https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...e4ddda-ebd2-11eb-97a0-a09d10181e36_story.html
(Lorraine Sorlet/for The Washington Post)
By Leslie Gray Streeter
Yesterday at 9:00 a.m. EDT
It seemed like a match … until it absolutely wasn’t. Recently, I’d stumbled across a dating-app unicorn: an effortlessly flirty chat with a man of an appropriate age that went beyond “Well, hello, Queen!” or “Yes, that is my dog in my profile.” We’d both recently moved from Florida to Baltimore. He, or at least whoever was in his photos, wore a jaunty hat and bore a striking resemblance to Wanya Morris of legendary R&B group Boyz II Men. Within a few minutes, we were trading snippets of ourselves singing ’90s ballads.
“Would you like to take the singing offline, over coffee?” I asked.
“I’d love to,” Not-Wanya wrote, “but I have to tell you that I’m not vaccinated.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, and wish you well on your search,” I wrote back as I got up to make my own coffee.
Sure, he was cute. But nobody’s cute enough for the risk of potential infection. I’m a single widowed parent with a 7-year-old too young for the coronavirus vaccines, and I co-parent with my 70-something mother. For me and others, a match’s vaccination status has become as important as age, location and whether their profile has spelling errors. Maybe more.
“A lot of people are not comfortable dating somebody who has not been vaccinated,” says Ali Jackson, 34, a New York-based dating podcaster and coach, who calls her company Finding Mr. Height, a joking reference to her own 6-foot stature. “Dating can be back to normal because of the vaccines. … But you have to make sure the person is on the same page as you.”
Several dating apps, including Bumble, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Hinge and BLK, are offering vaccination-related badges, designations and measurements of their customers’ comfort levels. And daters are finding clever ways to put this health concern front and center in their profiles (the “Game of Thrones”-esque “House Pfizer” is my favorite), while others just straight-up write, “VACCINATED PEOPLE ONLY.”
An image from Brady Francisco-Fitzmaurice’s profile on Hinge. (Brady Francisco-Fitzmaurice)
“I’m not saying it’s a dealbreaker, but it’s pretty close,” says Brady Francisco-Fitzmaurice, 37, a lawyer who lives in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood. “My friend group is all vaccinated, and they feel pretty strongly about dating someone who is vaccinated, too.”
Maddie Wolf, a 24-year-old graphic designer in Baltimore, had deleted her dating profiles before getting her covid shots, because even with socially distanced picnic dates, it was hard “not being able to [test] physical chemistry.” But since being fully vaccinated in April, the end of “the most depressing long winter ever,” she’s back on the apps and meeting women in person. Though vaccination is important to her, she’s waited until the actual date to ask, “ ‘Hey, are you vaccinated?’ ” “So far, I have not met anyone who is not,” she says.
This brings us to a weird new wrinkle of post-vaccination dating: You want to ask, but when? “You’re not entitled to somebody’s entire medical history when you don’t know them,” Jackson acknowledges. “These are conversations we wouldn’t have had before. You don’t ask a guy on your first date if he’s been vaccinated for STDs. But the timeline is now different. It feels potentially a little more invasive, and awkward, but it has to happen at a different time.”
Baker Beers, a 30-year-old lawyer who lives in Houston, had been psyched about the prospect of in-person dating after getting vaccinated in January. “I was like, ‘Who’s taking me to dinner?’ ” he says. However, he’s found at least one thing to miss about being online: “the opportunity to take a beat” and ask about a date’s vaccination status. “Online, you’re infinitely more likely to ask. Meeting a guy in person, I don’t think I’m bold enough to say, ‘Before I shove my tongue down your throat, or vice versa, are you vaccinated?’ ”
Weird post-vaccination wrinkle No. 2: Even if the answer is “yes,” can you believe it? Or are you going to show your card to everyone you meet? Francisco-Fitzmaurice has taken people at their word. “One woman said, ‘I’m happy to show you my card,’ but I told her it wasn’t necessary,” he recalls.
Beers notes that “there’s a much larger element of trust.” He compares it to his mind-set going into a bar right now: He hopes everyone is fully vaccinated — and not simply skipping the mask because no one will know the difference.
Everyone I interviewed says they want to date their fellow vaccinated folks not only because of safety, but because it’s a potential indication of their value system. “There are some medical preclusions, but in the age we are living in, unfortunately it’s a political statement to say, ‘I believe in science.’ So having been vaccinated means that you do,” says Jackson.
Being vaccinated “feels like a pretty important thing to do” for Susie Reed-McCullough of Greenbelt, Md., a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. But for the 33-year-old, who like me is the widowed mom of kids too young for vaccination, it’s more than that. “If someone is not willing to do that, I guess it would bring into question whether this is someone I would have long-term compatibility with,” she says.
Karla McCullum, a 39-year-old life coach from Baltimore, matched with so many anti-vaccination men that it ran her off the apps completely. “A lot of them felt like it was a government conspiracy against us. It was crazy,” she says. “I’ve been vaccinated. If they’re a healthy person who can get it, I want them to be too. But I got so much ‘I just don’t believe in it.’ ”
The vaccines are good news, but the worrying uptick in infections and variants make it clear that we’ll be dating through a pandemic for the foreseeable future. McCullum is hoping that with time and more research into the vaccines, “more people will feel a little more comfortable getting them.” She adds: “I might come back [to dating apps] then. I can wait a little longer.”
I agree. I’d lived in pre-vaccine limbo for a year and a half, so I don’t mind politely turning down otherwise excellent guys, no matter how well they sing. But I did tell Not-Wanya to look me up if he ever got the shot, just in case.
