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

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