Can You Fall in Love Over the Phone?
how and why dating during coronavirus can lead to love!
I fell in love in a corona hopeless place. Cue Rhianna.
Well, it wasn’t in the time of Covid-19, but in the beginning of it, #socialdistancing was at the forefront of our relationship. We couldn’t blame it on a pandemic, but rather an ocean keeping us apart.
He lived in London and I in New York.
While we’re no longer together, I’ve reflected a lot this past week and have realized that the way we fell in love is the EXACT way most new couples can fall in love this Spring - over our phones!
I’m hoping this story will encourage you to have more faith that dating, and falling in love, can still happen when you’re physically apart from one another.
It really is possible…
How we “met”
It started with a beautiful drunken happy hour at Soho Farmhouse.
I was with a dear friend outside of London and we had just purchased a bottle of rosé, poolside.
We were talking about my single status, as it often came up, and he suddenly had a brilliant idea.
“I have a friend that’s totally your type: tall, blonde, European. Let’s FaceTime him right now!”
And so, we did.
After a few short minutes, we got off the call and moved on -- basking in wine and laughs for the rest of the night. I thought nothing of it.
Fast forward a few days, I had left the U.K. and was in Italy traveling around the Amalfi Coast with some other best friends. Talk about privilege and freedom?! I'm mildly embarrassed to even describe this.
In our current world situation, the level of my appreciation and gratefulness for that trip is immeasurable.
Traveling to gorgeous locals with friends and having zero cares in the world is probably something many of us are DREAMING about right now.
But, it’s important to remember that while the beginning of this story sounds like a fairytale, location is pretty insignificant when making a connection with someone -- including…your living room.
Exponential Exposure
One lovely evening while heading to the world’s best cooking class in Positano, I saw that my Facetime date had slipped into my DM’s!
His opening line:
“ (Mutual friend) said we should chat. So hello! How’s Italy?”
And from there, a love story spiraled out of control.
Much like a contagious virus, our interest in one another quickly grew exponentially.
One text a day, went to 2, to 4, to 8, to paragraphs, to sending videos and voicenotes.
By the end of my trip, we started sharing hourly updates and couldn’t stop our excitement.
Facetime dates
I remember feeling anxious on my flight home.
Now that I was leaving Europe, would my phone relationship end once I returned to normal life?
Around 6 pm, I landed back at JFK. I turned on my phone and lit up! There were already several texts waiting from him. Did I want to have a phone call when I walked in my house, he asked? It would be the first time I heard his voice “live”.
Nervous but excited, I called him. We chatted for 3 straight hours.
During that conversation, we shared photos of the most mundane parts of our lives (like our closets), exchanged funny stories, and told each other about our families and their idiosyncrasies - it was the best and most open phone date I had ever been on. He stayed up until 4 am (his time) talking to me.
The next night we did the same, for another 5 hours!!!
This pattern continued for a few weeks. Slowly, we moved from calls to Facetime easing into our comfort with one another. I was always shocked that there was never a day where we didn’t have hours of things to talk about!
I want to preface this by saying, that I’m much more of a texter than a phone person. I can count on one hand the people I prefer to speak to (mainly being my parents and a few close friends). This was unlike anything I’ve had in my life…or at least since the 10th grade days of gossiping on the phone after school.
Our record was 8 hours one Sunday, where we did everything from making breakfast (or his lunch), to folding laundry, organizing our houses, etc.
“We joked around that we were falling in love like the old days and how romantic it all was. ”
The beauty of a long-distance affair is that there is no “playing it cool.” Thus, you don’t have a date, wait a week to go on date number two, and then text every few days in between.
You can talk whenever you want and the speed to which your relationship progresses is not impacted by your “schedule”. I believe that’s why our love grew so fast - we didn’t have to wait to talk or “see” each other every day.
There was also more honest dialogue about our emotions off the bat. We had nothing to lose. If it didn’t work, we had less pressure by living in different countries.
