How COVID Changed Relationships

Summary

All Of It: How COVID Changed Relationships
Hosted by Alison Stewart, WNYC
Release Date: March 11, 2025

In this insightful episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart explores the profound impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on personal relationships. Joined by Vox senior writer Ali Volpe, who meticulously covered dating and friendship dynamics during the pandemic and is currently penning a book titled Are We Still On?, the conversation delves into how isolation, technological shifts, and accelerated timelines reshaped the way we connect with others.

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1. The Resilience and Fraying of Friendships

Ali Volpe begins by dissecting which friendships weathered the storm of the pandemic and which ones began to dissolve. She explains that relationships deeply ingrained in daily routines—such as those with family members, partners, and best friends—tended to remain strong. In contrast, peripheral friendships, like those with acquaintances from social gatherings, often faded away due to reduced interaction and differing priorities during the crisis.

Ali Volpe [02:00]: "Those relationships that were already pretty well established... tended to make it through to the other side."

2. Technology as the Lifeline for Connections

The conversation shifts to the pivotal role technology played in maintaining relationships during lockdowns. Ali reflects on the surge in using platforms like Zoom and Slack, which became indispensable tools for socializing and working remotely.

Ali Volpe [03:08]: "I don't think I had heard of Zoom prior to this day. Five years ago, people were online all day working..."

Initially, these technologies facilitated numerous virtual gatherings—from happy hours to weddings and baby showers. However, as time wore on, the constant screen time led to what became known as "Zoom fatigue," causing a decline in digital interactions.

Ali Volpe [04:33]: "Oh, this is exhausting, and maybe I don't want to do this so much anymore."

3. Listener Stories: Navigating Relationships During COVID

The episode features heartfelt stories from listeners who navigated their relationships amidst the pandemic's challenges:

• Ryan from Brooklyn shares how he and his wife, who co-owned a bar in Bushwick, sustained their relationship through professional and personal hardships brought on by lockdowns.

  Ryan [05:26]: "Our relationship has survived just in sort of determination and, like, we'll get through this."

• Greg from Mountain Lakes, New Jersey recounts meeting his wife online, quickly getting engaged, and maintaining a happy marriage while raising a young child.

  Greg [06:07]: "We hit it off really well and we got engaged and we're still married."

• Chris from Brooklyn describes the expedited commitment in his relationship with Nathan, leading to living together and celebrating anniversaries just five years later.

  Chris [06:23]: "We had to have a really kind of expedited conversation about committing to each other."

4. Accelerated Relationship Timelines

Alison and Ali discuss how the pandemic compelled many to make swift decisions regarding their relationships. The uncertainty and risks associated with COVID-19 fostered a sense of urgency to formalize commitments and strengthen bonds rapidly.

Ali Volpe [07:19]: "People were very intentional with their relationships... It definitely accelerated relationships."

5. The Evolution and Fatigue of Dating Apps

The pandemic significantly altered the landscape of dating, with apps becoming the primary means of meeting new people due to restrictions on social interactions. However, this shift also introduced a more transactional and disposable nature to relationships, leading to widespread "dating app fatigue."

Ali Volpe [09:03]: "Once the pandemic hit, like, that just became the way you met people... It became the predominant form of dating."

Therapists and dating coaches noted an increase in feelings of disposability among users, as the abundance of available matches made connections feel less meaningful.

6. Creative Technological Solutions for Maintaining Friendships

Listeners shared innovative ways they leveraged technology to sustain friendships:

• Marianne from Queens highlights the popularity of Animal Crossing and streaming services that allowed friends to interact virtually through gaming and movie nights.

  Marianne [10:39]: "Animal Crossing had just dropped... It was a really fun way for people to keep in contact."

Ali adds that beyond gaming, platforms like Zoom facilitated unconventional uses such as virtual weddings, allowing couples to celebrate love safely.

Ali Volpe [12:11]: "People were maybe doing backyard weddings and displaying the whole thing on Zoom... It was a safe and distanced way to get married."

7. Building Supportive Online Communities

Beth from Ossining shares her experience of creating a virtual support group using Zoom, connecting with an international community to navigate grief, parenting, and other life challenges during the pandemic.

Beth [14:23]: "We use Zoom... It was really helpful at our age and stage... sharing joys that might happen or those deferred weddings."

8. Reflections on Lasting Changes and Future Directions

As the episode concludes, Ali Volpe reflects on the positive and negative shifts in relationship dynamics caused by the pandemic. She emphasizes the value of intentionality in friendships, advocating for ongoing open conversations that define and strengthen bonds.

Ali Volpe [16:21]: "Let's have these defining the relationship moments... I would love to see that persist more."

