Unconditional love for many friendships and romantic relationships were put to the test throughout quarantine and all of 2020. With more and more COVID-19 cases in the U.S., this pandemic provides people with less possibilities to see one’s romantic partner or friends. Some Miami Palmetto Senior High students have found a positive aspect towards their love as quarantine acts as the villain of this story. 

Relationship struggles have been prevalent throughout the last year due to COVID-19. Some couples find ways to stay connected, while others view quarantine as a large barrier for them and their partner. 

Social psychologist Paula Pietromanco believed in what possibilities might come from the outcome of successful and failed relationships. Pietromonaco views an outcome on how the couples seem to solve their own issues and whether both partners agree or disagree in a respectful manner. 

“Couples may end up being better at communicating and providing mutual support after this crisis is over,” Pietromanco said according to alKhaleej Today.

According to University of Massachusetts Amherst, Pietromonaco also finds behavioral patterns as an effective obstacle in couples in seeing as who they truly are. Some other issues may come from strictly quarantining away from your partner, loss of interest or wrong timing. 

Although many creative and new date ideas were sparked by COVID-19, couples still were divided by restrictions for the safety of others. For other couples, platforms such as Facetime and Zoom did not help the tough circumstances.For others, these platforms worked well enough and managed to emerge from this obstacle with a stronger bond than before. 

In fact, around 15% of relationships tended to improve, but as older people head for  a long-term relationship, the percentage increases, according to WGN9. Reasoning towards this comes from different behavioral and maturation into handling a stable relationship. 

Couples have experienced a curve that either brought them together or split them apart. Friendships went through a similar transformation. Although people have found safer ways to interact during the pandemic, life has changed for everyone.

As one may know, friends come and go, yet this presented itself a difficult challenge to all looking to hold on to the same love. Friendships act as a powerful bond that needs constant interaction, and the pandemic has made doing so challenging. 

Palmetto senior Iris van der Veen does school online, which has led to some negative effects on her life. In spite of this, van der Veen found positive aspects towards communicating with her friends. 

“So during my free time, usually on the weekends, I’ll call my group of friends… I’ve done a couple of movie nights with friends like through zoom,” van der Veen said.

Van der Veen recalls her past memories at Palmetto as unforgettable experiences she wishes she could experience once more. 

“I miss passing people in the hallway or like running to catch up with your friends… I miss hanging out with my friends in general. But, it was nice to see people on a day to day basis at school,” van der Veen said. 

With some positive aspects of stabilizing friendships during pandemic, there comes the negative as well. As for van der Veen, she too has had hardships with friends during this time.

“Personally, I haven’t made any new friends this year, so I feel like that’s something that we could talk about but basically how my relationship has changed between my current friends is just that we are closer mentally and emotionally,” van der Veen said.

Palmetto junior Bruno Wencelblat, also a MSO student, finds that taking classes online causes harder classroom interactions.

“So, it’s basically just teachers talking and throughout the class there’s not much of student to student interaction,” Wencelblat said.

Although Wencelblat believes that the pandemic took out students’ interconnection during school, he finds ways to see his friends during his free time. 

“I rarely hung out with people, a few times it was a social distance, masks outside type of thing, such as peoples front yards and parks,” Wencelblat said.

With the pandemic showing both sides of how one may personally take on friendships becoming greatly impacted from it, Palmetto sophomore Hunter Jordan finds MSO as a disadvantage towards creating close bonds.

“Quarantine, it’s definitely made you think a lot about friendships and forget that you actually have the friends that you have because they are all in person, you haven’t seen them in so long that you forget that you have those friends until you actually talk to them and realize,” Jordan said.

Jordan believes it untrue that MSO students have the same possibilities to have friendships than physical students. 

“As an MSO student you have harder access to friends, you can’t see them in person and you have to use your phones and text them, while they’re all meeting up,” Jordan said. 

Combined from the clash of MSO and physical students, quarantine left a huge impact on the students’ love towards friendships and relationships. With the pandemic going onward with seemingly no expiration date, young adolescents find new ways to interact with those they love.