Some reflections on what a year and a half of involuntary separation due to the COVID pandemic has taught me about my relationship with my fiancé. (I'm writing this in bed at 3 a.m., so please forgive me if it's not the most polished of posts...)
The two of us during a beach weekend on the South China coast (forgive the crop; Jay has a real job).
Regardless of the initial strength of the relationship, entering into long-distance mode means applying an attrition model: It's not a matter of if the relationship is strained and weakened; it's a matter of when and by how much.
The defining feature of romantic relationships - for me, at least - is a kind of intimacy that has very little to do with sex. It's the closeness of shared daily-ness, of synced routines; of living in an apartment filled with memories of friends, of travel, with reminders of who we are together. It thrives on touch, on smell, on proximity.
When I hear the word love, I think of the two of us meeting each other's tired eyes at 7 a.m. on a Saturday as Ti Qi the Wonder Poodle (see pics below) wakes us up to let us know that he has to go to the bathroom. I can read my first thought in Jay's eyes ("God, I'm exhausted; I hope he offers to take him out"). Then, in unison, we both say, "I'll do it." The feeling that I'm grateful to be able to spare Jay the trouble as I put on my coat and walk out into a chilly, misty morning is as close as I can come to encapsulating my conception of love. I'm a selfish person, and for me to feel like I would rather have the world wound me than him has been a novel, startling experience. I guess that love is grateful sacrifice, from its most quotidian to its most profound forms.
Ti Qi helping me retrieve my package from the post office in Shenzhen. We adopted Ti Qi when he was two after the puppy that Jay got me for my 30th birthday died of parvovirus that a shady breeder hadn't disclosed (Rest in Power, Raichu).
Ti Qi right before the COVID pandemic forced me to return to the U.S. Looking as fed up with everything as I was after months of shelter-in-place.
The stark fact is that relationships need to be fed with new, shared experience, and our current arrangement precludes this. My fondest memories with Jay involve travel all over China and the United States. He met me, a foreigner still struggling to adapt to a wildly different mode of life. And Jay unlocked the Chinese Way for me, a new language, a new country, a new philosophy and manner of moving through the world. Being forced to return to my hometown in the U.S. during the pandemic has felt like devolution, like regression, like loss.
Technology has helped. Videochatting feels immeasurably better than audio-only calls. It helps me to remember Jay's quirks of expression, the way that his eyes rove over my face as I ramble, searching for evidence of things unsaid. In return, I scan his face to see how hard he's been working, if he has the wet-sand undereye shadows that mean he went out last night; I watch as the seasons add and subtract a few pounds and wrinkles. The best thing has been just "hanging out" while Facetiming, the two of us chatting idly while I cook or clean and he plays with Ti Qi. This is as close to real, quality time as we can get at the moment. Sometimes I picture Jay next to me as I fall asleep, an improbable expanse of poodle stretching between us like a tube of gray shag carpeting.
I recognize that this is an opportunity to work on my weaknesses so that I am my best possible self when we reunite. There have been times during this relapse when I have thought, "God, I am so glad that Jay isn't here to see me like this." (When I first got home, I was so sick from COVID and withdrawal that I gave up trying to run from the bed to the bathroom; I bought a new mattress after several days instead).
Being apart has made me realize exactly how much the pain and chaos of my addiction has impacted his life. It takes my breath away that someone could love me enough to stay with me given the leaden cross that I carry.
As twisted as it sounds, the thing that has strengthened our relationship the most during this time of separation has been when one of us admits to something that he easily could've hidden. At one point more than two years into the pandemic, months after I had left China and returned home, my fiancé admitted that he had been talking to other people on the dating app that we met each other on. When I admitted to doing the same thing - using it to find friendship during a lame, lonely time, with perhaps the ghost of the shadow of the thought that friendship might grow into something more if the perfect guy presented himself flitting through the cobwebbed corners of my mind - I felt a surge of trust, of compassion, of love.
Growing apart during such circumstances is a natural, inevitable development. But what grows apart can be joined together again provided that the requisite patience and commitment remain. If you asked me today whether I was worried about my relationship, I would say that I am not. There is a reason why we use the ancient words, "For better or for worse, in sickness and in health... Until death do us part." Even if I couldn't ever be with Jay in person again, I wouldn't marry anyone else. For me, it's a commitment that you can only ever make wholeheartedly once. The words wouldn't mean anything to me if I knew that I had said them before.
"To have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. I will love and honor you all the days of my life."
It would mean a lot to me if you would share your own experiences and thoughts using the comments section below. What worked for you during times of extended physical separation? How do we hack long distance love?
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