Love In The Time Of COVID
Love And Other Feverish Things
My husband and I recently got COVID together. So romantic, right? We can laugh about it because we’re both fully vaccinated and boostered so we weathered it like a bout of the flu—well I did, he got off with a head cold that lasted 24 hours the bastard. Anyway, this was not a sweet bonding experience where we tenderly cared for each other. This was about discovering just how small your house really is when you can’t get away from each other. Seriously, I defy anyone to spend 7 days straight in lock-down with a loved one when you are miserably ill and they have only the mildest of symptoms. Unless they’re a canonized saint it’s not going to feel like a vacation for two. Ah “Love In The Time Of COVID”.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote this book...
Has anyone actually read “Love In The Time Of Cholera”? It’s one of those romance novels that gets name-dropped in movies and other books because it somehow qualifies as literature so it makes the character who loves it sound both sensitive and intellectual. Riiiight. I’m not a huge fan of Spanish literature, maybe something gets lost in translation not sure. I tried “One Hundred Years of Solitude” too—it didn’t float my boat. And I admit I did call it quits after 2 books by one very hyped author. The movie adaptations are awesome though…loved “Like Water For Chocolate” based on the novel by Laura Esquivel.But here’s something I find amusing because I’ve heard the title “Love In The Time Of Cholera” used to describe our current situation with COVID; Gabriel Garcia Marquez doesn’t write about Cholera as a pandemic separating lovers in his novel at all. At most, Cholera is used as a metaphor for the kind of love that burns with passion because the word for Cholera in Spanish is very close in sound to the word for passion. I’m guessing because, you know, Cholera = fever.
There’s a love triangle with a woman and 2 men, she marries the dispassionate but dependable and caring one and the other suitor burns with wild passion for her for decades (which doesn’t stop him from taking lovers that somehow mean nothing to him). Then finally her husband dies of old age and she rekindles her relationship with her old flame in their golden years. Oh, the 1st husband is a doctor who works tirelessly to cure Cholera victims—a title is born.
“Love In The Time Of Cholera” is basically about the merits of passionate vs companionate love. Personally, I’m not sure which side Marquez comes down on. Like I said, I don’t get a lot out of this genre of reading material but at least with “non-literature” romance novels they generally pick a guy you should be rooting for. It does seem like the heroine got the best of both in this novel unless Mr. Passionate caught something from one of his many “meaningless” affairs.
Man Is That Title Popular These Days
So why am I bothering with “Love In The Time Of Cholera”? Like I said, it keeps coming up with relation to our current circumstances. There 's a song (complete with video) by Danny Elfman, several news articles using the title, Kaiser Permanente is in on it with a clickable link that addresses the subject medically. There’s even been a TV show called “Love In The Time of COVID”. I have seen the trailer below and it looks slightly less entertaining than my last 15 minute AG test.The title makes great copy, I agree. A classic transformed into something pop-culture now. And it makes the title changer sound like they might have read the book—extra intellectual points, right? Even I’m guilty here with this very post. Got your attention with the pop-culture twist and that funky photo (it’s from the influenza pandemic during 1936-1937). This shit just keeps going round folks—maybe it’s about time we took it seriously.
As much as I am not a fan of the author or the style of writing. I do love the concept of the book and the ideas it explores. Same stuff I’m asking questions about here. And as long as we’re talking about the bastardized version of the title let’s get into “Love In The Time of COVID” a bit. Does the pandemic divide us or bring us closer together in our relationships? How are people dating, falling in love, even finding passionate love in the wake of COVID?
As much as I am not a fan of the author or the style of writing. I do love the concept of the book and the ideas it explores. Same stuff I’m asking questions about here. And as long as we’re talking about the bastardized version of the title let’s get into “Love In The Time of COVID” a bit. Does the pandemic divide us or bring us closer together in our relationships? How are people dating, falling in love, even finding passionate love in the wake of COVID?
Love COVID Style
I’ve done some research and the landscape has changed in ways that seem predictable in retrospect. During the early days of the pandemic the dating apps that were booming prior became more of a starting point than the one-stop shop they had been. Online services like Match.com dipped in membership as the new normal began to take shape. And that normal was Facetime and Zoom dating for long periods prior to physical meet-ups. If they chose to meet at all prior to the easing of restrictions.For some couples the pandemic meant long-distance relationships. Even if the distance was only blocks away. One partner might work in a high risk job and feel they could not compromise the health of the person they were seeing virtually. Others just weren't comfortable with the prospect of casual physical contact during the pandemic and slowed down their dating process to a crawl. Some even spoke about enjoying the new pace.