Conversely, she urges a move away from prioritizing individual self-care to fostering stronger community connections, promoting a balance between personal well-being and collective support.

Ali Volpe [16:21]: "We should just care a little more about our communities."

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This episode of All Of It offers a comprehensive exploration of how COVID-19 reshaped our interpersonal relationships, highlighting both the resilience of certain bonds and the vulnerabilities exposed in others. Through personal anecdotes and expert analysis, Alison Stewart and Ali Volpe paint a nuanced picture of the pandemic's enduring legacy on the fabric of our social lives.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

WNYC Studios is supported by Carnegie hall, which presents the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welsermust performing Stravinsky's Petrushka and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. March 19th. [e-mail].

[Ali Volpe]

Listener supported WNYC Studios.

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. This week marks five years ago since the COVID pandemic hijacked daily life and lockdowns started rolling out, first at work, then schools and pretty much every other gathering place. Reports have shown that this forced isolation impacted all kinds of relationships, friendships, dating and contribution contributed to feelings of loneliness and anxiety. All this week on the show, we are looking at the ways that Covid affected us. Ali Volpe is a senior writer at Vox and covered dating and friendship during COVID and is now working on a book about friendship called Are We Still On? For tonight. She's here to talk to us about how Covid challenged our attitudes and approaches to relationships. Hi, Ali.

[Ali Volpe]

Hey, how's it going?

[Alison Stewart]

It's going well. Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. How did Covid affect your relationships? Did they grow stronger or did they fizzle out? Did you reconnect with old friends you hadn't been in touch with? Did what you were looking for change? If you were dating with someone, how did that go? How did you meet people? How did you stay social? Our Phone lines are open, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can text to us or you can join us on air or you can reach out on social media at all of it. Wnyc. What kind of friendships really remained true during COVID and which ones were lost.

[Ali Volpe]

During COVID Yeah, I think those relationships that were already pretty well established, they tended to make it through to the other side. The people that you talked to every day, maybe your family, your partner, those best friends who you already were pretty much keeping in touch with very regularly because they're so baked into the routine of your life where it would feel weird not to talk to them. And the people that maybe were on the periphery of your social circle, they tended to fall off. Someone who was a friend of a friend who you maybe saw at a party a couple of times a year when those parties weren't happening, you don't see those people as much. Maybe you don't have their phone number, you're not checking in with them. With everything that was happening, they didn't come to the top of your mind. Not because they're not important, but because so much else was happening and the cadence of your relationship was not that regular to begin with, so it made it that much easier to sort of let them filter away.

[Alison Stewart]

We think about words that we use.

[Ali Volpe]

All the time now. Zoom, slack. I mean, five, six years ago, you didn't use them in regular rotation. How did technology step into the void that we were all in, where we were all apart?

Yeah, I don't think I had heard of Zoom prior to this day. Five years ago, people were online all day working. Students were online all day learning. We had to communicate via technology. Technology was kind of the facilitator for all of our relationships. And at first, people were really intentional with doing that. I can't even tell you the number of Zoom happy hours I had during the early days of the pandemic. People were getting married over Zoom. People were having baby showers over Zoom. So pretty much all of these social activities made their way online. Of course, people were still FaceTiming were phone calling. A bunch of apps came to the fore to kind of encourage communic. But as we spent more and more of our days online staring at screens, the more we realized, oh, this is exhausting, and maybe I don't want to do this so much anymore. A stat from a new book called the Social Biome pointed out that during the early days of the pandemic, people were calling one another at extreme rates. Like, the top day of calls in 2019 was on mother's Day, not surprisingly. And so early days of the pandemic had exceeded those numbers. But very quickly, those numbers petered out. We did not kind of keep up that digital communication to stay in touch with people.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah.

[Ali Volpe]

Do you think people had Zoom fatigue?

Oh, yeah, definitely. If you're just staring at a screen all day, even just one meeting makes me tired. But to do eight hours of it, people were like, no, I'm over this.

Let's take a couple of calls. Let's talk to Ryan, who's calling from Brooklyn. Hi, Ryan, you're on the air.

[Ryan]

Allison, thank you for having me.

[Ali Volpe]

Sure. What's up? Tell us your story.

[Ryan]

Well, my wife and I opened a bar in Bushwick, Brooklyn, together about four weeks before COVID lockdown. So she's my best friend, and that was a really challenging experience, you know, interpersonally, professionally. And our relationship has survived just in sort of like, you know, determination and, like, we'll get through this.

[Ali Volpe]

Give us a shout out of your bar.

[Ryan]

It's called Palmetto in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Knickerbocker. Avenue.

[Ali Volpe]

All right, Ryan, congratulations. Let's talk to Greg from Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. Hi, Greg, thanks for calling all of it. You're on the air.

