
New York, 2020. Katharine has matched with Ian on a dating app. For the first time in a while — since her divorce actually — she has met someone she likes. For real.
It's a relationship that gets complicated as Ian, relocating to China, finds himself confined there.
— By Katharine Smyth
Previously published on Paris Review in April 2020

New York, 2020. Katharine has matched with Ian on a dating app. For the first time in a while — since her divorce actually — she has met someone she likes. For real.
It's a relationship that gets complicated as Ian, relocating to China, finds himself confined there.
— By Katharine Smyth
Previously published on Paris Review in April 2020
About the author
Katharine Smyth
Katharine Smyth is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her essays and articles have appeared The Paris Review, Elle, The New York Times, Literary Hub, The Point, DuJour, Poets & Writers and Dominoamong other publications. Her first book, All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf, was published by Crown in 2019 and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
Credit Photo: Frances F. Denny.
About the author
Katharine Smyth
Katharine Smyth is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her essays and articles have appeared The Paris Review, Elle, The New York Times, Literary Hub, The Point, DuJour, Poets & Writers and Dominoamong other publications. Her first book, All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf, was published by Crown in 2019 and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
Credit Photo: Frances F. Denny.
|| THE EPISODES
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Loneliness is Other PeopleHaving a child to educate would have been nice, though: I had given myself until forty to fall in love again and thus hold off on single motherhood.
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Loneliness is Other PeopleWhen I said I was impressed that he was working, that I was having trouble focusing, he was full of good suggestions. “Perhaps a little mind adjustment like LSD could get you inspired”.
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Loneliness is Other People“This may be out of order,” he wrote instead, “but I definitely prefer your body now.” I started laughing—it was a date-stamped screenshot that made it very clear those were my breasts of four years earlier.
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Loneliness is Other PeopleI was mean to him, I’m ashamed to say, punishing him for the fact that I was all alone in a pandemic.
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Loneliness is Other PeopleHe had been worried, he joked, thinking of my proclivity to solitude, that they were going to lose me to this pandemic.