(If you’re giving online dating a chance right now, there’s also nothing to lose. There’s no true obligation to see them in real life after everything is over if it’s not a good match).
making it official
Around 2-3 weeks of talking, we knew our connection was pretty serious.
He had started saying emotional things related to our future. And that he was falling for me.
I held back a lot of the “lovey” talk because I had a little more sensibility knowing that we hadn't met in person. This scenario, strangely enough, wasn’t my first “texting” relationship). Because, there was that one time where I texted a popstar.
I knew (and was scared about) the possibility of us fizzling, and told him that I’d communicate my feelings once we saw each other in person.
So, he invited me to Europe, but I politely declined.
If there’s ONE thing I can tell anyone entering a long-distance relationship, it’s:
“do not fly to him first!”
I have made this mistake so many times.
Once, with a winemaker in Napa (you’re probably drinking his stupid pinot this week), a guy in Seattle, two guys in San Diego, and a stylist in London.
I would always tell myself, “Well, why not? You only live once...and it’s just a fun trip?”
Then we’d have an extremely “romantic” weekend, and then…ta-ta! I’d be left heartbroken, and the 2-3 days of fun was not worth the 2-3 months of disappointment.
No matter how good he is at negotiating, the bougie-ness of the trip, or him logically convincing you why it’s just “easier this time” for you to travel, you will always know a guy’s true intentions for the long game if they offer to visit you first.
So, he booked his ticket to NYC.
Our first real date
A little less than a month from our first DM, I found myself standing outside of his hotel with two umbrellas.
You have to admit, meeting for the first time in the rain is pretty damn poetic.
We hugged, and he handed me a gift - a Harrods Teddy bear. We then walked side-by-side to the pizza place I had been raving about for weeks.
“He was a big foodie like me (bonus bonus bonus points!)”
He came back to my place and we talked for a few more hours until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer - our usual. We parted ways with our first kiss in my doorway.
The rest of the weekend flew by.
Because we had so many Facetime/serious chats prior to meeting, our connection in person felt so much deeper from the get go (bonus points that you’ll also share with your future Corona BF)! I loved this aspect of newly dating!
We explored some tourist spots. Went to a Chef’s Table restaurant having a wonderful 3 hour meal. We made dinner one night and watched a movie. We did silly and regular couple things like go to Bed Bath & Beyond and TJ Maxx. It was pretty amazing, and we laughed the entire time.
I had never, EVER, felt so comfortable with someone in my entire life.
My social anxiety immediately went away. And looking back on our entire relationship, there was never a day where I wasn’t my true and authentic self. Perhaps, because I laid out all my fears and baggage on the phone.
I started to have deep feelings for him, but instead of saying the L-word just yet, we decided to come up with a silly nickname for something we loved so much - La Croix Pamplemousses.
“So, we started saying ‘I pample you.’ ”
He was so goofy like that. When it was time for him to leave, we were both teary-eyed. Were we being crazy? How the hell would this work out?
He flew back to London on a red-eye, and the very afternoon he landed, he already looked up flights to come back.
The golden rule for long-distance
He promised that we would see each other every two weeks. And we basically did.
Hey! If Harry and Megan could fall in love long-distance, so could we! In fact, they called two-weeks their golden dating rule and insisted that for a real connection to develop, this was the minimum amount of time you could go without seeing one another.
In Corona days, we’re going to have to move this to 4-6 weeks - but you get this gist.
He came back again and met my friends - having another lovely weekend. We cried and said “I love you” for the first time upon his departure, in the same doorway.
(Speaking of which, I should sage that sh*t).
I then went to visit him in Europe for 10 days...vacationing in France and London. I met his friends and family, including his parents. It was wonderful because I already knew his social circle due to our mutual friend, so it felt so natural.
And everything was pretty easy.
And AMAZING.
“He’d text when he said he would, he’d call when he said he would, and we made time to have quality talks every day. ”
There was truly a moment in time, in the early months, where I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that he wasn’t my (final) person.