[Greg]

Hey, thanks for having me. So, yeah, I met my wife, actually, during COVID Online, and we had a. We had a baby, now a three year old, and we're still happily married. And we got. We got engaged like three weeks after we met. Really. She came because she was going to Columbia University, and then she came and lived with me. And, you know, I got.

[Ali Volpe]

We.

[Greg]

We just kind. We hit it off really well and we got engaged and we're still married. It's like been what, five years? Almost five years, something like that.

[Ali Volpe]

Hey, Greg, congratulations. Chris from Brooklyn. Hi, Chris, thanks for calling all of it. You're on the air.

[Chris]

Hey, Allison. Long time, first time. So I met my partner Nathan, sort of middle of February 2020. Then everything shut down. We had gone on maybe two dates, and so we had to have a really kind of expedited conversation about committing to each other in kind of a huge way and keeping. Keeping each other in our bubbles and everything. So we would. I lived in Carroll Gardens at the time. He lived in Bed stuy. We walked 30 minutes to the grocery store so we could see each other in the middle. And here we are five years later. We live together and we just celebrated our anniversary.

[Ali Volpe]

Congratulations to you as well, Chris. Allie. That was a really interesting series of conversations we just had with people. There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, the idea of having serious, expedited conversations during this time. Do you think people were more, not more serious, but got there sooner with their partners?

Absolutely. People were very intentional with their relationships because, you know, the whole mortality of it, you know, you're faced with potentially getting this terrible illness and no one really knew a lot about. And so you're realizing, do I want to take this risk for this person or do I want to bring them into my life so we are protected together? And I think for a lot of people, they had those conversations about, you know, I like where this is going, going right now, and I don't want to not see you anymore. So it definitely accelerated relationships. People were moving in together a lot quicker than they might have just because let's bring each other into our bubble or I'm spending so much time over at your place anyway, why don't I just move in? And, you know, I don't know what my roommate is doing back at home anyway. So it makes sense. A lot of these negotiations were happening and it really accelerated timelines for people's relationships.

We're looking back at five years of COVID and discussing how the pandemic affected our relationship. I'm Bo. I'm joined by Vox senior writer Ali Volpe. We'd like to get you in on this conversation. How did Covid affect your relationships? Did they grow stronger or did they fizzle out? Did you reconnect with old friends you hadn't been in touch with? What did dating look like if you were doing it? Give us a call. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call in and join us on air or you can via social media at all of it. WNYC people really used.

[Alison Stewart]

They obviously used the dating apps before the pandemic, but people really relied on them during the pandemic and sort of as the vaccines evolved. Tell us a little bit. How would you would describe the story of the dating app in the past five years?

[Ali Volpe]

Yeah, dating apps were sort of this, like, cliched, you know, not super popular. People certainly used them. But once the pandemic hit, like, that just became the way you met people. You couldn't go to bar bars, you couldn't go to social clubs. You couldn't really leave your house. Nothing was open. So that was the only way people really had to meet one another, aside from, you know, other forms of online communication. So it became the predominant form of dating. I talked to a couple of therapists or dating coaches who have said over the last five years, they felt like their clients have expressed an in our sentiment of disposability. Like, things have gotten so transactional with online dating now because everybody's on it. If you feel like, you know, the next hottest person is just a swipe away, you start to feel a little bit bad about yourself. And so people are starting to act in these disposable ways without realizing that there's another person on the other side. And I think five years out now, we're starting to get to that point of dating app fatigue. People are really tired of feeling this way. They're tired of being strung along or ghosted, which, again, all of these problems existed before the pandemic. I just think the scale, the number of people who now use dating apps has made it a lot more apparent.

[Alison Stewart]

This text says, my oldest was home.

[Ali Volpe]

From college, and my two youngest were at the end of their high school years. I'm actually grateful for the extra months of family time the pandemic gave us. It actually Brought us closer together. Let's talk to Marianne calling in from Queens. Hi, Marianne. Thanks for calling, all of it. You're on the air.

[Marianne]

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sorry, my daughter is with me and she's a little cranky, ready for sleep.

[Ali Volpe]

It's okay.

[Marianne]

But, yeah, I remember that Animal Crossing had just dropped. That is a video game that was played on the Switch. It came out either at the end of March or early April, and all of my friends in my circle are gamers. And so in that video game, you create island homes, and you can invite your friends to come visit you on your island. And there were ways to dress up and decorate, and it was a really fun way to keep in contact and kind of lighten the mood a bit because there's these adorable animal characters that are on your island as well. And that game was the highest selling game, I think, that year, because that was a great way for people to keep in contact. And also sharing movies on Discord and Netflix, I think, also came up with a way to stream a movie and watch it all together and have audio commentary with your friends as well.

