Review

Culture

Film & TV

Romance

13 May 2023

6 min read

What’s love got to do with it?

Watching Lovesick, a surprisingly profound comedy about chlamydia, prompts Beatrice Scudeler to consider permanence in relationships.

Beatrice Scudeler

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here.

A row of young people stand and talk to each other

Lovesick's cast.

Netflix.

This article contains spoilers for those who have not seen Lovesick.

I was working on my English MA in 2019, just before the start of the pandemic, when a friend first told me about a Netflix show that had just aired its final season, Lovesick. The premise, I will grant, was not the most inspiring one for an unmarried, socially conservative graduate student whose only experience of dating had been an unfortunate three-day courtship with her at-the-time best male university friend.

In Lovesick, Dylan Witter is the usual twenty-something-year-old: out of university, sort of purposeless, dating a string of women he thinks he’s deeply in love with, but breaking up with each of them no later than at the four-month mark. Unsurprisingly, he is diagnosed with chlamydia; shaken by the realisation that eleven years of sex out of marriage has left him with little more than sadness and a disease, he decides to meet with all of his ex-girlfriends, both to warn them that he may have given them chlamydia, but most importantly to try and figure out why he can’t find permanence in his relationships.

From this point, Lovesick spends three seasons going back and forth between Dylan’s past and his present, building towards the final confrontation, at the end of season three, with his best friend Evie, with whom, he eventually realises, he has been in love for seven years. Along the way, we meet Dylan and Evie’s other best friend, Luke, who proposed to his girlfriend while still at university, was rejected, and now lives a sexually reckless lifestyle, as well as Angus, the kind-of-forgotten friend, who married a woman he didn’t really love, had sex with a maths student turned one-time stripper, divorced his wife Helen, and is now having a child with ex-stripper Holly.

By the time we are out of university or school, it is unsurprising that our sense of certainty and purpose should crumble, when suddenly the burden of finding meaning is solely on our shoulders.

Based on this description alone, you’d be forgiven if you thought this show quite a depressing drama, and certainly not one worth your time. In fact, it is a surprisingly profound, honest comedy about our generation’s struggle with the false promise of freedom, and our deep-seated desire for permanence, for a more sacramental view of reality. Dylan’s trials in his youth all point him towards the realisation that making commitments (whether that’s sticking to a career and becoming actually good at your job or finding permanence in a romantic relationship) is ultimately the one thing that makes life worth living. The writers of Lovesick would perhaps not put it this way, but this truly is a show about people who desperately need God, and fail without His guidance.

The same applies to all of us, to those who are not Christians, but also to those of us who profess Christianity, but live as though we are atomised and self-sufficient (which we can all be tempted to do). When we are children, we have our parents to guide us; they are not a replacement for God, but they provide some guidance. Later, at school and university, it’s our teachers. By the time we are out of university or school, it is unsurprising that our sense of certainty and purpose should crumble, when suddenly the burden of finding meaning is solely on our shoulders.

If we go to church, if we have a community in Christ to support us, the burden is somewhat lifted. But Dylan, Evie, Luke, and Angus have no such thing. They rely on each other alone, and, since they are lost, all they can do is commiserate each other about how difficult adult life is.

Even so, the suggestion is there in Lovesick that there are moral standards external to our conscience, that there is something sacred and greater than us. In the very first episode of the show, Angus begins his ill-fated marriage to Helen. They get married in what is presumably an Anglican church, and Dylan makes a curious remark that, even though he’s ‘not religious’, a wedding in a church seems more appropriate. He laughs it off by suggesting that you have to sit somewhere hard and cold to really enjoy the ceremony, but it’s clear that he’s talking about more than this.

What he’s experiencing is an intuition which I would guess is still in so many of us even in our post-Christian society, that is, the intuition that there is something sacred about promising to love and care for another person for the rest of your life, that it’s not merely a contract. It is a duty to uphold such a promise, and this is a kind of promise that ties us in love to what some people may call ‘the universe’, though what we really mean, who we really mean, is Christ.

They have chosen to make an attempt at permanence, not to dismiss adult life as a senseless heap of broken people.

Sure enough, the rest of the show is about our protagonists watching all their significant relationships fall apart, and trying to rebuild them. I will have to spoil the ending for you, but that does not really matter, as it’s fairly obvious which direction the show is building towards from the very first episode. Angus is left alone as Holly leaves him, but vows to find a new job in order to provide for his unborn child. Luke stops engaging in promiscuous behaviour (sort of, he has seven years of trauma to deal with, after all) and begins a precarious, but genuinely caring relationship. After being hurt and hurting many people, Dylan and Evie decide that, in spite of all the heartbreak, and after a broken engagement, it is still valuable to make ourselves vulnerable to suffering for the sake of loving another person.

