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“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
— Maya Angelou
Two significant things happened in March of 2020: I turned 30 and COVID-19 became a global pandemic. I thought my 30th year of life was going to bring new opportunities and more wisdom. I definitely got wiser, however, not in the way I expected.
I am currently two and half years into a relationship. If I could describe my girlfriend in one word it would be “intentional.” She is a no-nonsense type of person who knows exactly how she wants to be treated. We dated for six weeks before making it official. Within those six weeks she suggested we take the The Five Love Languages assessment. The five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. After taking the quiz, I found that my love language was physical touch and quality time. Fourth on my list was words of affirmation. My results were not a big surprise; I’m something like a professional cuddler. My girlfriend’s highest score was in acts of service. Even though she loves presents, she would much rather me cook and wash the dishes.
The last two years have been great. We honestly spoke to each other in our love language. Approximately four months into our relationship, my girlfriend got a job promotion. The only issue was that the job was in Florida. At the time, I was in the process of purchasing my first home, just 10 minutes outside of Washington, DC, or 879 miles away from Orlando. After a few conversations, we planned to see each other twice a month for the unforeseeable future. Still using the love language assessment as our foundation, we made it work for about a year and a half. Then March 2020 happened. The coronavirus, aka COVID-19, aka The Rona (or whatever Black Twitter said).
For all intents and purposes, COVID-19 grounded my relationship. Personally, COVID-19, ignited a level of fear and doubt that I had never experienced in my life. My girlfriend qualified as an essential worker, which made me live in a world of anxiety. My therapy homework often included challenging negative thoughts, daily affirmations and creating mantras. There’s no way I would have made it through March and April without therapy. We could not see each other physically, but we increased the level in which we spoke to each other. More than frequency, we shifted how we spoke to each other. We prayed in ways that I did not know was possible. Our communication levels reached an all-time high. We listened to both of our therapists and spoke in waves of confidence, hope and future speech. We started paying attention to the details.
Conversations moved from “how was your day” to “tell me one negative and two positive moments of your day.” We praised the good moments and rationalized the challenging ones. We couldn’t physically see each other so we got creative. Saturday mornings were for virtual bunch dates with bottomless mimosas, while Tuesday nights included Amadea Seales’ Smart Funny & Black. We tried to establish some type of routine in what was a disorganized world. We made it our business to intentionally uplift each other every day.
I didn’t notice at the time but my love language was changing.
If COVID-19 was hard enough to manage, the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Tony McDade flooded our timelines. My anxiety was even more elevated and my tool box was not working. The woman who I wanted to marry was still by herself, in Florida, while I was afforded the privilege to work from home. After many internal debates, and advice from my friends and my very Ghanaian parents, I made the decision to temporarily move to Florida for at least a few months. Although my girlfriend and I had built a solid verbal foundation, with the exceptions of a few vacations, we had not spent longer than 72 hours in the same space. So, to say we were nervous would be an understatement.
As the world began to shut down, Florida kept being Florida. Face coverings and social distancing was seen as a soft suggestion versus an enforced mandate. Due to this, we stayed inside most days. Not only was it physically impactful, COVID-19 can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. Being quarantined in a one bedroom apartment, in an unfamiliar state, with someone you have never lived with, can yield its difficulties; but we compromised.
I explained the importance of the NBA bubble while she taught me that every Black millennial should watch Girlfriends in their adulthood. We found an appreciation of our differences and our relationship grew stronger because of it.
The weeks turned into months and the next thing I knew, we had spent about four months together. Not one fight or argument. As I look back on that time, I have to credit one thing — communication. We made words of affirmation a staple during our time together. Through the help of my therapist, family, friends and girlfriend my anxiety about COVID-19 went down and I learned to normalize feelings of anxiousness.
Life has a funny way of giving you exactly what you need, when you need it. It’s your responsibility to see change as a new opportunity to grow.
