This year, at the ripe age of 23, I married my long-term partner in a tiny ceremony in Tbilisi, Georgia. I am Welsh, he is Jordanian, and we met while he was studying engineering at Swansea University. It’s an unlikely pairing, but it works.
As I write this, my husband is more than 3,000 miles away in the UAE, where he has been working as a solar engineer for the past three years. While it isn’t an ideal circumstance for a newly married couple, it’s one that we’ve become accustomed to, whether we like it or not.
Although my partner had lived in Wales for seven years (with a few summer trips back home), spoke English as a first language, had a long-term British partner in addition to two honours degrees - when he graduated we were told that unless one of us found a decent paying job within the first few months, he would have to leave. The Catch-22: non-EU international students do not have the right to work in the UK, which makes finding a job incredibly tough.
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We were devastated at first, but we made it work through frequent travel and video communication. In that first year, I would travel to visit him every term break, holiday or reading week - up to six months of the year in total. A long distance relationship is manageable when you have a clear plan and the future is foreseeable. Our plan was solid: as soon as I graduated and found work, he would relocate back to Wales, we would get married down the Gower, and we would finally settle down.
Then, out of nowhere, all of this went out the window.
Covid hit and airports closed, borders closed, shops closed, schools closed - the world went on stand-by. I couldn't have predicted that I would end up graduating into a pandemic, and that Dubai would remain on the ‘red’ list - barring anybody without UK residence rights - until August, 2021.
With our plans clearly in chaos, I decided that if I was going to be stuck in lockdown anywhere, I would choose to be stuck with him. I booked the first available flight to Dubai, but one cancelled flight turned into two cancelled flights, and two cancelled flights turned into three.
What was supposed to be a short break apart turned into seven long months.
During that seven months, I struggled more than I expected. The first year had been easy because we could travel freely, and we had some control over things, but the pandemic was unpredictable and out of our hands.
Separated through lockdown, the nice things that typically come with long-distance relationships - the long phone calls about what you've been up to, sharing as many experiences as you can such as watching a movie together and eating at the same time - morphed into concerned conversations. With the Covid death rate increasing exponentially, and with no prospects of the border re-opening, healthy concern turned into unhealthy panic attacks, and casual news checking turned into an obsessive news addiction.
In those seven months apart, I would check the news for travel updates every morning before doing anything else - sometimes up to five times a day. I knew deep down that the Government had no intention of re-opening the border to the UAE any time soon, but I needed something to hope for.
As it played out, the news we were hoping for more than a year ago didn't come until last week.
Before then, as the months of endless Zoom calls slowly rolled by, it became clear that settling down in the UK together, in my beloved Wales, was no longer an option (any time soon, at least). With more than 1,000 recorded deaths a day, in addition to closed borders and a colossal economic downturn, the chances of either of us finding decent work in the UK became a distant fantasy.
If I wanted to have a relationship with my partner outside of the Zoom world, I would have to move to the UAE myself, despite disliking the country. When Dubai re-opened its border in the latter half of 2020, I hopped on the first available flight.
We treated our time in the UAE as a temporary pit-stop before the UK would welcome us both - not just me. Thankfully, we both found jobs we were happy with, and we had a well-needed catch up in the sun. Time and effort makes the heart grow fonder, after all - not distance. Compared with the UK, Dubai was a thriving hub of few restrictions, and more importantly, fewer cases. Today, the UAE’s total death rate is 1,950+ - a small figure compared with the UK’s devastating rate of 130,000+. My husband and I were luckier than many, because, as others fell sick and died, we at least had our health.
We embraced the change in circumstance and married in Tbilisi, Georgia, rather than the Gower, because it had much fewer travel restrictions. It isn't what we planned, but as we look back on it now, we know that it's a story to pass on.
After nearly a year of living under the baking sun, I finally found a job in Wales that would enable me to support my husband's UK visa application.
I had to come home alone (via hotel quarantine) a few months ahead of him, but with restrictions finally easing, it seems that this year will be the year we were hoping for.
Have Covid restrictions affected your personal relationships? Let us know in the comments :
