After an entire year off from dating, I am lying in the bed of a man I met on Bumble, remembering all the things I had forgotten about intimacy. Through my hangover I realise just how utterly lovely it is to be touched by someone else, especially after being pandemic-single and not knowing when that would ever happen again.

I had a horrible break up two weeks into the first lockdown, followed by a bleakly brief attempt at getting back into the dating game last summer, and have been accidentally celibate for a year — the first time this has happened since I was 16. Feeling stronger and happier, I have decided it’s the right time to start dating again.

Admittedly, it hasn’t been smooth. With the Bumble man, my overriding feeling was relief that I remembered how to have sex. But did he really say “good girl” halfway through? That felt particularly jarring coming from a man who works as a teacher. Is this the guy who I thought he’d be when I met him online?

Having only started meeting people again three weeks ago — but now having five dating apps on my phone — I wasn’t sure anyone would be exactly who they claimed to be. But hey, he said he was, and you have to start somewhere, didn’t you? In my new dating column, all these seminal issues will be discussed as I try to work out life after love, but also after a pandemic.

During a lonely lockdown summer last year, I downloaded Hinge and lasted three months before I swore off the apps indefinitely. Not only were the micro-rejections of mediocre men I didn’t fancy in the first place hideously depressing, I quickly sensed how easy it is for people to hide who they really are online. Profiles were so heavily curated to be a certain way that they were almost irrelevant. It made me appreciate how important it is to gauge things like atmosphere and body language when you first meet someone.

One man drunk straight vodka all night and told me his cousin was the most wanted man in Europe

This became clear when I met a guy who described himself online as an entrepreneur but in reality, sold garden furniture for his dad. So far, so harmless but when the subject of violence against women came up, he mock punched me in the face, twice, until I left. He was grim — not least because he looked like Ed …….

Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/dating-app-marriages-divorce-more-likely-lucy-holden-b964545.html