It’s the height of winter, a time when motivation to leave the house plummets with the temperatures, and staying in to eat pasta and binge watch TV shows rises, particularly if you have a good snuggle buddy.
But for many Hudson Valley singles, the culture of dating and the uncontrollable realities of the region’s geography and population — not to mention the pandemic — make finding a partner right now especially complex.
“I work from home now and it’s not like I’m going out all the time to see people,” said Sam M., a 24-year-old software developer from Poughkeepsie. “With the pandemic, it’s not really a natural environment to just meet people. I mean, everyone is masked up, it’s not easy to just talk to someone.”
COVID-19, as it has done with just about everything, has made the dating scene even more complicated than it already was, changing not just how and when people pursue each other, but in some cases impacting their philosophy around intimacy altogether.
Kay B., a 21-year-old student at SUNY New Paltz, said the pandemic made her realize just how important meaningful relationships are. It hit her hard during the first year of the pandemic, when she was forced to move home and isolate with her parents in the Bronx, and she didn’t have a partner to share the life-changing experience with.
“I remember feeling like the world was ending, that nothing I had expected in life was going to happen. I’m not going to travel. I’m not going to be meeting people in classes. And I think a lot of people … realized that we needed something,” she said. “I realized that I wasn’t having deeply intimate relationships with people, I was just having fun. But I also realized that I did want something more substantial.”
Pandemic solitude hit a lot of people. Statistics from one of the most popular dating apps, Tinder, often used among singles in tandem with apps like Hinge and Bumble, found that 60 percent of users surveyed started swiping because they felt lonely during the first year of COVID-19. Once connections were made, conversations then lasted 32 percent longer.
Dating may be difficult for many people right now, but the Hudson Valley poses its own unique challenges.
Meeting new people: spread-out towns and a shrinking dating pool
For Sean Haber, 29, from Kingston, dating feels like a reversion to high school. “It’s kind of like being at a school dance,” he said. “You’re the single one in the corner watching all these couples together on the dance floor, and you look over at the punch bowl to see who’s left.”
And the older he gets, the more that sidelined crowd shrinks. He’s gotten to the point where he’s hesitant to even approach women, he said, because if they’re cute, interesting and around his age, he reasons it’s likely they’re already seeing someone.
For young adults in their 20s and 30s, this game of musical chairs becomes even more daunting as the region ages.
According to a report issued by the nonprofit research agency Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, as of 2017 the population of 20- to 39-year-olds has dropped in every Hudson Valley county by at least 4.8 percent.
And the median age of residents in four Hudson Valley counties — Ulster, Putnam, Dutchess, Greene and Columbia — are all between 42 and 47, at least five years older than the median age of Manhattan residents, according to 2018 census data, suggesting that there are fewer young adults in the region than downstate.
Dating in the Hudson Valley is challenging in part because the dating pool appears to be shrinking. The number of 20- to 30-year-olds in the region decreased by at least 4.8 percent between 2000 and 2017.
Adam Kuylenstierna / EyeEm/Getty Images/EyeEmThat means, to find new romantic prospects, singles often have to expand their search — which can be hard given the size of, and distance between, communities.
Michael S. lives in Kerhonkson, a “one street, two gas station” hamlet with a population of just over 2,000 people. For the 35-year-old, dating in his town isn’t an option — he’s not attracted to the few single locals that he’s met, and the newcomers moving in tend to be coupled up folks from New York City, he said.
Location is one of the key factors that’s limiting his ability to date.
“People are far away. I’m getting older and it’s cold out. When I get home, I’m basically done for the day.” he said, noting that he works up to 50 hours a week at a lumber company nearby. “My dating life is essentially non-existent at this point. I meet up with a few people here and there, but it doesn’t usually go past that.”
Distance has always been a key issue in Sam’s dating life, too. In spring 2021, he graduated from SUNY New Paltz, where he was a commuter from Poughkeepsie. Though he dabbled in the college dating pool, the trek was a deterrent from actively pursuing women — it had to be worth it if he was going to stay on campus late, cutting into his study time, just to drive back home in the dark for 30 minutes.
Now, in his first year post-graduation, he’s currently trying to navigate what dating even looks likes outside of the student world in New Paltz, where many of his connections remain.
“I think for younger people, it’s so much easier if you’re a 5-minute walk away from each other, which is why so many people move to [New York] City. Otherwise, you really have to plan it out just to hang out,” he said. “Even now, if I was to meet a new person, and they said ‘Hey, do you want to drive 45 minutes to come hang out,’ which is easily the case, I’d probably say no. It’s dark, I’m not going to drink and drive, I’m not into it.”
But even as a student, Kay avowed, it’s hard to meet new people. There are fewer social opportunities out there, and she now feels a hesitancy to even ask someone out for a coffee because she doesn’t know how they’re feeling about the pandemic.
“It’s definitely harder,” she said. “Now the only people I’m really exposed to are from just going to class, and I’m not even seeing their faces. I didn’t realize how intimate life was until we were told to stand six feet apart and put masks on our faces.”
Rejecting hookup culture and changing expectations
“I’m looking for that rom-com type of love” — that’s Sean’s dating app bio.
It’s his way of setting himself apart from the countless swipers that are just looking for a fling or a hookup, trying to subtly send the message that he’s funny and romantic, hoping women understand he’s not playing “the game” of hookup culture.
“It’s like playing Monopoly until 4 a.m., it’s exhausting. I think as a whole, we need to agree to end the game.”
Is “the game” — ambiguous connections versus relationships — on its way out? Kay would like to think so.
“We had all kind of gotten used to this hookup culture … where you’re seeing someone, but there’s so much ambiguity surrounding that relationship,” she said. “I think people are getting really tired of the ambiguity, having feelings for someone and not knowing where that situation is going.”
Time in pandemic-induced isolation — where dating felt wrong so she used the phase to focus on herself — made Kay reimagine what romance means.
“I think over the past couple of years, we’ve all collectively decided to renegotiate and rethink our priorities in love and with relationships, and what exactly we need and what we’re willing to put up with,” she said.
She noted that politics and belief systems have become much more important to the conversation. The once taboo subjects that took weeks to come up — politics, religion, money — are now splattered across the table immediately.
“The question that kept coming up for me is when to know when it’s worth it,” she said.
There’s also a new gravity to consider when meeting new people potentially exposes loved ones to COVID-19.
Within the last few months, Kay has deleted Tinder. It feels ingenuine, she said, and the people she finds while swiping don’t fit the “worth it” criteria for her.
Meeting people in-person, where that instantaneous natural chemistry can be revealed, is also ideal to Sean. He believes the best relationships are the ones you aren’t even looking for, but rather fall into.
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, questions about love are inevitable for many singles across the region — who, with the cumulative impact of the holidays, the winter and year three of the pandemic, are looking for love in perhaps the worst climate possible.
It may be a harder culture to navigate, but Kay believes it’s evolving.
“We’re all realizing that love matters,” she said. “It can be hard and complicated. Things have gotten really heavy in the last year. But I’m proud of all of us who are choosing themselves in love and choosing to love purely.”
Life in the Hudson Valley
February 08, 2022 at 08:33PM
https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/culture/article/Swiping-right-is-easy-Dating-right-now-is-hard-16838342.php
Swiping right is easy. Dating right now is hard. - Albany Times Union
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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