[Ali Volpe]

Yeah. Thanks for checking in with us. You know, this brings me this a little bit of a question. It might catch you off guard, but I'm wondering, Allie, what was the most creative way you saw tech being used to maintain friendships?

Oh, that's a really good question. I. My mind first goes to Zoom Weddings. It was something that I really found really interesting. Of course, some people had the dream of their big wedding and really wanted to go through with that, so they postponed their weddings. But for some couples, they're just like, let's get it out of the way. We will have the big wedding later, and let's just get married. And so people were maybe doing backyard weddings and displaying the whole thing on Zoom, and their family could log in, and it was a safe and distanced way to get married. And so that really struck me as, like, the power of love and romance. And despite all of the terrible things that were happening in the world, people still wanted to celebrate their love in whatever way they could.

There's been a lot of discussion about third space as the place that you go that isn't home or work. But during this time, we were at home and working at the same place. Unless you were an essential worker, I should say. How did social media stand in as a third space for a lot of people?

Yeah, I think of places like Nextdoor or, like, Buy Nothing groups on Facebook and how those sort of online communities, again, while they existed prior to the pandemic. It really sort of provided like a very local look into what was happening in your community even when people weren't going out of their houses. And I spoke to a researcher who studied some of these third places and found that, you know, even to this day, they can be adequate third places for people who, you know, still are homebound or immunocompromised. And I love checking next door. I love to see what's going on in my community. Of course, that was not, like the only way people stayed in touch online. There was a lot of, you know, like, different gaming apps that I felt like people were using to, like, collectively play games together while you're on these apps and chatting together. A lot of really creative ways that people were, like, using technology and social media to stay connected.

Let's talk to Beth, who's calling in from Ossining. Hi, Beth, thanks for calling all of it.

[Beth]

Okay. It's a privilege. Love your show.

[Alison Stewart]

Thanks.

[Beth]

So during COVID it started in April here in New York. Of course, it hit us hard mid March, and friend had a mom die. I'm in my 60s, and so I said there's a way we could support her. And, you know, so we use Zoom. And I started cafe to cocktails for a group about a hundred of us, but really about 40 attended regularly monthly checking in. We represented Singapore, Mexico, the U.S. norway, Sweden. We're an international group and it was really helpful at our age and stage, whether we're dealing with parenting, passing and supporting each other through grief or sharing joys that might happen or those deferred weddings that were mentioned. And just to hear about the pandemic from a global perspective, we had educators. You know, we represent a lot of different fields, and so we're not doing it obviously as frequently now, but it certainly even brought out those introverts who were really reluctant, say, to come to a reunion. So, you know, these are friends. When you have friends over 40 or 45 years, you do know yourself well. And so I kind of thank the pandemic for that. You know, I said, why not? We could do a Zoom and did it. It wasn't expensive. I wasn't using my car.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah, we appreciate it, Beth, thank you so much for calling in. Allie, as we wrap up, what's something from the way that people dealt with the relationships during COVID which was really positive and you really kind of hope continues on in your book, your research for your book. And what is one thing that you'd really just. We should sunset it we should put it away.

[Ali Volpe]

That's a great question. I spoke with a woman last week who told me she was very intentional with her friendships during the pandemic, that she had a number of conversations with them where they basically told one another like they defined the relationship. They're like, I'm in this with you. I am your friend. I want to do everything I can to make this friendship last. And it wasn't just her initiating these conversations, it was other people too. And so she felt like she had a lot of support and clarity in terms of knowing where these relationships stood, especially in a time like when you're not seeing people as much. So I would love to see that persist more. Let's tell our friends how much we love them. Let's have these defining the relationship moments, which, you know, don't have to feel awkward. As simple as like, yeah, I'm gonna do whatever I can to help you with X problem, Y problem. Something that I think I would love to sunset is the idea of prioritizing the self over our communities. I think we got really used to the idea of self care, of taking care of ourselves, which again, I'm all for. You need to take care of yourself to be able to take care of other people. But I think we've gotten away from the taking care of other people part and I think, yeah, we should just care a little more about our communities.

Ali Volpe is working on a book about friendship called Are We still on for tonight. She is a VOX Senior reporter. Ali, thanks for walking us through this.

Thanks so much for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

WNYC Studios is supported by Carnegie hall, which presents the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welsermust and soprano Asmit Gregorian performing works by Haydn, Strauss, Janacek and Puccini. March 18. [e-mail] NYC now delivers breaking news, top headlines and in depth coverage from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday and evening. By sponsoring our programming, you'll reach a community of passionate listeners in an uncluttered audio experience. Visit sponsorship.wnyc.org to learn more.