What Did Dating Look Like in a Previous Pandemic?

AP History didn't cover this... [ view in browser.     add cosmopolitan@email.cosmopolitan.com to your address book ]             FOLLOW US       Let's Take a Look at What Dating and Sex Looked Like in a Previous Historical Pandemic   Dating in 2020 looks a lot like an Expectation vs. Reality GIF. Expectation: Love! Happiness! Butterflies! Reality: masks…Zoom…glory holes??? And while people have certainly been making the whole socially distanced thing work, it's undeniably a weird time to be single and/or navigating a relationship. But it's also not the first weird time of its kind. Let's rewind, oh, about 100 years. Insert: the 1918 influenza pandemic, or what some people may refer to as the Spanish flu. You can blame the 1918 flu, which lasted from 1918 to 1920, for an estimated 50 million deaths—including about 676,000 fatalities in just the United States, according to the CDC. And yup, it's definitely comparable to our current pandemic. Just look at some of these headlines from the 1918 newspaper archives: "Kissing Is Barred While Influenza Is Lurking About" —Tombstone Epitaph, 1918 "Quarantine Will Be Lifted: Schools and Places of Amusement to Reopen" —Chattanooga News, 1918 "Wellesley College to Break Quarantine to See Show" —Boston Globe, 1919 This got me thinking: Was dating nearly as impossible then as it is now? Were singles making it work despite citywide shutdowns? Were hookup pacts a thing then too? Historians say yes. Kind of. So here's what we know about what dating was like during the 1918 flu pandemic. Trust, Americans felt cockblocked by the 1918 flu just as much as you do now. READ ON       Dax Shepard Relapsed With Painkillers After 16 Years of Sobriety   "It doesn't feel fair to anyone—it's not." Read On         Rose Leslie Is Expecting Her First Child With Husband Kit Harington   Ygritte and Jon Snow are going to be parents!! Read On         Taylor Swift Gifts Gigi Hadid's Newborn Daughter an Adorable Homemade Present   Is it normal to be jealous of a baby? Read On         Hello, Your Weekly Horoscope Is Here   Everything you need to know for the upcoming week. Read On         You're Gonna Love These Genius Halloween Costume Ideas with Face Masks   So you can be safe and spooky at the same time! Read On       cosmopolitan.com ©2020 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019   Unsubscribe     Privacy Notice