Love in the Time of Covid
Relationships have changed considerably in the time of Covid-19. For many, this has been in a positive direction, with roughly 20% of people saying that their relationships with their spouses, children, or neighbours have improved since lockdown measures have been implemented. New romantic relationships appear to have also benefitted, with some couples feeling like they are getting to know each other better at a quicker rate than usual. Indeed, this rate of acceleration has been so profound that some couples have gotten engaged after only one or two dates. Stuck in lockdown, singles have been rushing to dating apps, a surge in activity that saw Tinder hit 3 billion ‘swipes’ on Sunday 29th March 2020, and contributed to Bumble’s cofounder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, becoming the world’s ‘youngest self-made woman billionaire’. Covid has even changed how individuals present themselves on dating apps, with the Washington Post reporting that users of dating apps have started to list their vaccination status on their dating app profiles, in the hope of attracting more potential suitors. However, this is not to say that Covid-19 has witnessed only positive changes to relationships. It has instead acted as a ‘gargantuan stress-test’: where some relationships have thrived, others have become strained. The same survey that revealed that roughly 20% of respondents saw their relationships improve over lockdown also demonstrated that approximately 10% of respondents felt that their relationships had worsened. This is also evident in the increasing divorce rates around the world, a rate that is in some places 122% higher than it was twelve months previously. The breakdown of relationships is not only apparent in divorce rates, but in domestic abuse figures also, which have risen worldwide in the time of Covid-19.
The Pandemic Perspectives group debated these issues on 18th February 2021, guided by Dougal Shaw’s BBC article, ‘Coronavirus: Tinder boss says “dramatic” changes to dating’, Steven Petrow’s article for the Washington Post entitled ‘On dating apps, ‘covid vaccinated’ and ‘fully vaccinated’ are popping up in profile names. Does that mean it’s okay to be intimate?’ and Alain Badiou’s chapter ‘Love Under Threat’, taken from his book In Paise of Love (2012) in our discussion of dating and dating apps. Furthermore, Lauren Aratani’s article ‘Caught in a Covid romance: how the pandemic has rewritten relationships’ for the Guardian, the BBC’s ‘Covid lockdown love: ‘We got engaged after 24 hours’ piece, Sarah Marsh’s ‘“This year has brought us closer together”: how Covid changed dating’, also for the Guardian, law firm Charles Russell Speechlys’s webpage called ‘Will couples who were locked down together stay together? Cohabitation in the wake of COVID-19’, and psychologist Honey Langcaster-James’s Sky News opinion piece ‘Coronavirus: The psychology of why lockdown is making our relationships stronger’ informed our consideration of how the pandemic has benefitted our relationships. Finally, the BBC articles ‘Coronavirus: Making relationships work during lockdown’, ‘Coronavirus: Lockdown may trigger “surge” in couples splitting’, and ‘Why the pandemic is causing spikes in break-ups and divorces’ provided a platform on which we could consider the negative impact of the pandemic on relationships.
Sadegh Attari kicked off the discussion, asking the group what they took the term ‘love’ to mean, given its significance to the week’s topic. Hanan Fara replied that ‘love’ should not be restricted to only the romantic, for it has impacted other kinds of love as well, such as familial, neighbourly, and community love. Christopher Griffin drew on Badiou’s philosophical musings on the topic, calling love ‘the panorama of existence viewed through the prism of difference’. Richard Kendall was more interested in a holistic conception of love, arguing that the pandemic has challenged all kinds of love experienced recently, not just the romantic. Carmen Torres defined love as the connection that manifests in deeply committed relationships, but raised that this could also apply to self-love, which she defined as being accepting and appreciative of one’s self and showing a commitment to self-improvement. Alastair Gardner echoed Torres’s contribution, stating that self-reflection has been vital during the pandemic, and that self-acceptance was important to maintaining one’s mental health. Rounding up this discussion, Liam Knight, chairing in the absence of David Christie, apologised for the romantic skew in the readings sent prior to the session, and conceded that love should not be considered a purely romantic feeling, and can apply to how one feels about one’s friends or family members.
Richard Kendall moved discussion onto the topic of romantic love and the ‘after time’. He questioned whether we might see the dawn of a second Roaring Twenties, or if we might witness something else instead. Drawing on Torres and Gardner’s comments earlier in the debate, Kendall asked if the increased emphasis on self-love and self-acceptance that the pandemic has beckoned has seen individuals thrive while living alone. Griffin followed Kendall’s line of argument, pointing to the statistics located in the readings that demonstrated the increase in divorces worldwide. After querying if these statistics show that romantic relationships are in a state of crisis, Griffin paused to consider the etymology of the term ‘crisis’, summarising it as an ‘opportunity to change’, leading to a discussion of how the pandemic might have changed romantic relationships. Pre-pandemic, Griffin remarked, online dating was incredibly pressured and fast-paced, whereas the pandemic had now slowed this process down and afforded individuals a greater chance to be creative with their socially-distanced dates and get to know each other better. Attari developed this further, noting that although many people have voiced that they feel like the pandemic has made time meaningless, the pandemic appears to have accelerated relationships, a point perhaps substantiated by the literature regarding divorce rates and sudden marriages. Knight expressed that both arguments – that the pandemic had slowed down the initial stages of relationships, and that it had accelerated other elements of them – were not incompatible, suggesting that time spent in-person might explain why some aspects of relationships had slowed, whereas others had sped up. With in-person contact made more difficult by lockdown restrictions, he argued, early relationships could not move beyond the ‘just talking’ stage, whereas pre-established relationships and marriages in which both parties cohabited had been made more intense by virtue of increased exposure to each other. Gardner continued the conversation, firstly picking up on Griffin’s line of argument regarding crises by suggesting that relationships can indeed strengthen in times of difficulty, and then by agreeing with the ideas put forward by Attari and Knight, claiming that ‘one month in old money is one week now’. Finally, Gardner considered the implications of a post-pandemic world on young LGBTQ+ people. The post-pandemic world, he argued, will see more young people than ever return to their family homes after graduating university. This could severely stifle the formation of romantic relationships for LGBTQ+ people who may not be out, or fully comfortable, at their family homes, which may be of severe detriment to their sense of wellbeing.
As the conversation drew to a close, Kendall also turned his attention to the post-pandemic world. Picking up on the fact that many young people have been forced home over the course of the pandemic, he suggested that this could result in an increase in cross-generational dialogue, which might expose those with more entrenched views to different ways of living and loving. This, Kendall hoped, would lead to a more understanding and compassionate world. Similarly looking for reasons to be hopeful, Knight considered the implications of life lived increasingly outside of romantic relationships on pregnancy rates, births, and the population. He wondered if this could in fact have a positive impact on the environment, a consideration that Kendall agreed with, observing that a year of fertility for young people had been missed due to lockdown restrictions. Along this thread, Griffin also questioned if notions of the family might change post-pandemic and wondered if more couples – or individuals – might seek to adopt. Torres was less optimistic, however, anticipating that pregnancy rates would sky-rocket as soon as the younger generation were vaccinated, citing post-lockdown hysteria as the main cause for this expected increase.
In closing, Fara contemplated how life in the post-pandemic world might be different. She asked why marriage is considered the end goal for many people, women especially, and expressed a hope that the pandemic might shift this, especially given the emphasis to self-acceptance and self-love that the last year has placed on us all.
There was much more. Join Pandemic Perspectives to have your say or set up your own group…