How Matt Hancock helped my dating life... lockdown has finally made singletons commit

I made a new year’s resolution for 2020, to never use a dating app again. “It’s all about the chemistry”, I told my friends wisely, as I flicked Bumble off my screen, “and you only get that in real life.” Two months later, rather awkwardly, a global pandemic happened. I locked down with my parents and once it became clear my dad was the only man I’d see outside of my Zoom room, I reluctantly re-downloaded Hinge. And, to my surprise, I got a message from someone which made me laugh.

We had a video call, and then a coy, arms-length picnic on Hampstead Heath, counting on the fumes of my 70 per cent alcohol mini-Carex to lubricate the conversation. We kept talking all week, and the rest, as they say, is history. Within a fortnight he proposed (that I be in his bubble, slow down) — and we spent the rest of the summer dating. It’s longer than any romance I’ve had.

Which has made me think. Everyone talks about how Covid will lop a year off the precious time us singletons have to couple up — but I suspect it’s done the reverse. I’d never have met my guy outside of a pandemic — for one thing, I wouldn’t have been forced to use a dating app, and would have continued to base my dating life on the Russian roulette of whichever bloke had drunkenly staggered up to me in a bar. We’d have never crossed paths. Data suggests dating apps are good for society because they allow us to traverse class and race boundaries which we wouldn’t manage to do in everyday life.

I can’t lay claim to quite such a socioeconomic feat — but I am certain our groups wouldn’t mix in real life (my friends debate how they’d like their eggs over a Clapham brunch, his how best to ingest powdered substances in Hoxton).

Before Covid, we never invested in one person — the instant we spotted a flaw, we knew there were plenty more fish because we could, easy-peasy, enlarge the pond by upping our radius on Tinder. Mambo No 5 was the scent of our times — why bother cooking Monica breakfast when you have an appointment with Erica (and Rita) tonight?

Lockdown changed things because Hancock and Harries, ever the stern parents, told us we had to choose whether we were in or out — “test the strength” of our relationships and stop messing each other around. As a result one friend, who had always gone for hedge-fund-Harry types (and been heartbroken as a result), landed her first boyfriend in years — because she was forced to bear it out with a guy who didn’t just want to speak to her nether regions. And she gave it time — weeks of conversations — because there was no one new and shiny to be distracted by, so she could see past the initial lack of lust, and fall in love.

“Good at banana bread” is the new good in bed.

This August, London saw a gold rush as FTSE investors reacted to fears of a second wave by investing in the trustiest metal they knew. The gold rush that coincided in the dating world was not so dissimilar — a load of guys who my friends and I had given up for dead messaged us on WhatsApp, out of the blue. As one male friend puts it, “you realise how precious relationships are when you’re alone”.

Covid has taken us back to times of less choice — when there were only a couple of eligible fellas in the village, and you had to court for weeks before sleeping together. But the divorce rate was a fair bit lower back then — so I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing. Bring on Lockdown 2.0.