Love on lockdown: how the pandemic pushed relationships into hyperspeed

Couples that got together right before or during COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 had to navigate the early days of their relationships under unprecedented conditions.

The pandemic led some new couples to move in together well before they would have considered it otherwise.

For others, isolation led to them becoming very close much sooner than regular dating normally would have.

For David Walsh of Estevan, Sask., the love story started shortly before the pandemic with the best date he had ever had. Walsh went out with Ivan Slywka in Calgary on New Years Eve 2019 after they met on a dating app.

Fast forward to March 2020, and Slywka was helping Walsh move into a friend's home in Calgary, right as the pandemic was beginning.

Then an ambulance pulled up to the house.

"The people in it get out in their hazmat gear and are going into the upstairs portion of the house, because the people upstairs had called 811 and they needed to be assessed for COVID," Walsh said.

Walsh told Slywka he couldn't go back into the house, because he'd either be quarantined or get sick.

"So Ivan was like, 'well, I guess we live together now. You can come live with me,'" Walsh said. 

"It was a lot to process really fast. On the one hand I had the uncertainty and the scariness of the pandemic and the virus. And on the other hand there was the uncertainty and the scariness of this person who I definitely liked … but hadn't known them very long."

The new couple got to know each other quickly. 

"When you're first dating, especially if you don't live together, you only see the side of that person that they want you to see. It's always them on their best day basically," Walsh said. "All of a sudden I see them all the time, good and bad."

Walsh said he is a generally guarded person. It had always taken him a while to open up. But because of lockdown, he had to let his guards down fast.

"It was an interesting and at times romantic experience, just because it was a level of intimacy I had never experienced before."