(Lorraine Sorlet/for The Washington Post)
By Leslie Gray Streeter
Yesterday at 9:00 a.m. EDT
It seemed like a match … until it absolutely wasn’t. Recently, I’d stumbled across a dating-app unicorn: an effortlessly flirty chat with a man of an appropriate age that went beyond “Well, hello, Queen!” or “Yes, that is my dog in my profile.” We’d both recently moved from Florida to Baltimore. He, or at least whoever was in his photos, wore a jaunty hat and bore a striking resemblance to Wanya Morris of legendary R&B group Boyz II Men. Within a few minutes, we were trading snippets of ourselves singing ’90s ballads.
“Would you like to take the singing offline, over coffee?” I asked.
“I’d love to,” Not-Wanya wrote, “but I have to tell you that I’m not vaccinated.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, and wish you well on your search,” I wrote back as I got up to make my own coffee.
Sure, he was cute. But nobody’s cute enough for the risk of potential infection. I’m a single widowed parent with a 7-year-old too young for the coronavirus vaccines, and I co-parent with my 70-something mother. For me and others, a match’s vaccination status has become as important as age, location and whether their profile has spelling errors. Maybe more.
“A lot of people are not comfortable dating somebody who has not been vaccinated,” says Ali Jackson, 34, a New York-based dating podcaster and coach, who calls her company Finding Mr. Height, a joking reference to her own 6-foot stature. “Dating can be back to normal because of the vaccines. … But you have to make sure the person is on the same page as you.”
Several dating apps, including Bumble, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Hinge and BLK, are offering vaccination-related badges, designations and measurements of their customers’ comfort levels. And daters are finding clever ways to put this health concern front and center in their profiles (the “Game of Thrones”-esque “House Pfizer” is my favorite), while others just straight-up write, “VACCINATED PEOPLE ONLY.”
An image from Brady Francisco-Fitzmaurice’s profile on Hinge. (Brady Francisco-Fitzmaurice)
“I’m not saying it’s a dealbreaker, but it’s pretty close,” says Brady Francisco-Fitzmaurice, 37, a lawyer who lives in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood. “My friend group is all vaccinated, and they feel pretty strongly about dating someone who is vaccinated, too.”
Maddie Wolf, a 24-year-old graphic designer in Baltimore, had deleted her dating profiles before getting her covid shots, because even with socially distanced picnic dates, it was hard “not being able to [test] physical chemistry.” But since being fully vaccinated in April, the end of “the most depressing long winter ever,” she’s back on the apps and meeting women in person. Though vaccination is important to her, she’s waited until the actual date to ask, “ ‘Hey, are you vaccinated?’ ” “So far, I have not met anyone who is not,” she says.
This brings us to a weird new wrinkle of post-vaccination dating: You want to ask, but when? “You’re not entitled to somebody’s entire medical history when you don’t know them,” Jackson acknowledges. “These are conversations we wouldn’t have had before. You don’t ask a guy on your first date if he’s been vaccinated for STDs. But the timeline is now different. It feels potentially a little more invasive, and awkward, but it has to happen at a different time.”
Baker Beers, a 30-year-old lawyer who lives in Houston, had been psyched about the prospect of in-person dating after getting vaccinated in January. “I was like, ‘Who’s taking me to dinner?’ ” he says. However, he’s found at least one thing to miss about being online: “the opportunity to take a beat” and ask about a date’s vaccination status. “Online, you’re infinitely more likely to ask. Meeting a guy in person, I don’t think I’m bold enough to say, ‘Before I shove my tongue down your throat, or vice versa, are you vaccinated?’ ”
Weird post-vaccination wrinkle No. 2: Even if the answer is “yes,” can you believe it? Or are you going to show your card to everyone you meet? Francisco-Fitzmaurice has taken people at their word. “One woman said, ‘I’m happy to show you my card,’ but I told her it wasn’t necessary,” he recalls.
Beers notes that “there’s a much larger element of trust.” He compares it to his mind-set going into a bar right now: He hopes everyone is fully vaccinated — and not simply skipping the mask because no one will know the difference.
Everyone I interviewed says they want to date their fellow vaccinated folks not only because of safety, but because it’s a potential indication of their value system. “There are some medical preclusions, but in the age we are living in, unfortunately it’s a political statement to say, ‘I believe in science.’ So having been vaccinated means that you do,” says Jackson.
Being vaccinated “feels like a pretty important thing to do” for Susie Reed-McCullough of Greenbelt, Md., a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. But for the 33-year-old, who like me is the widowed mom of kids too young for vaccination, it’s more than that. “If someone is not willing to do that, I guess it would bring into question whether this is someone I would have long-term compatibility with,” she says.
Karla McCullum, a 39-year-old life coach from Baltimore, matched with so many anti-vaccination men that it ran her off the apps completely. “A lot of them felt like it was a government conspiracy against us. It was crazy,” she says. “I’ve been vaccinated. If they’re a healthy person who can get it, I want them to be too. But I got so much ‘I just don’t believe in it.’ ”
The vaccines are good news, but the worrying uptick in infections and variants make it clear that we’ll be dating through a pandemic for the foreseeable future. McCullum is hoping that with time and more research into the vaccines, “more people will feel a little more comfortable getting them.” She adds: “I might come back [to dating apps] then. I can wait a little longer.”
I agree. I’d lived in pre-vaccine limbo for a year and a half, so I don’t mind politely turning down otherwise excellent guys, no matter how well they sing. But I did tell Not-Wanya to look me up if he ever got the shot, just in case.
