Relationships Move Fast on a Slow Cargo Ship

Modern Love

For our 10th date, we crossed the ocean on a freighter. Turns out isolation can have surprising benefits for new love. (You can’t walk away.)

By Dev Aujla

Liz and I were on a cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with the sun setting and a light wind. The scene resembled one of those retirement brochures in which a couple stares wistfully across the open sea and into their future — except she and I barely knew each other. It was our 10th date.

Two weeks prior, we had been drinking wine in a small Chinatown bar — a last-ditch effort to drum up romance. I had connected with Liz through work a few months before, and we had gone out on several dates that felt promising.

Then she called to tell me she didn’t feel ready. Her actual words were: “My astrologer says it’s not the right time.”

I’m not a big believer in the stars, so I hung up, turned to my friend and vented about that astrologer (who definitely hadn’t been out on any of our dates). How could the position of the stars on the day Liz was born derail my dating life today?

The next morning, I settled into the familiar letdown of losing something that had barely begun, resigning myself to more of the noncommittal dating that so often characterizes relationships in New York City.

A few weeks later, Liz messaged me as I was returning home from a friend’s wedding overseas: She had changed her mind.

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At the bar in Chinatown, I showed her a photo I had taken during my flight of a cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing the ship made me think about how we no longer know the size of the world because we don’t feel the distance when we travel. What would it be like to experience how far North America is from Europe? To travel by sea, as my grandparents did when they came a century ago from India?

“Let’s do it,” she said. (She’d had two glasses of wine.) “Let’s take a cargo ship across the Atlantic together. It will be our next date.”

We both laughed. The next morning, I woke up and texted to tell her I was still thinking about the cargo ship.

“When are you free?” she replied.

“Anytime in the next three months.” I was mostly joking, but it was also kind of true: My work as a consultant for start-ups allowed me to set my own schedule. (Her work gave her similar flexibility.)

A few hours later, she told me she had booked it. We would leave in two weeks.

I gulped. Things weren’t supposed to move that fast. We had never spent more than five consecutive hours together. I hadn’t told my friends or brother that I was even seeing her again. (Last they knew, an astrologer had sunk my chances.)

We had never spent the night together, and now our next date would involve a 10-day trip with a only few other travelers and crew on a cargo ship?

Yet, I knew I had to say yes. Why not take a big leap?

As we planned the trip, we stuck to logistics; it seemed too risky to get to know each other more before we set off. We bought books about celestial navigation, shipwrecks and personality tests, and made lists of ways we could decorate our cabin.

When I finally told my family, my parents tried (unsuccessfully) to meet her, and my brother sent me YouTube videos of dates gone bad on cruise ships. It all started to feel overwhelming, and like a very bad idea.

After we boarded the ship in Halifax, it was clear that our room hadn’t been built with romance in mind. Two bolted-down single beds lined a wall; our small bathroom reeked of sewage and diesel. The ship was 15 stories tall and as long as three football fields, carrying 3,800 containers and 1,300 cars from North America to Europe. Its hallways were disorientating, narrow, windowless and lined with identical-looking doors. There were only 28 people on board, including the captain and 18 crew members.

Liz and I started to unpack. She had brought new sheets, cashmere blankets, candles and lamps. I had brought a small Persian rug, Scrabble boards, cards, books and a list of questions to ask on a date. Just in case.

My side of the room felt like a dormitory, while hers felt like home, so her side is where we stayed. As we laid on the single bed, adjusting to each other, shipping containers were being stacked with hard thuds outside of our window.

We fell into a rhythm as our journey began: reading, sleeping and sharing stories with the other travelers. We befriended a Dutch couple who had been traveling the world for six years in their modified Toyota Land Cruiser. They called themselves “overlanders.”

The big excitement involved emergency drills, where we would rush through hundreds of meters of container-made ravines and water-sealed doors, up a five-story metal staircase on the ship’s outer edge to the escape vessel at the stern. We spent our afternoons camped out next to the espresso machine. One night, the Filipino crew hosted karaoke, after a traditional meal of sinigang and breaded fish.

All the idleness meant that Liz and I had no choice but to get to know each other. Mundane interactions turned into deep dialogues about our pasts. Hearing the captain tell a story about sending money home to his daughter led Liz and me into a long conversation about our relationship to money and how it has evolved over time. Every day on the ship felt like a month of dating in New York. Over those 10 days, we spent more than 160 hours awake together, shared two dozen meals and made out more than the average couple does in five months.

By the third day, I told Liz I loved her. By the fifth, we were talking about the future. By the eighth, we were arguing.

She said I didn’t consider her needs. I was pressuring her to be social when she needed time alone. I wanted her to see things my way and wasn’t listening. In turn, I thought she wasn’t accepting the reality of where we were. We just stared at each other in our small room. There was nowhere to go.

If we had been back in New York, I would have left and met my best friend at a neighborhood bar to complain about her. He would have supported me, and I would have felt entitled to move on, repeating the dating cycle I had been stuck in for more than a decade.