For others the loneliness of lock-down drove them into instantaneous committed physical relationships after their virtual courtships. There are accounts of couples who met through Facetime dates. Experienced intense virtual chemistry (or thought they did) and then went through the careful steps to meet in person. The testing, the 2 week wait period, for some a lengthy trip to reach their “perfect” match (I read about at least one that drove 80 miles to meet a woman he’d dated virtually).
The final rendezvous could only have been emotionally intense. How could it not be? All the virtual courtship, all the pandemic preparation, all the built-up tension and loneliness of COVID lock-down. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to understand why these people had passionate responses to each other. Or why some of them took the immediate if insane leap to move in together.
And then the vaccines became available and restrictions began to loosen. Maybe not so surprisingly a lot of these insta-relationships fell apart like the desperate tissue paper chain link bonds between them. Exposed to the light of social interaction many partners’ introverted traits which had been Godsends while penned inside apartments together, were suddenly irritating. Others found “devoted” partners wandering astray the moment they found medically approved freedom.
The final rendezvous could only have been emotionally intense. How could it not be? All the virtual courtship, all the pandemic preparation, all the built-up tension and loneliness of COVID lock-down. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to understand why these people had passionate responses to each other. Or why some of them took the immediate if insane leap to move in together.
And then the vaccines became available and restrictions began to loosen. Maybe not so surprisingly a lot of these insta-relationships fell apart like the desperate tissue paper chain link bonds between them. Exposed to the light of social interaction many partners’ introverted traits which had been Godsends while penned inside apartments together, were suddenly irritating. Others found “devoted” partners wandering astray the moment they found medically approved freedom.
The New COVID Love-scape
And the dating/social world may have changed for good a lot of pundits are saying. Such a small thing as handshaking, swept aside during the pandemic, is having a hard time gaining traction for a comeback. So where does that leave hugs, handholding, kisses? Not necessarily a bad thing that we are beginning to reserve our close physical contact to people we know well. But then the question becomes how long does it take to know someone well? And how many hoops do they jump through for us to know them?There seems to be a whole new level of vetting in dating prior to getting physical these days. Somewhere between the virtual and the real dating there is “the COVID talk” which is hopefully a frank discussion of many aspects. Have they been vaccinated? Do they have any preexisting health concerns? If they’re smart, they’re asking about in-person connections too, anyone in their household engaging in risky behavior? COVID is like the new STD. You’re not just dating your partner you’re dating their roommate, and so on and so on.
Probably not surprising that Virtual Dating isn’t going away any time soon. And many singles tout it as cheaper and more convenient than the physical version. Apparently, many singles say they will use some sort of cobbled together version of virtual dating even as restrictions ease. Using Apps like Hinge or Bumble or online services like Dating.com or Match.com to match and then meet through online sites like Zoom and Facetime.
The data seems to show Zoom and Facetime doing a robust business in dating traffic. One quote I read from a woman said she had “…literally four dates planned tonight.” I guess I’d put that in the category of semi-speed dating. Not sure how you get something meaningful out of that but if it meets that need for her…OK.
And that’s the thing, passionate love, that hit of dopamine we all crave, it has been desperately hard to come by since 2020. Either you’ve been riding the madness with your longtime partner and the stress and irritation have ground that neurotransmitter to paste, or you were on your own weathering a one-two punch of anxiety and loneliness that left you starved for the rush of that happy brain chemical.
Passionate Love Ultimately COVID-Proof?
So, I can’t say I’m surprised that dating and passionate love survived COVID, maybe raggedly, limping, and badly in need of some commonsense adjustments. But no one could give it up. Deadly pandemic be damned. "Love In The Time of COVID" if we’re going to play with that title, was about grieving the loss of casual physical contact and learning to come together in new ways.So much of it was driven by the tension of separation. Our inability to be close to one another during this strange time seems, to me, to have pushed so many relationships into high gear so quickly. Some feverishly passionate even if they turned out to be desperate and ultimately impermanent. Some finding comfort in a mutual need for companionship, both hoping for more to blossom. Others built relationships slowly without meeting at all. Maybe it doesn’t matter so much that some of them didn’t last so long as they burned bright or offered warmth when the darkness was greatest.
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