COVID-19 Destroys Romance
Being restricted to four walls - or 80 if you live in a California mansion - has side effects. We cannot go to work obviously and that increases depression.
Money is not the only motivation for having a job or owning a business. It is also about taking a break from home, which is not a warm, fuzzy place as Hollywood and Christmas ads have made us to believe.
We are now depressed because we miss work, and co-workers we could not stand, before the pandemic. What is not well-documented though, is depression caused by the inability to demonstrate love.
Hollywood has two kinds of love: the interior and exterior. The exterior is more important because it has witnesses. We go out to dinner not because we don’t have food at home. We dine out to show that we are loved. We go out to sports stadiums or public parks to be seen holding hands as in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The exterior part of love expects us to throw birthday parties for the ones we love, with men saddled with this financial responsibility. Throw in Valentine’s Day, and men are ready to forget about ‘falling in love.’
Restaurants, bars, shopping malls everything is on lockdown so we don’t have proof that we’re in love. Friends and enemies cannot see us and this affects the relationship. There is no compensation.
We don’t see eye to eye most of the time. We take laptops to bed, his and hers and only one person does housekeeping but we used to live with that. The compensation was going out. It made us feel good, gave us something to post on Instagram and Face.
COVID-19 has spoilt the fun. Love is no longer validated. We can no longer prove that we’re loved because we cannot be seen.
‘You never take me anywhere.’ Translation. You don’t love me.
This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang, author Sweetness, a South African novel.
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