On the ship, however, there was no escape. I walked to the outdoor deck underneath the bridge and sat on a metal box filled with life vests while she stayed in the room. For the whole afternoon I just sat there, replaying our conversations.

There were moments she had told me she needed space; I just hadn’t heard. Did we really need to be more social? Where did that come from? Why did I feel that way? There was no one to talk to, to tell me I was right or wrong. The conversations in my head felt so familiar, repeated from past relationships where I blamed the other person and moved on, patterns that suddenly felt so obvious. I had never allowed myself to move slowly enough to truly understand what was being said. I never recognized the gap between what I said, what I did and, most importantly, what I wanted.

Hours later, as the sun set, I walked back through the windowless corridor, entered our room and sat down next to her on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I am too,” she said.

We fell asleep on her single bed.

Two days later, we arrived in Liverpool, England. In ship time, it was almost our one-year anniversary. We checked ourselves into a four-star hotel, ordered room service and watched a bad movie.

I looked at Liz. I loved her laugh, her red sweatshirt. Everything was perfect.

On the plane back to New York the next day, we opened a bottle of champagne. A few weeks later, we went to Liz’s astrologer for our first relationship reading.

“You’re a match,” the astrologer said.

My Aries, Liz’s Aquarius, the rising sign and the sun and the moon were all on our side.

A few months after we returned, our New York apartment leases expired simultaneously, and we decided to move in together. Then we got engaged. And more recently, as the coronavirus brought our city and country to a terrifying standstill, Liz and I decamped for my family’s home in Victoria, British Columbia, where the two of us (and her brother!) are all, as I write this, quarantined in a small house across the street from where I grew up.

It’s OK. We don’t mind isolating ourselves. For us, it made all the difference.

Dev Aujla, who lives in New York, is the author of the book, “50 Ways to Get a Job: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Work on Your Terms.”

Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.

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Updated April 11, 2020

This is a difficult question, because a lot depends on how well the virus is contained. A better question might be: “How will we know when to reopen the country?” In an American Enterprise Institute report, Scott Gottlieb, Caitlin Rivers, Mark B. McClellan, Lauren Silvis and Crystal Watson staked out four goal posts for recovery: Hospitals in the state must be able to safely treat all patients requiring hospitalization, without resorting to crisis standards of care; the state needs to be able to at least test everyone who has symptoms; the state is able to conduct monitoring of confirmed cases and contacts; and there must be a sustained reduction in cases for at least 14 days.

The Times Neediest Cases Fund has started a special campaign to help those who have been affected, which accepts donations here. Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities using a numbers-based system, has a running list of nonprofits working in communities affected by the outbreak. You can give blood through the American Red Cross, and World Central Kitchen has stepped in to distribute meals in major cities. More than 30,000 coronavirus-related GoFundMe fund-raisers have started in the past few weeks. (The sheer number of fund-raisers means more of them are likely to fail to meet their goal, though.)

If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

If you’re sick and you think you’ve been exposed to the new coronavirus, the C.D.C. recommends that you call your healthcare provider and explain your symptoms and fears. They will decide if you need to be tested. Keep in mind that there’s a chance — because of a lack of testing kits or because you’re asymptomatic, for instance — you won’t be able to get tested.

It seems to spread very easily from person to person, especially in homes, hospitals and other confined spaces. The pathogen can be carried on tiny respiratory droplets that fall as they are coughed or sneezed out. It may also be transmitted when we touch a contaminated surface and then touch our face.

No. Clinical trials are underway in the United States, China and Europe. But American officials and pharmaceutical executives have said that a vaccine remains at least 12 to 18 months away.

Unlike the flu, there is no known treatment or vaccine, and little is known about this particular virus so far. It seems to be more lethal than the flu, but the numbers are still uncertain. And it hits the elderly and those with underlying conditions — not just those with respiratory diseases — particularly hard.

If the family member doesn’t need hospitalization and can be cared for at home, you should help him or her with basic needs and monitor the symptoms, while also keeping as much distance as possible, according to guidelines issued by the C.D.C. If there’s space, the sick family member should stay in a separate room and use a separate bathroom. If masks are available, both the sick person and the caregiver should wear them when the caregiver enters the room. Make sure not to share any dishes or other household items and to regularly clean surfaces like counters, doorknobs, toilets and tables. Don’t forget to wash your hands frequently.

Plan two weeks of meals if possible. But people should not hoard food or supplies. Despite the empty shelves, the supply chain remains strong. And remember to wipe the handle of the grocery cart with a disinfecting wipe and wash your hands as soon as you get home.

Yes, but make sure you keep six feet of distance between you and people who don’t live in your home. Even if you just hang out in a park, rather than go for a jog or a walk, getting some fresh air, and hopefully sunshine, is a good idea.

That’s not a good idea. Even if you’re retired, having a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds so that your money keeps up with inflation, or even grows, makes sense. But retirees may want to think about having enough cash set aside for a year’s worth of living expenses and big payments needed over the next five years.

Watching your balance go up and down can be scary. You may be wondering if you should decrease your contributions — don’t! If your employer matches any part of your contributions, make sure you’re at least saving as much as you can to get that “free money.”