Locked down queer love: intimate queer online relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Gay couples who have been displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic had to work with communication platforms so that they could process and proceed with their relationships. Using the notion of romantic intimacy as mediated and socially processed information, interviews were analysed in order to describe twelve (12) gay couples’ enacted communication in order to approximate interpersonal romance. Results have shown that gay couples communicate affective, cognitive, and non-physical intimacies to establish commitment and mutuality. Affective intimacies include posting daily updates about daily routines, using words of affirmation through texts and app messages, and uploading short video clips. Cognitive intimacy is shown through discussions of health, social, and relationship issues. Non-physical intimacy includes viewing each other’s daily activities, dining together and engaging in online sex. Technological platforms have continued to enable relational intimacies not only to augment relationship sustenance but also to reinforce a nuanced yet global form of mobile affection. The time spent communicating with each other, coupled with the enacted intimacies, and the sense of commitment and mutuality, led to a well-spent locked down and long-distance romantic relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID 19
• LGBTQ
• romantic intimacy
• social information processing
• mediation

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

University of the Philippines Diliman [202103 PHDIA Y2]

Notes on contributors

Jonalou S. Labor

Associate Professor Jonalou S. Labor, PhD, is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Communication Research, College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines, Diliman. He holds a PhD in Communication. His research interests include communication and technology, mobile communication, mediated LGBTQ+ realities, health communication, and risk/disaster communication. He is currently the Director of the Office of Research and Publications at the College, a research fellow at the UP Resilience Institute, and Special Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs of the University of the Philippines System.

Augustus Ceasar Latosa

Dr. Augustus Ceasar D. Latosa is a lecturer in the Department of Communication, Institute of Arts and Sciences, Far Eastern University Manila. He holds a PhD in Communications and New Media from the National University of Singapore. He is a published book writer and a researcher interested in crisis communication, social change, queer studies, and rhetoric.