COVID Romance Will End With a Fizzle and an Urp
By: Amy Culberg
Tags: Self Improvement, Self Love, Covid 19, Romance, Love

I recently read a piece by a young Medium writer about how different romance is these days (https://medium.com/the-haven/from-phone-calls-to-booty-calls-86eb64046dd0). She elaborated about how my generation met in person and now they meet online. It’s worth a read.

My grandma once told me, “Some of your greatest loves are not necessarily your longest.” I didn’t think about the source at the time, a woman who had been married for half of a century.

The fact is that romance is weird, love is crazy and all of it has to do with the where, what, why, when and how of it.

My zayde and bubbe partially tied the knot because of how far away their New York train stops were from one another. And, yet, they were in love. Arranged marriages often end up like love stories. You sit next to someone in class, boom grandchildren. Like Lorrie Moore once wrote, “Life is hard. Here is someone.”

The COVID romance, where people have met online during the pandemic, has its own quirks.

The COVID romance is like the movie where the person runs through the airport yelling, “Stop that plane,” but that’s the whole movie. Just the running through the airport, yelling. That would get you tackled and maybe shot in real life. You can’t even raise your voice to the check-in people anymore without getting cuffed.

The COVID romance is like the tv series, where the series is kept alive until the final episode where the kiss finally is finally planted. In post-COVID, one of the people might say “Dude, I’m seeing someone in real life.”

The COVID romance is the musical that breaks out into song instead of slutty lust. But in real life, when you finally meet after COVID, one of you might say “Um. I’m not super interested in dating someone who’s that into musicals.”

The COVID romance is doomed. Its constraints are too specific. How will real-life romance live up to COVID romance?

You’ve been meeting online. You’re both lonely, bored, more flaw-accepting than your usual. Maybe you’re not even really available. Be honest. You’re sexually frustrated. All that not-touching. It feels like love. All that, “If only we could be together.”

The vaccine is almost here.

The end is in sight.

One day soon, the COVID romancers will be in the same room, allowed to finally, feverishly connect.

Love cannot survive outside the COVID bubble. Ask any ending from a James Bond film. There is just the one hook up after the extended life and death chase scene. Then the credits play. You don’t think, “Boy! Those two are going to have attractive children.” You think, “Well, that was hot.” She goes back to her place. He goes back to his place.

And scene. Like COVID romance.

The COVID romance has an expiration date. It will occur immediately after the one-time hook-up. Then back to real life. Back to Tinder. Back to SilverSingles. Back to eHarmony. No one can live up to their COVID romance. It’s like you met in space and now you’re on earth. The gravity is all wrong.

Perhaps, if you would like to keep your COVID romance alive, you should never meet. You should ghost each other as soon as you can go outside without a mask. Then, you can compare everyone you meet in real-time to the person you never met. That would be beautifully romantic and totally destructive. Like love.