It’s Okay to Enjoy Social Distancing

Finding joy during a crisis doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you sensible, sane, and more likely to do some good.

Photo by Davids Kokainis on Unsplash

I’ve been grappling with a lot of guilt ever since my husband and I began sheltering in place a couple of weeks ago. While the severity of this crisis weighs heavily on our hearts, the dominant effect of social distancing has been to grant us more time together, at a moment when that’s all we wanted.

We only just met last June, and our connection felt cosmically destined, like we’ve been together through countless lives on other planets, in other galaxies. (I know, I know, it’s all terribly vomit-worthy.) We got married quickly, so that his new job with the military would acknowledge me as his partner. We’re newlyweds who didn’t get to take a honeymoon before starting our new life together.

We’re still in that beautiful bliss-bubble that the freshly in love get to enjoy for the first couple of years, if they’re lucky, and being together at home nonstop is heaven. We are staging morning dance parties to our favorite ’80s bangers, cooking elaborate meals for each other, working out together in the park, going for runs, walks, and hikes, and hooking up like oversexed bunnies. We are making music together and putting on livestream concerts…