Niamh Jordan, a 28-year-old editor in Dublin, Ireland, got into a relationship right before the pandemic. After she and her partner helped each other through a long and difficult quarantine, they decided to call it quits at the beginning of summer. “I wanted freedom again,” she says. “Everything is opening back up here. We want to enjoy being single.”
When the world went into lockdown last year, those who managed to snag a coveted quarantine partner may have done all they could to keep them. But in the thick of a post-vax summer, we’ve re-emerged into public life, and for some young folx, the opposite impulse has taken hold. These people are intentionally ending or avoiding relationships in favor of dating, socializing, and reaping the joys of some good old-fashioned hoeing.