The show ends with Dylan telling Evie that he loves her for the first time, and you can tell it’s the first time in his life that he has really meant it. They are not married yet, but we can guess that’s what will happen next. They have chosen to make an attempt at permanence, not to dismiss adult life as a senseless heap of broken people, but rather to decide to take away some of the brokenness by growing up, making a commitment, and standing firm.

To marry during a pandemic, in the wake of my parents’ divorce, and uncertain about our future, was at once the maddest, and the best decision we ever made.

Something I have not yet told you is that the first time I watched this show was when I first started dating my husband. Although I could not relate to the endless dating, I could relate to the fear, the uncertainty of whether the other person wants to care for you in the way we want to care for them.

Not long after, I told my now husband that, if he didn’t think our relationship would lead to marriage, I’d much rather we break up and move on. I did not want Dylan and Evie’s seven years of suffering. I wanted marriage, I wanted commitment, I wanted a family. We did get married, around a year later, and after a year of marriage I watched Lovesick again. Now as a married woman, and having gone through the hardships of moving country twice, having a child after a difficult delivery, and facing problems in our extended family, I appreciated more deeply what a sacred and courageous thing it is to commit to sticking by one person, no matter what.

To marry and have children, knowing how ruthless and un-beauteous the world can be, is exactly the act of bravery our society so desperately needs. I watched Lovesick for the third time just recently, leading up to our second wedding anniversary. It was my husband’s first time watching, and we could not help but reminisce about our courtship, and how, to marry during a pandemic, in the wake of my parents’ divorce, and uncertain about our future, was at once the maddest, and the best decision we ever made

So, yes, watch Lovesick, even though it’s technically just a comedy about chlamydia. It may spur you to reflect on the real meaning of love: the fearless and unconditional caring for the other, regardless of their brokenness, but rather because of it. After all, that is how God loves us.

Explainer

Culture

Freedom of Belief

Migration

11 November 2024

7 min read

From Nigeria’s killing fields to Europe’s shores, the data behind the domino effect

While Nigeria thrives, some left-behind are desperate to escape.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria

Fatal attacks map.

ORFA.

Just as every coin has two sides, every soul contains the equal capacity for good and evil. Just like affairs of the soul, migration has the ability to strengthen or weaken societies.

Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has one of the world’s largest and most professionally distinguished diasporas. Over 17 million Nigerians live in other countries. The most famous members of the Nigerian diaspora, figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anthony Joshua, John Boyega, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Wally Adeyemo, have achieved stardom thanks to talents that impact or entertain millions of people globally.

However, these famous figures merely represent the glorious one percent of the Nigerian diaspora. Their success can easily distract observers from the grim reality of why so many Nigerians desperately seek to leave a country known for producing world changers.

Seeking data on violence

In October 2019, researchers at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa started a project exploring the nature and impacts of of religious violence in Nigeria. The project spanned four years and generated many significant findings. Terror groups in Nigeria killed 31,000 civilians in 7,000 attacks in just four years, the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) accounting for 39 per cent of these killings (a figure dwarfing the killings perpetrated by ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates), So called “land-based community attacks,” a concept referring to instances when actors like FEM invade small Christian farming settlements to kill, rape, and abduct Christians and burn their homes, accounted for 82 per cent of civilian killings in the study, Christian death tolls far exceeding Muslim death tolls (2.7 Christians killed for every 1 Muslim killed) in the reporting period, and 6.5 times as many Christian murders compared to Muslim murders relative to average state populations.

The methodology of the study set out to find data on all the people, regardless of their religion, negatively affected by terrorist violence. However, with every new batch of data collected, disturbing patterns emerged. Since the 2009 birth of the infamous Boko Haram insurgency, global media coverage of the terrorist violence has consistently argued Muslims rather than Christians disproportionately bear the brunt of this Islamist extremist violence. The findings of the study suggest otherwise.

ORFA data map of fatal attacks across Nigeria.

Source: ORFA.

Shouldn’t the government do something?

Historically, Nigerian governments have been reticent, even reluctant, to condemn violence in the north associated with the Fulani ethnic group. Former presidents like Muhammadu Buhari, a member of the Fulani, have even gone as far as to dismiss the issue of Fulani ethnic violence as just “cattle rustling.” However, in Nigeria, mere “cattle rustling” to some is a seriously grave situation for others.

Findings by the Observatory researchers suggest Nigerian security operatives, most of whom belong to the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups, have a suspiciously selective way of engaging with terrorist violence in northern Nigeria, often leaving Christians distinctively vulnerable. Roman Catholics in Nigeria have even accused Nigeria's military of being a jihadist force. Churches in northern Nigeria live in a constant state of terror and acutely distressing fear.

In Nigeria, the federal government alone, led by the president, has the final say on matters concerning security and the army. Incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has notably appointed far more Christians to senior government offices than his predecessor, Buhari. The Nigerian government is famously opaque. Despite its nominally democratic visage, family dynasties and networks continue to dominate political life and business affairs.

