It's Not You… …It's The Pandemic

As covid rages across the world, so too has the number of divorces. Kemi Alemoru talks to those couples for whom being forced together, meant ultimately falling apart

- Kemi Alemoru

As the saying goes: when it rains, it pours. In March, I was marooned in Manchester at my parents’ house as the heavens opened. A storm was brewing outside as cases of Covid-19 surged. Because of lockdown, I found myself separated from my partner of seven-and-a-half years by the M6; a barrier only marginally bigger than the huge chasm that had developed between us. We’d been a little rocky beforehand but, by May, when I managed to smuggle myself back to London to be with him, things were looking terminal. We’d argued about where to quarantine, how much attention we should be paying each other in lockdown, how little attention we paid each other in normal life, both busy filling our time with demanding jobs and social lives. But really the bigger question that neither of us had the courage to ask was: if we died during this crisis, would we be happy knowing we had spent so many years shackled together? Or was now the time to chase new experiences?

It might seem dramatic to think that a virus could chime the death knell of what was once considered a ‘forever’ relationship, but the chaos (and, let’s be honest, the metaphysical searching that chaos has inspired) has resulted in time drawn on relationships across the world. As the UK shuttered in March, restrictions started to lift in China, where reports emerged of a spike in divorce enquiries. The pandemic, it appeared, had become a powder keg for marriages as couples were forced to lockdown together, their lives entwined in a way that they had never been before. It came as a stark warning to the rest of the world, and then, much like the virus itself, the effects began rippling to shores closer to home.