Jessica Parilo never thought she’d meet “the one” on Tinder, nor did she ever want to or be hopeful that a Tinder relationship could turn into something meaningful. But when Jessica, a third-year science student at Western University, swiped right on Matt Klein’s profile, her world changed; her love life grew alongside her fondness for her online connection with @MattKlein.
When the high tides of quarantine’s quiet time hit and imposed excess time for rest and respite, Parilo turned to Tinder to add some seductive spice to her, at the time, bland and deeply uninhabited love life. “It was all for fun,” she says. “I didn’t go into it with high expectations for finding success, nor did I have genuine intentions to enter into a serious relationship.”
She describes having joined the dating app out of boredom and to satisfy a tempestuous crave for human connection, attention and sociability amidst the most stagnant and uncertain of worldly times: “I mean, what else was I to do to pass time? I mainly just wanted to have fun conversations,” Parilo says in response to questions about her motivation to join Tinder.
After matching with Klein on May 5th, 2020, Parilo’s mindset changed. She describes being more open to the idea that those movie-like online love affairs could work: “His handsome profile picture struck my attention at first, but I quickly fell in love with his personality and, frankly, our mutual desire to have deep conversations in the strangest, most unprecedented state of the world,” she says. He was one intuition-led Tinder swipe of hers that actually lasted.
They say that if you want something badly it comes when you least expect it — and for Parilo, love was just that. Her love for Klein grew out of a passionate longing for meaningful communication: “It was like my own self-led personal project about learning how to be intimate from afar and about exploring the parameters of sex, desire and connection online,” she says. Out of this project she “found not only a boyfriend, but also a changed perspective on dating apps.”
However, it seems that Parilo wasn’t the only one who found success on a dating app during the pandemic. Findings from a recent Tinder study published on Vox in February of 2021 found an overall increase in the success rate of online dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Bumble during quarantine. The study, conducted on 5,000 Tinder users, found that conversations on Tinder lengthened by 32% and matches increased by 42% compared to before the pandemic.
Randall Jones is a master’s student studying Relationship Psychology at University of Victoria. When asked for his perspective on online dating efficacy during the pandemic, Jones references his own research on online dating psychology, suggesting that it can be opportunistic if approached meaningfully: “If people join dating apps with intentions to simply hook up, it wouldn’t be surprising that conversation length and quality would be null and void,” Jones says. “Seeing these statistical increases from Tinder’s research shows an obvious incline in the use intentions and behaviours of Tinder users during quarantine.”
While traditional intimacy narratives may follow differently in the absence of physical touch, cybersex, sexting and digital intimacy have become an integral part of the evolving digital love industry propelled by pandemic stay-at-home orders. Parilo says her biggest challenge on Tinder was finding creative ways to be intimate and communicate in healthy ways online: “Learning the whole cybersex thing is like learning a new language. It's awkward and scary to be “scandalous” and put sexy vocabulary in writing instead of saying it in person,” Parilo explains.
Jones comments on this, saying that “although maintaining close ties and nurturing healthy relationships with friends and family from a distance was challenging for most people, it was especially hard for those looking to pursue intimate connections and navigate the dating landscape during quarantine.”
When asked to elaborate on his research, Jones says that during the pandemic “dating platforms saw an interesting shift in applicant demographics, use intentions and behaviours; specifically, an increased willingness to have deeper conversations about topics other than physicality and sexual desirability.” Parilo also noticed this play out in her experience on Tinder during the pandemic: “There were actually some quality men at the time who brought decent potential to the online dating game,” she says.
In an interview, Parilo reflects on her experience feeling unseen and lonely hiding behind a mask and being restricted to familial interaction during quarantine. Parilo feels that dating apps compensated for this lack: “Talking to Matt on Tinder made me feel prized and noticed,” she says. Jones comments on the importance of this kind of recognition in intimacy: “Although healthy narcissistic supplies couldn’t be exercised physically during quarantine, there was an increase in virtual variations,” Jones says. “This likely helped the success rate of online dating.”
Parilo says that the most challenging aspect of being intimate online was navigating sexual exploration: “It was hard to be vulnerable and ‘perform,’ both intimately and sensually, in ways that are scary and uncomfortable enough to do in person,” she says. “Sexting, flirting and facetiming were great, but without being together in person it was hard to be and feel sexy.”
Jones says that feeling attractive, lusted and desired online can be especially hard in the digital dating world. He addresses the common social misconception that intimacy pertains to physical or sexual desire: “Intimacy is not just about the physical. Sex is one part of the picture, yes, but intimacy is deeply complex, emotional and multi-layered,” Jones says.
The stress of keeping intact elements of surprise, mystery and seductive lust held many, including Parilo, back from building strong foundations for intimacy. Having to think about meeting a partner’s desires and being “sexy” comes with other anxieties: “I sometimes worried about my privacy online. I also felt more vulnerable and inclined to embarrassment having a screen in between and the internet involved,” she says. “I often felt an underlying obligation to choose between compromising my sexiness and effort to feel desired by my partner and the privacy of my intimate communications.”
Though establishing a healthy communication and intimacy routine online was a challenging adjustment for Parilo and Klein, the couple grew and learned from the experience. “Having had to resist desires and temptations for physical togetherness so early on in our relationship made our connection stronger, in my opinion,” Parilo explains. “We communicated through all the emotions and that’s made me feel more connected to Matt.”
With stay-at-home orders lifted many are finding it hard to transition their virtual relationships into in-person ones. Rhonda Balzarini, a Social Psychologist and Professor at Texas State University, told BBC in an April 2021 interview that at the start of quarantine, “desire surged as a constructive psychological response to pandemic-induced stress.” Looking ahead, “when the “honeymoon” period wears off, relationship take a hard hit,” Balzarini explains.
Jones suggests that laxing quarantine restrictions and the partial resumption of social life has shifted standards of intimacy and performance expectations. Jones describes an observed similarity in pandemic-initiated relationships when translated to in-person: “Couples are now beginning to notice things about each other they had not had the capacity or chance to while cooped up inside and with things being strictly virtual,” he says.
Parilo attests to this, saying that in the past few months she has learned new things about Klein that she wouldn’t have otherwise noticed: “I realized that he was SO much more of a social butterfly than he came across as online,” she says. “It made me feel a bit insecure at first because it was a lot to take in seeing how many people (including girls) he knew and was comfortable being around in social settings.”
Togetherness is not too much to ask for, even without the pandemic. Being in the presence of others is a basic human and social need that, as Jones says, “doesn’t have to be physical to be fulfilling.” This desire for friendly conversation played a part in Parilo and Klein’s Tinder success. “He turned into a good friend and then into my boyfriend – and being in person has complimented the already great connection we built together in quarantine,” Parilo says.
While the pandemic tested the capacity of intimacy and the strength of relationship communication, for Parilo and Klein it only deepened their investment in each other and in finding creative ways to desire one another.
Having met on Tinder allowed Parilo and Klein the chance to anticipate their desire for one another upon resumption of ‘normal’ life. Now that they can be together in person, they are learning more about each other as people, as friends and as lovers. “Every time I learn something new about him, I fall more deeply in love -- even if it’s something that makes me uncomfortable at first,” Parilo says. “Using healthy communication, Matt and I have been able to rework these beautiful new understandings of one another into our relationship’s new normal.”