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Quarantine during a global pandemic is maybe not the most romantic setting for a love story. But, alas, I’m a pisces and dammit I’m going to find some romance in all of this.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how lucky I am to find myself in my particular situation. I’m in a relationship with a person I love dearly and trust fully. We live together and rely on each other. We’ve reached a level of comfort in our relationship that makes it easy to be stuck with each other for weeks in our little house. We respect each other’s need for space and we are still laughing with each other and not bickering too often.
Lately, I’m noticing that people seem to be settling into this weird lifestyle, well mostly. We’ll see more and more interesting stories coming out of our time stuck at home, and among those will absolutely be love stories. Just in the past few weeks I’ve had two friends get engaged while two other friends had to send out “Change The Dates” for their wedding. Also stories of roommates falling in love and husbands finally starting to date each other pop up all over the internet.
Here is a short (and developing) love story involving unexpected circumstances for two people who find themselves quarantined together.
Extended Honeymoon
The early part of a relationship is everyone’s favorite part, right? The Honeymoon Phase. It’s a time easily recognized by butterflies and thoughtful little gifts and good morning texts. Eventually, this gives way to the real stuff. The identity and relationship negotiating. The tests. But for this brief and fleeting moment, you spend all day smiling like a dope and sending flirty texts and thinking things like what’s he up to? or is she thinking about me, too? or showing your friends your personally curated collection of screenshots from their Instagram feed so you don’t have to say “they’re cuter in real life,” and instead you can just say “see what I mean? 😏”
I have a good friend from high school who I haven’t seen a long time. She’s one of those people that is gorgeous and smart and always seems perfectly in place and perfectly in control no matter what. We were catching up via text recently and I was surprised to find out she had started a new relationship after breaking up with a guy she’d been with for a few years. The new guy is a friend from college and they work together too, so it makes sense, starting fresh with someone who is comfortable and interesting who you can trust.
“We went on a trip to NOLA right after Mardi Gras weekend and decided to officially start dating (this was like a week or two before the official lockdown happened in DC).”
Their job requires them to travel, so when they weren’t traveling, they stayed together. When the official lockdown started, they ended up basically living together after just about two months of dating. I had to find out how that had affected their blossoming romance.
I thought it would have to be the most romantic story ever. It’s like pressing pause on the Honeymoon Phase. Every day is sweet and lovely, right? When you’re wondering what are they thinking about? you can just look over and ask, “hey, what are you thinking about?” The only thing better than sweet good morning texts has to be real good mornings that smell like morning breath and sound like groggy angels singing, right? She told me, “If quarantine hadn’t happened, because of our work and personal travel plans we would have only seen each other over 6 weekends between March and May… But now we [spend] every weekend together.” What a dream.
But then you remember that Reality is where we actually live. People are complicated. Relationships are too.
“We actually almost broke up like three times at the beginning quarantine lmao.”
Photo: Netflix
“My only child side definitely shows in a quarantine situation,” my friend said. And I can see that. Not just with her, but with anybody. The first few weeks of living with someone for the first time can be challenging to negotiate how exactly your habits, quirks, and idiosyncrasies can work together. And that usually comes after having known someone for a long time first and deciding that you want to make living together work.
My friend and her new live-in boyfriend are making it. She’s mostly a chill person and, if I’m judging based on his Instagram profile, he seems sane and easy to get along with. The chaos of the world has thrown them together in a way neither of them could have expected. It is challenging their strength as a couple. I say it’s a good thing.
It must be hard to jump into the intensity of living together right at the start of a relationship. But, might it be the ultimate hack to a perfect relationship? You might be able to set boundaries early, or to negotiate who and what you are together. You find out early whether they’re neat, or whether they like to be lazy or productive on Sundays, or how late they sleep. And you find out if you can handle all of that.
It’s certainly not always ideal, but if the situation is right, it could be the start of something beautiful.
We’re living in strange times, but the cool thing about life is that it keeps going. People get sick or they finish remodeling their bathroom. Uncles post their rants on Facebook, babies cry and poop and grow, and couples figure out how to make it work together. The things that make life interesting and sad and beautiful are still happening, even when it seem like absolutely everything is scary and bleak. Even when it feels like the someone pressed pause on the planet, all the shit that makes life worth living carries on. I find a lot of comfort in that.