One of the particular stories of the Covid pandemic has been the forced long and seemingly interminable separation that various people had to endure finding themselves stuck in different parts of the country or, worse, different parts of the world where rapid changes in travel restrictions, visa rules and issues of quarantine have kept people in suspended animation as it were. Even within the city itself, for many health workers and others, people in love have stayed away from each other for weeks on end and even months at times, just to ensure the safety and security of their loved ones.
Now, with a fresh relaxation of the restrictions seeming to be on the cards, hope springs afresh that such separated people can reunite with their loved ones - maybe not yet for those separated by national borders, but certainly for people living within the same city or state. What has such forced longdistance done to people in their relationships? Has absence made the hearts grow fonder? Has the distance between them helped heal old wounds, set aside differences and seek intimacy with each other again? Or, is it a case of being far from sight is far from mind, where the separated people have for the time apart, lived as if single and now are staring at the prospects of getting back together with maybe a little bit of trepidation?
The answer lies not in the distance itself perhaps, but the nature of the relationship and what it means for each of the people in it. For some of us, love is quite a self-oriented emotion, something to satisfy some intrinsic need of ours and a way to give us what we want, while for others, it is an other-oriented emotion, a way to connect and be with somebody else, and in doing so, feel a sense of satisfaction. For yet others, there may be no longing for love at all, save for the very specific person who triggered it in them.
Love might leave some longing, while for others, it might just wither away without ongoing attention and shrivel into a shadow of itself. Love might, like a creeper on the road side, strain to grow wherever there is sun, and finding one path blocked, might just reach out in a different direction. There is no defining love and there is no predicting what these forced separations will do to love.
Will there be a joyful reunion, or an awkward one? Will there be tearss? Will the reunions bring in recommitment to togetherness, or will it bring grief ? We might wish at the end of it that our love had not been tested thus at all, but our love has been tested, and whether it survives, thrives or shrivels and dies will bring us insight into ourselves and how we love, and the persons we love. There are testing times indeed.
(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)