As countries impose strict lockdown measures and travel restrictions to combat the coronavirus pandemic, couples all over the world are facing similar predicaments. While some are choosing to stay apart, during this compulsory lockdown, others have decided to move closer together.
The question of how couples should handle lockdowns is so widespread that it was even brought up at a press conference last week with Jenny Harries, the United Kingdom’s deputy chief medical officer.
Jenny said, “I’m clearly going to start a new career here in relationship counseling, so I shall tread very carefully as I work through this answer.”
“Test really carefully your strength of feeling, stay within the household either together or apart. But keep it that way.”
I took a walk around my area on Saturday, March 29 to see how Nigerians were coping with the lockdown, with distance not up to five miles, I came across a family who were supposed to wed on that same day but could not due to the pandemic.
I walked into the compound where I met with one of the family who chooses to remain anonymous. She said ” Today was suppose to be my sister’s wedding ceremony, but due to the coronavirus and lockdown, we couldn’t hold the ceremony proper, I am so so pissed.”
In an effort to locate the couples, Ekohotblog gathered that both couples are US-based. They were to arrive on Thursday but due to the travel restrictions
in the US, they also could not make it down to Nigeria.
On the other side of the world in the United Kingdom, 21-year-old James Marsh and his girlfriend, Kiera Leaper, were due to celebrate their first anniversary on Monday. Instead, the country went into lockdown.
The pair — who study together at the University of Leeds — had seen it coming. When it looked like the country could go into lockdown, the couple squeezed in one last hangout before Marsh retreated to his family home at the opposite end of the country from Leaper. The lockdown is set to continue for at least three weeks.
So far, the couple has FaceTimed every day, and spend time together with their friends on online video chat platform Houseparty. They’re trying to keep busy — Marsh with his course work, and Leaper with exercise.
But there are challenges. Marsh and many of his friends are in the final months of their three-year undergraduate degrees, and they’re sad they won’t get to celebrate together. “We’ll just sort of go away with coronavirus being the memory of our third year,” he said.
And while technology helped keep Marsh and his girlfriend connected, it wasn’t the same as being in the same room, he said.
For three years, Anika, 32, has wanted to marry her partner, but things outside their control kept getting in the way.
Finally, the New Delhi-based couple set their dates. They would register their marriage in court on March 20, hold a big dance party on April 10 with 400 people, and then have the wedding ceremony on April 12.
Then the coronavirus outbreak happened.
As the Indian government began taking more measures — including suspending all tourist visas — the couple grew more worried about their wedding. Anika, who asked not to use her real name for privacy reasons, started thinking of a plan B.
We didn’t want to postpone it again. What if something else went wrong? What if nothing changes? We wanted to start our lives together — we didn’t want to wait.
As the situation evolved, their wedding plans kept changing. Finally, with only days to spare, they decided they would get married on March 20, and hold a small ceremony after the court proceedings.
“That entire week was pretty traumatic,” she said, adding that they ended up uninviting guests to keep numbers down to 30 or so people for social distancing purposes. “We were sending last-minute messages just apologizing to people.”
In the end, it was a sweet, intimate wedding, Anika says.
There were nods to the crisis unfolding outside — the couple updated their wedding hashtag to #loveinthetimeofcorona, and kept sanitizing and disinfecting the space.
“Sometimes it’s destiny,” she said. “At that time, yes, you feel stressed and disappointed. But now, in retrospect, I think it was perfect.”
Even though it wasn’t the wedding they had dreamed of, Anika and her husband didn’t want to postpone it. In India, it’s not culturally acceptable for couples to live together before marrying. Now, the pair have gone straight into life together — under lockdown.