Love, luck and lockdown: How young relationships survived lockdown
Home-workouts, Tik-Tok trends and Zoom quizzes after soul-draining Zoom quizzes. Having flashbacks to those strange months back in the peak of lockdown yet?
Back in March 2020, the UK lockdown rules stated you could only leave the house if it was essential.
This left many young couples and singletons no choice but to quarantine alone back at their family homes.
For many singletons, lockdown was a prime opportunity to put their feet up and kick-start their online dating profiles. For others already in relationships, lockdown proved to be both testing and rewarding.
This month, an Open University summary report based on the UK’s Covid-19 relationships showed that, “younger women’s (aged 18–34) relationships seemed more likely to get a little or a lot better (35%) and also more likely to get a little or a lot worse (18%)”.
Alison Curtis, a Couples and Relationship Counsellor based in Southampton says: “The biggest impact on people’s relationships across ages, gender and different ethnic groups, was the impact of loss of connection.
“Of course it was not just those couples living together that were impacted; LAT (Living Apart but Together) couples were seriously impacted — they seemed to be the ‘forgotten’ domain when all the restrictions were imposed.”
With coronavirus affecting even the most solid relationships, what can we expect from those couples struggling before the added tension of lockdown?
“Relationships which were already struggling before lockdown mostly experienced increasing challenges in not having strategies to deal with the escalating frustration or conflict that resulted,” Alison comments.
For many young couples, lockdown brought a relationship spring clean.
The lack of physical touch and quality time for LAT couples left them no choice but to iron out the creases and communicate with each other.
“My breakup is quite possibly the most positive thing Coronavirus has brought to my life.”
For 19-year-old Georgina Knight from Portsmouth and her now ex-boyfriend, their choice to isolate at their separate family homes was a blessing in disguise.
Georgina and her ex-boyfriend, who were together for nearly three years, decided to end their relationship during lockdown after desperately trying to cling on to what once was.
She says: “At the beginning of lockdown, I was unsure what I wanted any more but we decided that it was a good opportunity to stay together and to take our relationship back to basics.”
After being furloughed, Georgina returned to progressing and enjoying her career as a vet. This highlighted to her what little ambition her now ex-boyfriend had.
“I had all this time to really think about what I wanted and if I was happy.”
Georgina adds: ‘Lockdown helped me realise that I can be on my own. We did a lot of growing up together and he was my first for everything, but I just felt a bit trapped at times.”
She continues to say that if they had cohabited together, she would have either stayed and questioned the relationship or they would have broken up out of anger or spite.
It seems being isolated from her then boyfriend made Georgina realise how isolated she really was in the relationship itself.
“When we were back together, it was like we had never been apart.”
One couple, who knew they wanted to make their relationship work during lockdown, were university students Liberty Lawson, aged 21, from Surrey and Aaron Piggott, aged 20, from London.
They too made the decision to quarantine back at home with their families, due to initially thinking lockdown would last a couple weeks, not a few months.
Aaron mentions how they had been exclusive for months prior to lockdown and how he was planning on asking Liberty to be his girlfriend, but lockdown hit.
He continues: “ We FaceTimed, phone called, spoke a lot via text messages and participated in numerous Zoom calls meaning we could socialise with each other and in a group environment.”
The couple discussed how difficult it was with the lack of intimacy, spending time together and how boring texting would get with very little to discuss.
“We were not actually labelling ourselves as ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ so the fact it did not fizzle out just shows, does it not?” Liberty says.
While recollecting their time during lockdown, Aaron and Liberty both agree that the overall experience was mostly positive.
It further taught them that with the chance of a second lockdown on the horizon, they both feel more prepared and optimistic about the idea of cohabiting together.
Oh and yes, Aaron did finally ask Liberty to be his girlfriend.
And she said yes.
“I am a completely different person now compared to who I was before lockdown”.
Amid the many couples faced with the separation of lockdown, singletons like Summer Joy Oram-Timcke, aged 21, from Essex, also had to deal with the isolation of lockdown.
“To be completely honest, being single during lockdown was not very different to being single out of lockdown. Only since lockdown rules have eased it has all changed for me,” Summer says.
During the peak of lockdown Summer Joy enjoyed jogging, long walks by herself and even the dating app, Tinder.
She says: “Lockdown was such a new and weird experience, which made me think a lot about my life. Before lockdown, I would not have said yes to a date but because I have been lonely, I thought, why not?”
Not only has Summer Joy found the confidence to go on dates post lockdown, she has also unearthed the value of her friendships.
“I go out a lot more than before lockdown because being on your own, it is kind of difficult now. I see people now more than I did before lockdown. Life is just too short.”
