How to Find Love in the Time of COVID-19

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1. Try a few online dating sites. When you find one for people over 50, go ahead and subscribe, you know, just for fun. This is new for you because you were married when online dating first became popular.

2. Immediately get freaked out by the wretched weirdness of judging potential partners by three blurry photos and answers to stupid questions like “How patient do you consider yourself?” — realize they’re all judging you the same way and disable your profile.

3. Reach out to one of your exes because you figure he’s safe, living two states away, and you might enjoy a little socially distant sexting or Skype sex.

4. When Mr. Two States Away doesn’t respond, embrace the shame spiral of having ceded the upper hand you had at the breakup over a year ago and decide you’ll never date again.

5. Shake yourself out of that shame spiral by remembering what a jerk that guy was and how you were the one who ended things, so you certainly don’t want to go back down that road again, and decide there might still be someone out there for you.

6. Embark on a physical fitness regimen to get yourself into naked-in-front-of-strangers shape by the time this whole quarantine is over.

7. Abandon said physical fitness regimen when you discover that The Tiger King, frozen pizza and $4 wine are a purr-fect pairing.

8.Take yourself for long solitary walks during which you compose the most compelling freelance writing cover letters imaginable — then realize you have nothing to write them on, so when you get back to your computer you end up sending identical letters to six different posts, accepting that you’ll never hear from any of them.

9. Explore all the features and settings on the two vibrators you bought years ago until you begin to wonder why you thought you ever wanted a human lover in the first place.

10. Adopt a cat.

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