We talked about our future so openly, that it was the most refreshing relationship I had in such a long time -- leaving me feeling the most secure, the most loved, maybe ever.
the beginning of the end
And then it stopped being easy.
While most fairytales have an end, I hope you don’t copy this one.
I started noticing unhealthy patterns in our communication, and other issues started creeping up like finances (international flights are costly), getting vacation time with work was challenging, and most strikingly, our daily lifestyles and choices were pretty different. I want to respect the private part of our relationship as much as possible, so without giving any more personal details, the ‘real shit’ started unraveling.
“I know what you’re thinking. No shit Sherlock. Your Facetime romance wasn’t real?!”
Because our relationship always had SO much depth and communication, I believed that we’d maturely tackle life problems as they came. But sadly, we could not.
Once real conflicts arose, we reacted in completely different ways.
I think we both started noticing our different coping mechanisms, and things shifted. I’m someone that needs to talk through a situation soon after. He is not, and thinks time settles things, or perhaps ignoring them or me does… I’m still not sure.
However, I tried to compartmentalize these worries about our relationship and kept moving forward.
There were bound to be long-distance struggles, right?!
Around 5 months in, we flew to Seattle for Thanksgiving to meet my family. It was pretty good, not amazing, but good. My family instantly fell at home with him like I did, but fights were crawling up. We spent the holidays together too, and I’d say it was the same.
Much like quarantine life, some days were good, and some were sad.
The breakup
Then in January, having enough serious talks (or lack thereof), we couldn’t move forward in our relationship and understand one another.
Our curve was completely flattened.
Facetime videos changed to calls, to texting, to a few days of not talking.. and then we both broke up with one another pretty mutually.
Corona “rekindling”
Naturally, there was some caving and texting after the breakup, which I think is normal when you’re grieving such a serious love.
It was so hard to stop talking (especially since that’s all we ever did), and neither of us were very good at it.
I’ve wondered over the past few months, if we had been in the same city, would physical connection have helped cure our fights?
“You know...when you have an argument but one good hug, or one funny thing in person, can make all the anger go away? ”
Or were we always broken, and we just didn’t know it because, living oceans apart, slowed down time for us to realize it?
It probably would have helped ease some arguments, but I believe the issues that were apparent in our relationship would have come out eventually -- irregardless of our distance.
I’m not gonna lie, this whole coronavirus has stirred up feelings of missing our communication and the good parts of our relationship more than anything.
We “rekindled” over text recently, but the very issues that were present upon our breakup came up again within a few days.
Which in a way, is one of the best forms of closure you can possibly get.
In a major world-crises and global pandemic, if you still can’t choose love or find understanding over everything else, then it’s not meant to be.
so, start texting!
The moral of this story is not about my whirlwind romance or breakup though.
It’s about realizing that there’s a possibility of finding a f*cking significant love of your life while being forced to “socially distance.”
Because you just read a story about it.
A person that I spent 4 weeks talking to before meeting, ended being one of my greatest romantic endeavors.
It didn’t have a happy ending, but (social) distance wasn’t the greatest downfall of our relationship. Ultimately, we were a mismatch on our personal dealbreakers that were brought to light over a 6 month period (hopefully much longer than this covid chaos will entail).
Thus, better communication would have been the only thing that healed us, not proximity.
And if you’re still thinking it’s depressing or weird to date right now, I get it. I hate an awkward video chat with a stranger, I feel you! But maybe both of you will be more vulnerable with your emotions with this crises and have a “real chat” from the start.
In a time like the present, I'm encouraging you to give love a chance — you never know how worthwhile it might be.
A true connection can happen oceans apart, or even streets apart, starting from your phone.
And if I could do it all over again I WOULD, and immediately answer that DM.
(open your Hinge).
P.S. check out my blog post on “Dating App 101”. In 10 mini-chapters: I’ll tell you how you should craft your profile, which two apps are my favorite, real-life funny stories, and my least favorite opening line.