, at risk by having this visit.
LAURA: You all had had the vaccines.
BETTY: Yes, which made it feel like it was a little safer anyway, but he didn't feel that way.
LAURA: Right.
BETTY: Well, yeah, the second time, the tension was even worse. And he started predicting, “Oh, this is gonna be a pattern.” And my attitude was, of course it's a pattern. This is my sister, I'm gonna …
LAURA: Yeah …
BETTY: I'm gonna want to see her every once in a while. There are other people I'm gonna want to see. I'm gonna want to go visit my kids. And I started realizing, you know, when you said it earlier, was he a little more introverted. It's not something we could have detected during the early days of the COVID, because everything was just working like clockwork. Everybody knew we can't go out. Everybody knew we can't do this. We can't do that. And things began to crumble a little bit.
LAURA: Oh, I'm sorry. Is he still that way? I mean, I know that we've got the boosters now, but we keep getting these variants. Is this still a big sticking point for you two about, you know, seeing other people and going out?
BETTY: Yeah. That is a -- we call that, I mean, it was very romantic. We called ourselves sneaking into the movies, like on senior day. And, you know, you go to the movie on senior day, and you go at 11 o'clock in the morning, and you're the only people in the theater, and it's romantic, and you hold hands and you eat popcorn, and you take your mask off. And it's, it's cute, and it's nice. But beyond that, he's not very -- he's not very family oriented. So my solution to seeing my family is what I did during my marriage, is see ya! Basically, I'm going to see my, whatever, fill in the blank, or I'm going to take a trip or I am going to see my girlfriend in California. And I'll be gone a week, and it'll be wonderful to see you when I get back. He thinks that's inappropriate,
LAURA: Inappropriate, because you're going without him, or inappropriate because of the pandemic?
BETTY: Inappropriate for me to travel without him.
LAURA: Oh, my goodness.
BETTY: It needs to be a joint decision because we're gonna be going together. It's kind of a no-win situation. My sister was a flight attendant. So she and I just would jump on the plane and go to, you name it. I mean, Morocco, or Normandy. We once went to Spain for the weekend. My longing is kind of ramping up. What do you call it? wanderlust. I've been sitting here for two years, and I am -- and I understand there's another strain of COVID here and that's what -- we talk about that a lot. But I'm thinking, you know, I want to go back to Hawaii. I you know, I'm taking time off. And I'm so close to California now. I want to visit the vineyards. And he's a homebody. Sometimes, it just feels controlling. And a lot of times -- I think more times than not -- it feels like he wants a wife. Like, you know, if I didn't want to go there wouldn't be a problem.
My health is 100 percent great right now, and there are things I want to do while my health is great. Like, while I can go to a casino without asking for a wheelchair, or go on a cruise without, you know, while I can, I don't have to use a walker. And I feel very fortunate to be my age and to not have those issues. But I know I won't always not have those issues. And I would love to see as much of the world as I can.
LAURA: Yeah, I'm just wondering if you can see yourself continuing to live with him, but basically living separate lives. Like, well, you're no longer necessarily romantic partners, but just kind of friends, companions.
BETTY: You'd have to, you have to imagine old school. He's very old school. I mean, that would be an affront to his dignity, if we did that. That's too millennial. And let's live together and go our separate ways. Because that was one of the suggestions I've already made. You know, “I love you. I want to travel. You love me. You want to stay home on the sofa? I'll see you when I get home. I'll go where I need to go. And I'll see you when I get home.” And that doesn't work for him. I mean, either it's kind of all or nothing. Either we're together; all for one, one for all. Or we’re apart, which, you know, my term would be each to his own.
LAURA: Yeah. I'm sorry to hear this. Boy. So what's the next step?
