This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you're listening to the Love, Happiness, and Success

podcast.

Very cool, atmospheric tune there by Deja May called Will I Ever Be?

I thought it was a nice combination of sort of wistful and hopeful

in tone and topic because that is kind of our theme for today. We are talking about dating

and not just any kind of dating, but a special kind of dating because there is a new sort of circumstance,

a new set of both opportunities and potential pitfalls for singles these days in the era of

coronavirus and dating during quarantine. So just in time for cuffing season 2020, we are going to be speaking

about the new reality of dating. And I have to tell you to the impetus to this whole topic

came from a story written by an acquaintance of mine who's a writer named Michael Stahl. Michael's

actually been on this program with me

before and he recently wrote a couple of really great pieces about his experience of

dating recently. One was published in Narratively.com. Another one was in Melmell.com and his story

actually got picked up by like the Guardian. It's been all over the

place. So if you Google, Michael Stahl dating, you'll get the scoop. And I interviewed Michael

to participate in this with us. And unfortunately, the audio file was corrupted, so we cannot include it it but here is the punchline Michael like

so many people who are out there dating these days connected with someone online and over a period

of weeks established an relationship that felt very emotionally intimate over Zoom only to have it falter when they met in person.

The dating coaches on my team have been hearing a similar story over and over again that

the way that people are coming together and connecting, particularly since there's so much

online involvement, can create really interesting new opportunities but also some pretty

major pitfalls that need to be navigated in a very kind of conscious and thoughtful way. So to help

...