MADRID - Andrea Chabant Sanchez, a
Madrid-based publicist, normally travels to Paris once a month
to see his girlfriend. In January he booked his flights through
to July.
Now those precious reunions are on hold, as ever-tightening
travel restrictions prevent him, and many other separated
couples around the world, from seeing each other.
"I honestly don't know when I'm going to see the person I
love again," said Sanchez, who has not seen Emma Besancon, 24,
since before Spain declared a state of emergency on March 14.
"I always had a date: one for this month, next month..."
said Sanchez, who is 29. "Now there's no window."
Andrea Chabant Sanchez, 29, and Emma, 24, celebrate their first dinner as a couple with friends in Paris
Lola Gomez, a 22-year-old drama student from Malaga, is also
feeling the pain of separation.
"It's only been eleven days, but it feels like I haven't
seen her in a month," she said of her girlfriend Sara Lozano,
also 22.
Lozano left the flat the couple normally shares in Madrid to
join her family in Pamplona the day before national confinement
was ordered.
Neither knows when they will next meet.
"We've been separated before, but this isn't like Christmas
or summer time, when it's long but you're doing a million other
things," said Gomez.
"This quarantine means a lot of time alone, thinking, asking
yourself questions - a lot of time shut in too. You miss your
partner so much more. To be honest, we're having a rough time of
it."
SHARING A (REMOTE) DRINK
Etienne Berges, a 26-year-old humanitarian policy adviser
working in Myanmar, will not be seeing his girlfriend, Amber
Medland, as expected next month.
On March 16, Myanmar made quarantine mandatory for anyone
arriving from coronavirus-infected countries - meaning Medland,
a 29-year-old writer based in London, would spend her entire
holiday in medical isolation.
"We usually try to manage the distance by setting down
dates," Berges said. "But (the outbreak) upended even our
ability to do that."
Still, the couple is finding ways to be together across
continents: surprise macaroon deliveries, video-calling while
sharing a drink or watching the same TV show.
Gomez and Lozano have taken to dining together, and always
video-call one another from bed at night.
"That way, you give and get tenderness before sleeping,"
Gomez said.
It is not quite the same as the real thing, however.
"The person you love should be the one person you can break
confinement with, completely - because you lay beside them at
night. And I can't," said Sanchez, who stayed alone in Madrid
while Besancon went to be with her family in Normandy.
As the outbreak spreads, separated couples are facing the
fact that days apart turn into weeks, and now possibly months.
"Coronavirus questions the nature of long distance
relationships, erases that peace of mind you used to get
thinking, 'Oh, I can be there this afternoon'," Sanchez said.
"The certainty is gone."