If it weren’t for COVID, Rachel’s boyfriend of nine months probably wouldn’t have been able to hide that he was in a secret, five-year relationship with a woman who lived just three Metro stops from her.

In fact, if it weren’t for COVID, Rachel might not have gotten back on Bumble and agreed to that beer garden date in the first place.

“Within a month, we were seeing each other once or twice a week,” says the D.C. resident, who preferred to go only by her first name to protect her and others’ privacy. “It just seemed like a normal relationship, completely.”

Until, of course, it didn’t.

Rachel is among the legions of locals who tried (and failed, and tried again) to navigate D.C.’s dating scene during a pandemic — one that seemed to evolve with each new phase of the virus.

In the first weeks of March 2020, some residents, lonely and seeking familiarity, reverted to texting their exes. As 2020 wore on, Zoom screens and public parks replaced bars and restaurants as first-date locales. In 2021, vaccines became the status symbol du jour of dating apps as residents looked hopefully toward a “Hot Vax Summer,” before the delta variant dampened the vibe.

As the logistics of dating changed, so did dating philosophies — and in the case of some locals who spoke with DCist/WAMU, only after some pretty shocking experiences. With the third year of the pandemic on the horizon, many who tried to make connections during COVID say their lessons in love have helped them grow, albeit in hard or wholly unexpected ways. Burned too many times, or just tired of the never-ending series of first dates that go nowhere, they’ve realized life is too short to spend it senselessly swiping.

After getting out of a relationship in April 2020, Rachel tried her hand at virtual dating without much luck. She says meeting strangers over Zoom made her cry and feel like she was in “an interview for a job [she] didn’t even want.” It wasn’t until February 2021, after a long hiatus from the dating apps, that she agreed to meet “the perpetrator of the past nine months,” (as she calls him now) for drinks.

The two hit it off. Over the next nine months, they talked nearly every day. They went on a weekend trip together to the mountains in North Carolina, he hung out with her friends, he even met her family.

“We talked about having a future together, he told me we were on the same page,” Rachel says. “He wanted to be with me, he wanted me to feel like a priority.”

It all fell apart around Halloween of 2021, when a web of chance encounters between mutual acquaintances — that sprung from a kid’s birthday party, of all places — revealed the truth. Rachel had always known about the other woman, they even had a mutual friend, but she thought they broke up over a year ago. When the mutual friend put the two in touch with each other, Rachel pulled up the receipts (an email confirmation of an AirBnB booking with the shared boyfriend). Separately, each woman dumped him.

True to character, he tried to lie his way out of it, Rachel says. But eventually, he admitted the truth.

“She thought they were moving in together in December. They talked about getting a dog. I mean, like, they’ve been together for over five years,” Rachel says. “She had no idea.”

According to Rachel, COVID was “the only way he could’ve kept this up.” When they met, vaccines weren’t widely available and the couple stayed in a lot, ordering takeout and hanging out at home. Later in the relationship, he avoided bringing her to family gatherings, purportedly because he had young, unvaccinated nieces and nephews. In Rachel’s words, “he had a perfect excuse.”

Since the breakup, Rachel and the second (technically first?) girlfriend have become friends, relying on one another for healing. Rachel says she always had questions about the supposed “ex,” but never prodded further to avoid seeming like “the crazy girlfriend.” Second-guesses and self-doubt, Rachel says, are things she’s left in 2021.

“I think a lot of women are raised this way, to be a people pleaser, to go with the flow, and that’s something that I don’t want to continue in 2022,” she says. “If something bothers me, I’m bringing it up… I’m standing up for myself and doing my best to protect myself.”

D.C. resident Michael S.’s COVID-era dating reckoning came in a different, albeit similarly dramatic, fashion. (Michael preferred to not give his last name to speak openly about his dating life.) In the summer of 2021, he started seeing a guy he’d met online. He says the guy delayed meeting in person, always coming up with an excuse. But for “some weird reason,” Michael persevered and finally, after five weeks of virtual back-and-forth, they met up.

Things progressed quickly from there— maybe a bit too quickly, Michael notes looking back. Within just a month of meeting IRL, the man was spending upwards of four nights a week at Michael’s place. Michael says he was sick a lot, which at the time pulled out his nurturing side but in hindsight made him feel manipulated.

When he told Michael that he loved him within two months of meeting, the interaction set off alarm bells.

“I was like, ‘this is way too early,’ and when I didn’t say it back he got really mad,” Michael says, adding that the guy got up and left. “This was my naiveté talking but it seemed like a red flag, definitely an orange flag.”

Michael says their communication after that interaction was confusing: the guy would tell Michael it was over, only to text a few hours later and ask to get back together. Ultimately, during a phone call last October, the pair decided to stop seeing each other. Michael says the man told him he planned to move to California for a job at the start of the new year. They never spoke again.

After a few therapy sessions spent trying to untangle his feelings about this short-lived but intense relationship, Michael did what a lot of people do — he googled his ex. But instead of a LinkedIn job update or a new Facebook profile picture, he found his ex’s obituary, dated just weeks after their last phone call.

“It was just so jarring,” Michael says. “I think especially in COVID, whoever you meet kind of intimately, I don’t know, the feelings just feel stronger.”

The news put things into perspective for Michael. He says that now he approaches his dates with an openness and intentionality about what he’s looking for because, “life is short.”

“This year I really want to be more diligent about finding a partnership, because you don’t know when life will just change,” he says.

Not everyone’s dating lessons were so dramatic— or traumatic.

Nicole LaFragola says her pre-pandemic romantic history looked like a lot of people’s: ghosting, casual flings, and first dates that never led to seconds. But with the onset of COVID, she wanted to be more mindful.

“I spent a good deal of time talking to individuals for much longer periods of time before I decided to actually meet them in person,” she says of her dating app pen pals. And when she did meet them, “it was a lot harder than dating had ever been before. You didn’t know what to do with your hands, you didn’t know what distance [to stay at]….It was really hard to find chemistry during the complicatedness of that time.”

After months of awkward first encounters, she started talking to a “really nice guy” on Bumble in July 2020. Eventually, he asked to take her on a hike with his dog, Watson — a move that she says scored him points immediately. Even if the date went horribly, she’d at least get a good hike out of the afternoon, she thought.

They met up on the C&O Canal, and LaFragola remembers blushing non-stop. But mid-walk (in the middle of a sweltering D.C. summer), they noticed Watson limping. That’s when her date picked up his 80-pound pitbull mix, swung him over his shoulders, and carried the dog all the way back to the car.

“I’m like, ‘oh my god, I’m in love,’ or whatever that feeling was,” LaFragola says. “I just thought it was the most adorable thing anybody could ever do.”

They agreed to see each other again and a year and half later, moved in together in Bethesda. (And Watson the dog is okay — they think he was just overtired from the heat.)

“[Before COVID] I always saw dates as more of an adventure: the person could be terrible, but I’ll still maybe have a story from it,” she says. “But seeing my life kind of narrowed down a lot [during the pandemic], I tried to be much more mindful than I had before. COVID really brought home to me to spend my time with quality people.”