BETTY: Well, my thought is, is like I said, I think at some point, the road is gonna be beckoning me in such a way that I can't do this any longer. At a certain point, the scales are gonna change. And the weight is gonna be on the side of go and see and do, and spread your wings and fly -- and all that kind of stuff. But right now, the weight is on: I have someone to love and who loves rubbing my feet at night. And I have the companionship that I've craved and wanted. I'm not lonely ever, have someone to eat meals with and go to movies with and snuggle with him in bed at night. And, and to me, at this point, it's worth it.
LAURA: You know, I think this is the most I've ever sighed during an interview. Because I remember that Betty had been on her own for a long time. And she had been so excited about this totally out-of-the-blue love connection that she gave the rest of us hope. But Betty says she doesn't want anyone's pity. And that everything's fine when it's just the two of them, and they're doing things like putting jigsaw puzzles together or going to doctor's appointments and then eating lunch and taking a nap. She calls it old people stuff -- and sorry, I can't help it. Another sigh!
Oh all right, I don't want to end this episode on a downer. So let's hear about Nils. He didn't want to talk on tape, so we're having a voice actor read an excerpt of the email he sent me.
VOICE ACTOR: Just before Thanksgiving 2020, I met a dog at my apartment complex. Well, the dog was attached to a nice lady my age. I ran into them a couple more times. And we started walking together and eventually dating. When the rent was raised on our apartments, we decided that even though it was probably too soon, we'd move in together. We found a place where we each have our own bathroom -- so important! And our own bedroom if we need a corner for a timeout. There's also a small yard for the dog. So he's loving life with two people to take him for walks and give them treats. And we think it's pretty great, too.
LAURA: And finally, there's this voicemail.
CONNIE: Hi Laura. This is Connie calling from Northern California.
LAURA: Connie is 74 and about a year after her divorce became final, she went online. That was in early 2020. Connie says she wasn't looking for a relationship, just a companion for conversations and outings. This is what happened, and let's see if you can get through the ending without tearing up because I sure can't.
CONNIE: One of my searches led to a mid-day museum date with a younger man, still working; seriously into music, movies, and his three grown children. We met, he told me his parking ticket would run out in an hour. Good getaway plan, Stan. After sweet tea in the museum cafe, we traded phone numbers and parted -- me taking the public transit in the wrong direction.
Within the week, he'd asked me out to dinner, during which we both shared stories, music preferences, and fabulous hush puppies. We were planning a live concert the next week. But that day, Gov. Newsom halted public gatherings, and COVID-19 halted my public dating. David and I began deep phone conversations and texts throughout the day and many evenings. The quarantine made our relationship grow as we began to delve into details and feelings.
We lived about 45 minutes apart. And on the first day that he visited my home and apartment, I had actually cut a 6-foot-long piece of paper to lay on the carpet between us. I had the windows open, and each of us had a homemade mask on our face. We ended up taking a walk to the downtown, 6 feet apart, both of us with our hearing aids turned up on the maximum volume.
After that, there were a few COVID-19 drive-in movie dates sitting in his car, which became our two-person pod. When my lease was up, I did suggest that he move in. That meant my one-bedroom, 500- square foot apartment -- we got very close, let's say, now. And then it meant one of us had to back up in the hallway to let the other pass. Each of us had had a challenging relationship in the past and wanted nothing more than peace and quiet, respect, and shared positivity. David decided to retire by the end of the lease. A year later, we had found a two-bedroom place to allow my Casio keyboard, his large computer, my collection of family photos dating from the 1800s and more. We look forward to post-COVID meals with our respective kids around the table, with all three leaves now in place. As we learn our new neighborhood, we've taken masked trail walks and a few outside dinner dates.
Two of my friends separately told me I'm like plant that has not been cared for and now is in glorious bloom. Who knew that there were gray flowers?
END CREDITS:
Dating while Gray is produced in partnership with North Carolina Public radio. For more on the show, check out datingwhilegray.com That's also where you can find links for sending voicemails and emails. I'd love to hear from you. I'm Laura Stassi. Thanks for listening.