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A family member of mine was set to move out of the home in which she lived with her fiancé, just a week before the economic lockdown and stricter social distancing was enforced. They’d agreed to break up. She had just started searching for new apartments. She had a few appointments lined up for places to see the very weekend that nearly everything shut down. So, of course, the property managers she was going to meet with started cancelling their appointments. And even if they hadn’t, you don’t want to be driving around town apartment hunting in the middle of a pandemic. There is so much risk of exposure.
Imagine if she had found a place—how are you going to move during the Coronavirus outbreak? Just think about what goes into moving. The packaging of things and renting a truck and going in and out of the new building and the old several times, touching elevator buttons and opening dumpsters to recycle things. It’s an infection waiting to happen. So, now my family member, let’s just call her Kim, and her ex-fiancé are stuck together during the lockdown. It’s like a breakup on steroids. It’s pretty much your worst-case scenario.
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She can’t stay with family
The only other family she has in town are over the age of 65, and it’s not safe for her to stay with them, especially because she is still working part time doing small gigs like walking people’s dogs and running errands. She can’t risk becoming a carrier and bringing that to elderly family.
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He didn’t want to break up
Oh yeah, did I mention this part? The guy didn’t want the breakup. He begged her to stay. And now…she did! So he’ll keep pretending everything is normal, calling her babe, asking what they should make for dinner, trying to watch their show on Netflix together. It’s this bizarro parallel universe in which he’s pretending the breakup never happened.
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No sleep
She’s on the couch. Since he doesn’t want to admit they’re over, he sees nothing wrong with them sharing a bed so he won’t leave the bed. So she’s on the couch and not sleeping well. She’s in this terrible hell-hole of sleep deprivation and waking to find she still lives with her ex, not sure if she’s just having another nightmare or it’s reality because she’s so damn tired.
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It’s tempting
Kim says it’s tempting to just get back together because, right now, people need all the comfort they can get. I mean, people get back with exes when there is no pandemic happening, because it’s comfortable. So you can only imagine how strong the temptation is now, when everything is so unstable.
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They’re repeating fights
They were going to breakup because they fought all the time. And now they can’t get away from each other. The same fights are happening. But she doesn’t want to engage—she doesn’t see the point. Why use energy to fight with someone you don’t even want in your life right now? It’s like trying to patch up a broken window on a sinking ship.
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She can’t fly home
It’s too late to fly back to her parents’ place now. She lives hundreds of miles from them and, who wants to brave an airport and an airplane and a shuttle and a taxi during a pandemic? There are just too many chances to pick up the virus. So she is truly stuck.
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No phone call privacy
We want to speak to our loved ones right now more than ever. And, of course, when Kim speaks to friends or family, she wants to vent about the situation with the ex. But she can’t do that with him ten feet away. So she has to go for walks to have these private calls. And of course, if she goes for a walk to talk on the phone, he knows it was about him, and interrogates her when she gets back.
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Then face masks were enforced
Where Kim lives, you must wear a face mask in public or you can face a fine. This just started. You can’t really have a phone call when you’re wearing a face mask, so she’s forced to stay in her shared apartment with her ex when she talks to friends and family.
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FaceTime is awkward
Since the guy wants to stay together and is pretending everything is normal, he’ll do this very manipulative thing: when Kim is on FaceTime with friends, the ex will just bomb the call, pop in, try to chat with the friends, and force everyone to act like this is perfectly normal. He wants Kim to feel pressure like “See, your friends still love me.”
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No accepted favors
Kim is trying so hard not to take any help from the ex, for fear he’ll misread that as them getting along again. Which means she’s come down to eating cheese and crackers for dinner because she was out of personal food and refused to let the ex cook for her.
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She can’t go to a hotel
Most hotels are closed where she is but even those that are open are either so expensive that staying there for several weeks would put her in thousands of dollars of credit card debt or they are just so grimy she feels they aren’t cleaned properly. Keep in mind housekeeping staff touch the pillows and sinks and every intimate surface you’ll touch in a hotel.
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It’s a circle of hell
You know how, usually, after a breakup, the best thing to do is get total space? You need to not see or speak to the person for months, so you can go through the motions of grieving and expelling the person from your system. Yeah, she doesn’t get to do that. She’s stuck in the worst part of the grief step for what feels like eternity. Seeing an ex after a breakup can have bad consequences.
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She can’t see friends
She can’t see friends to just cry about the breakup and vent about it. She can’t get ice cream or drinks with a friend and just let it all out. Can you imagine? She’s just stuck alone with the pain—well not alone. The source of it is in her face, making protein shakes and doing his laundry.
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No more girlfriend discount
They’re still paying rent and paying for utilities together. He makes quite a bit more than her, and when they found the place, they agreed he’d just pay a bigger portion of the rent because he could, and he was the one pushing for that particular apartment. Now he’s asking her for half the rent—exactly half—because they’re “Just roommates now! According to you.” Which is something he says to her very passive aggressively.
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She’s ready to get sick
I’ve had to talk her out of doing something stupid like flying home or renting a dingy hotel room. On many occasions she’s said “Just let the Coronavirus have me. It can’t be worse than this.” I’ll send her videos of those affected to remind her that it is worse.
