Relationship

Can't move in with your partner? Here's how to survive isolating without them | James Greig


Since the coronavirus outbreak reached the UK, I’ve only seen my boyfriend for five minutes, when he dropped off some baba ganoush and paracetamol at my flat. I was scared I might infect him, so we had an emotionally charged conversation at two metres’ distance, which felt like a combination of a chaste Regency courtship drama and a young adult dystopian romance. It’s a strange situation: six months into our relationship, we’re having to weather the obstacle of a global pandemic, and the potential role our romance could play in spreading it. I can say with certainty that neither of us planned for this.

But we feel like there isn’t much choice other than to get on with it. Earlier this week, Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, made an announcement that sent a chill down the spine of the nation’s commitment-phobes. Speaking to the BBC, she suggested that couples currently living in separate households should either remain apart or “test the strength of their relationship” by moving in together. British couples are now faced with a stark choice between spending far too much or far too little time with one other. It’s hard to think of a less promising context in which to progress a relationship.

Even if you are really keen on the idea of experiencing the slow death of love while confined to a zone-3 houseshare, the fact is that for most young renters moving in together isn’t as straightforward as that. Most young people live with flatmates, who could reasonably object to a new person shedding hairs down the drain – and that’s before you even take into consideration the, you know, virus going around.

Renters can’t just dip in and out of their contract, either. Even during a pandemic, your landlord is unlikely to accept “I just really think it’s time me and my boyfriend get serious – it’s been six months!” as a valid breakout clause. This means that, for many couples, moving in together simply isn’t an option, no matter how willing they are to test the strength of the relationship. And that’s withouteven considering the numbers of couples where one half is in a high-risk group and already isolating.

Some of us might just have to accept that we’re not going to see our significant other for some time. I am of the exact demographic that Harries is addressing, having not seen my boyfriend for several weeks. I’ve been self-isolating with a fever that comes and goes, along with a shortness of breath that could possibly be imaginary (these days being a hypochondriac is a moral responsibility). It’s one of those situations where I probably don’t have Covid-19 but it’s better to act as if I do, particularly because I’ve internalised the idea that practising anything less than perfect physical-distancing ethics is “Tory”. I’d rather live as a hermit than face such a charge. Now I’m recovered, we have been plunged into a sudden “long distance” relationship, with all the yearning and frustration that entails, despite living within walking distance of one another.

Ultimately, it feels churlish to complain given how much worse our situation could be. But being separated from my partner is still difficult. I miss him in a way that texting or Skyping doesn’t satisfy. There have been moments when I’ve struggled to get my breath or woken up drenched in sweat and wished I wasn’t alone. The situation I’m in feels potentially endless, given the impossibility of getting tested – something that has become an elite status symbol reserved for public figures.

What makes it so difficult is that at times like this, a relationship comes in handy. In the absence of any kind of structure or routine, some of us need another person around to shame us, just with their presence, into being a functioning human being. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to slip into a parody of adolescence: eating too much cereal or staying up till 2am in lieu of any reason to wake up the next morning. While I receive a lot of epistolary support from being in a relationship, I need a warden as much as a penpal.

If you do find yourself separated from your partner, maybe the best thing to do is acclimatise, treat it like a long-distance relationship, and embrace the various digital channels through which you can approximate intimacy. Video chat is of course the closest thing you get to a face-to-face conversation. It’s important to speak every day, even if you’ll eventually stop asking, “What have you been up to?”; all you’ll ever have done is feel anxious while hunched over a laptop at an angle guaranteed to give you lifelong back problems. At least there’s the ongoing collapse of the global economic order, which should keep conversation ticking over for a while.

If you’ve run out of things to say to each other, you can load up Netflix Party, recreating the magical experience of sitting in silence and watching a terrible made-for-streaming romcom with an original soundtrack by Selena Gomez. Maybe these long-distance coronavirus love affairs aren’t that different to real life ones after all.

James Greig is a journalist based in London, and writes for Vice, i-D and Huck



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