Distributed intimacy

For most of the last ten years, I’ve practiced what a friend of a friend once called distributed intimacy, which to me meant building and relying on a network of mostly platonic relationships rather than seeking out a primary partner and lover, best friend, confidant, roommate, etc.

As is with most things that appeal to my core sensibilities, I might’ve taken it a bit too far. But the idea of distributed intimacy still resonates with me—and the idea of picking a person still registers as a threat to the relationships that I want to build and maintain.

This year proved that the bigger threat to networked intimacy is not a single person competing for time and attention, but something that preys on networks, themselves. Like, say, a pandemic.

This affects single adults like yours truly, but more than anyone, it affects the young—who are on average far more socially promiscuous than any other age group. I asked a friend who teaches high school how his kids were doing. “They’re like the walking dead,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking.” And thus the roaring 2010s continue to be paid for by those too young to vote.

Of course, live-in couples and young families have their own share of pandemic hardship. Even in normal times, we all struggle to find the right mix of intimacy and solitude, of closeness and distance. Regardless of one’s life choices, the pandemic probably has us feeling too much of one and not enough of the other.

Hang in there, y’all.