Understanding the religious geography and reaction

Religion in Nigeria is divided along geographical lines. The northern half is dominated by conservative Islam. Catholicism and Anglicanism reign supreme in the southeast. The southwest functions as a geographical melting pot of Islam (albeit a more secular variety compared to the north) and Christianity (especially Pentecostalism). The north contains a surprisingly large number of Pentecostals. Many Pentecostal pastors and choirs in the north have been kidnapped by the mercilessly violent Islamist extremists.

The overwhelming majority of Christians in Nigeria live in the southern half of the country. However, in a Nigeria which has suffered from one oppressive government after another for decades (most of these led by conservative Islamic military and civilian presidents), most Christians struggle to survive and lack the energy to speak up for their northern kin. Despite their weariness, the Southern Nigerian Church (the collective population of Christians living in the south) has a sacred responsibility to awaken and demand greater protections from the federal government and the military for Christians living in the north.

Local causes, global effect

Over the last two decades, commentators have routinely pointed to climate change as the primary factor facilitating violent encounters between Muslims and Christians. Fulani cattle herders, guided by the desire for better grazing lands for their livestock, have often encroached on land owned by Christian farmers in the north and middle regions. The findings by researchers at the Observatory suggest significantly more is going on to facilitate these violent clashes than just climate change. Ascribing the challenge of religious violence in Nigeria to just climate change provides a get-out-of-jail free card to the men of violence linked to the orchestrated killings of Christians.

Ethno-religious violence has quietly become commonplace in northern Nigerian life. The single solution capable of curbing this violence is unprecedented, cross-party, interethnic, and interreligious security reform. Strength of security affects every person in Nigeria. From the richest to the poorest, no one is immune from a sudden kidnapping, suicide bomb, or violent act of banditry negatively changing their life forever.

Nigeria's neighbours in Europe cannot afford to continue slumbering and must wake up. Readers in Europe feeling insulated from the violence the data records are just as susceptible to the shockwaves that a collapse of the Nigerian state as other West African neighbours. Such an event would imperil the security of citizens in countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece just as much as it would people living in Mali, Chad, and Cameroon.

Nigeria has never been nearer to a civil war or state collapse since the Biafra War of the late 1960s. Ethno-religious violence disproportionately targeting northern Christians is one of the greatest and most overlooked factors contributing to Nigeria's dysfunctionality. In an unprecedentedly connected world, such a collapse would, in turn, trigger further collapses. The European Union (EU) does not grasp the severity of how such a collapse would affect its own security and stability. At a time when every day brings news of small boats carrying migrants to European shores, Nigeria's collapse would trigger one of the greatest avalanches of mass migration in modern African history.

A modern Middle Passage

Nigeria has a population of over 235 million, the largest in Africa and sixth largest globally. If just 10 per cent of the population attempted to flee in the event of another civil war or a destabilising political event, that is 23 million Nigerians desperately fleeing into any country they reason might welcome them. Many of these millions would gamble by voyaging on the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean in small boats with the goal of beginning new lives in European countries. Some would inevitably perish in what might evolve into this century's Middle Passage. Nigeria’s collapse would destroy the EU by overwhelming its borders and social services. The average population of an EU country is just under 17 million, or the size of Nigeria's diaspora. The unprecedented connectedness of our world means catastrophic destabilisation in one country can have significant consequences for the stability of other countries globally. The EU has a geopolitical responsibility to invest in improving Nigeria's security situation. Abductions, killings, and displacements in Nigeria might trigger instability in Europe and beyond.

However, the collapse of Nigeria would not only destabilise the EU. ISIS affiliates like ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have a strategic interest in Nigeria's collapse, because it would open the door for them to expand their control throughout West Africa.

A team of researchers guided by the goal of better understanding terrorist violence in Nigeria simply followed the breadcrumbs of organically emergent data to show why the broader world should take seriously violence against Christians in the Giant of Africa. Living in an unprecedentedly connected world comes with new privileges and new responsibilities. To simply indulge in these new privileges without standing strong and shouldering these new responsibilities would be foolish, selfish, and nearsighted.

English poet John Donne once famously wrote,

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,  of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
Every man is a piece.

The “old self” understanding of global connectedness, ruled by selfishness and ignorance, must give way to the “new self” model of prosperity and security via proactive collaboration. For every one Okonjo-Iweala, Boyega, or Antetokounmpo, millions of Nigerians suffering from the effects of a rapidly destabilising state dream of emigrating abroad. Global Christianity and global security stakeholders each have an interest in a stable Nigeria. A stable Nigeria functions as a wellspring of human capital for the benefit of the entire world.

Donne, in the same poem, wrote,

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The world is involved in Nigeria and Nigeria is involved in the world. The death of Nigeria would pave the way for the death of the EU. The bell tolls for the EU community to awaken from decades of neglectfully overlooking its interests in a stable and secure Nigeria.