How Coronavirus Increased Communication with My Partner
There will be an ongoing balancing act of social distancing and increased intimacy with our loved ones. Are you ready?
Every morning you wake up with a sense of dread. You turn on the news and your anxiety level spikes.
Everything you love to do is canceled.
Your job is either in jeopardy or making you work from home. You’re scared and isolated from most of the world.
We’re all being affected by the coronavirus epidemic in different ways.
Grocery stores are running out of food. Hand sanitizer and toilet paper prices are through the roof.
You can’t go to that show you had tickets to or enjoy an organized half marathon because everything’s been canceled for a month.
How is the Coronavirus Affecting Your Relationship?
We’re all so worried about suffering from disease and the widely-spread panic that is enveloping us all. What we’re not paying attention to is how the current state of the world is directly affecting our relationships.
I’m talking specifically about relationships with significant others.
My husband was sitting slightly hunched over in a defeated-looking way with a distant look on his face the other day. I asked him what he needed and he looked up at me and said “I need you. I need to talk about how I feel. I need us to communicate about what’s going on.”
This may seem elementary, but my husband is not as good at talking about his feelings the way I am. I’m a therapist and a writer, all I do is talk about feelings.
But he has a harder time understanding what he needs. For him to recognize that he needs to feel close to me and safe during these scary times is a big deal.
Being Close in a Time of Separation and Isolation
This statement from my beloved made me realize that the coronavirus and the state of the world as we know it right now has the potential to distance us from the people we love most.
We’re asked to be physically distant from people, this whole “social isolation” thing. But what about your partner? How are you demonstrating intimacy and closeness with them?
Now more than ever is the time to increase communication between you and your partner. Mine is scared about what this outbreak means for his job. He feels helpless. We’re both trying not to give in to the panic, but it’s difficult to do when everything he is supposed to be doing is getting canceled.
My husband works in theater. As you may or may not know, all theater shows, Broadway and high schools alike are shut down for the next month, at least. This means less income for us and uncertainty about when it will come back.
He’s salaried, he still has a job for now and will hopefully weather out the storm, but it means certain sacrifices will be made. He’s trying to put on a brave face for me because I am prone to anxiety and panic, but I’m the one now trying to put on a brave face for him.
I work from home, so I’m already socially isolated for the better part of my day. My husband usually travels a lot for work, so we’re used to talking mostly by phone. But now, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. And suddenly I realize how important it is to talk about what’s going on.
It’s a Pandemic
It’s easy to focus on the pandemic that’s sweeping the world right now, both the coronavirus itself and the pandemic of fear. That fear is permeating our lives and affecting our relationships.
It’s hard to talk about how we’re feeling without making each other anxious. I’ve noticed over the last week that we communicate better when we’re doing something.
We went on a hike the other day with our dog, and it gave us the opportunity to speak freely about our fears and concerns. We were much more communicative on this walk than when we’re sitting in our apartment thinking about quarantine.
Quality Time and Communication
It’s not just the fear of the coronavirus or how it’s affecting our jobs and income that we need to talk about. Now that we’ll be spending a lot more time together, we need to figure out how to communicate better about everything.
As I mentioned before, I’m pretty good about identifying my feelings and my needs, but my husband is continuing to work on this. Which is fine. This time together will give us the chance to practice openly communicating how we’re feeling and what we need from one another.
For example, instead of coming home from work and vegging out in front of the television, I proposed that we come up with other ways to spend time together.
Since the hike was so successful, I figure there are other ways to spend more time outside now that the weather is getting nicer. We can also do things like puzzles and play games. Cleaning and organizing have now gone on our list, as well as time together spent reading and playing with our dog.
Doing these activities together allows us more time to talk about things. We talk about what our goals are, what drives us, how our day was beyond just “I wrote 20 emails and put away equipment at the shop.”
The quality time we get to spend together due to the coronavirus is bringing us closer together and increasing our level of communication. I encourage you to spend time with your significant other during this crisis and really communicate. Spend time getting to know each other more than you did before.
