Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Online dating was popular before Coronavirus; the pandemic is making it more prevalent and inevitable. People are sifting through their matches and meeting people electronically. In person or not, romantic dates require coordination or mitigation measures between two people trying to connect. What that means is that love in the time of Coronavirus is more complicated than usual.

How can one find love in a global pandemic? Surprisingly, many have said that the pandemic helped people identify their matches with fewer distractions. The way people search for love is reinvented. People have more time to self-reflect, figure out what they really want in a mate, can get to know potential partners, and weed out candidates who do not match with them more effectively through virtual meetings. They set clear expectations and boundaries from the onset with more clarity. They may know quickly what mitigation measures their potential dates are taking or not taking. They may just save time and energy on superfluous dating games.

Love seems to be much more needed and readily given in the time of Coronavirus – and the need for love is universal and everlasting. We witness the public love of healthcare workers and front-line essential workers, as well as outpouring of emails, texts, message, social media posts, virtual calls, and telephone conversations people share with their loved ones. The urge to connect substantiates a human belief in the common good and a sense of shared destiny. People have come together in isolation and find ways to share their deepest sorrow, grief, loss, or feelings of blissfulness about what one can still attain in the time of extremity.

The title of this article, Love in the Time of Coronavirus, echoes the power of love depicted in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. In the Covid-19 era, we can further attest that love, in its many forms, is the most viable foundation that can bring about necessary change to better our world while bringing us together as a whole. With love, we may begin to redirect anxiety and woe to mitigation, preparation, and remedy. With love, we may just come out of this disaster unscathed, stronger, better, and more conscious of what lies ahead for the world.

新型冠状病毒时期的爱

新型冠状病毒侵袭世界之前在线约会已很流行；而病毒的来袭使之变得更加普遍。人们在线上筛选伴侣并以电子方式会面。无论是线上会面或者实际面对面相见，浪漫的约会需要两个试图建立联系的人来共同协调之间的防疫措施和会面方式。这意味着新型冠状病毒时期的爱比平时更难、更复杂。

如何在新型冠状病毒大流行时期寻找到爱情？令人惊讶的是，许多人表示，新型冠状病毒使得人们变得专注、除去不必要的干扰来识别理想伴侣。人们寻找爱情的方式已经彻底改变：有更多的时间进行自我反省，弄清自己真正想要的伴侣是什么样的人，可以快捷地在线上结识朋友，并通过虚拟会议更有效地淘汰与自己不匹配的候选人，从一开始就更加清晰地设定了明确的期望和界限。人们可能很快就知道结交的朋友是否正在采取防疫措施、是否能为他人或社会大众的健康着想，因而得以避免无谓的约会游戏、节省时间和精力。

在新型冠状病毒时期，人们似乎更需要爱，也更容易将心中的爱赐予他人 -- 人们对爱的需求是普遍而永恒的。我们在在见证了医护人员和前线工作人员对公众的牺牲与爱心，人们在这时期也与亲人分享大量的电子邮件、短信、消息、社交媒体、虚拟电话和沟通交谈。世人保持联系的需求证实了人类对共同利益和共同命运感的信念。人们在隔离孤立中仍然能聚集在一起，想方设法分享自己最深切的悲伤、哀悼失落或幸福感，在极端时期仍能获得的便是一份共有的归属感。

这篇文章的标题“新型冠状病毒时期的爱”呼应了加布里埃尔·加西亚·马尔克斯 (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 的《霍乱时期的爱情》中所描绘的爱情的力量。在新型冠状病毒时期，我们可以进一步证明，爱的多种形式是最可贵的生命基础，它可以带来必要的改变，以改善我们的世界，同时使人们团结在一起。有了爱，我们可开始将焦虑和痛苦化解、转变成为寻求缓解、准备未来和补救灾祸的动力。有了爱，我们得以毫发无损地从这场灾难中走出来，变得更强大、更美好，并且更加关切和重视世界的未来。