How To Not End Quarantine in Divorce:
A Therapist’s Guide to Relationship Survival During Lockdown
As a therapist and a borderline optimist I tend to generally subscribe to the old saying “everything in life happens for a reason”
…but what the fuck right?
In the past few months, life took a really dramatic turn that most of us were not expecting, and certainly not prepared for.
Leisurely browsing the aisles of Target feels like a distant memory for me now, as we gurgle hand sanitizer, and stockpile toilet paper like Charmin drug lords.
China announced that when their lockdown was lifted, there was a massive spike in divorce rates. Which I can understand since my husband appears to have recently taken up mouth breathing.
Hence, the question I seem to be getting more often these days: how do I not kill my significant others before this whole thing ends?
Before you start goggling “how to hide the body” here are 5 painless strategies to try that just might save your relationship during lockdown:
1. Name your fight style
For most of us, conflict is a lot like dancing; we only know one move and we rely on it heavily.
We tend to break into two groups of conflict styles: those who withdrawal, and those who pursue.
Withdrawers, like myself, tend to totally “log offline” when conflicts arises. This can look like getting quiet, freezing, looking disengaged, avoiding, defensiveness, placating or needing to leave the room. The goal here is to ultimately keep the peace, but it tends to move you further away emotionally from your partner, rather than closer.
Pursuers are the exact opposite. They tend to pursue by getting louder, demanding, reminding, complaining, asking lots of questions and blaming. The goal here is to attempt to reconnect, quickly, but it often causes your partner to move as far away from you as physically possible.
While neither style is inherently wrong, they both have their challenges when it comes to moving through conflict.
Openly talk about which style (pursue/withdrawal) you are with your partner. Talk about where you might have learned this style of conflict resolution. Ask your partner what they might need in order to avoid relying so heavily on their withdrawal/pursuit tendencies. Listen to understand their patterns, without judgement or criticism.
Knowing your patterns can ultimately create more awareness around how to approach conflict with more ease and less horrible “dance moves”.
2. Give each other “sick days”
This whole COVID situation really took the air out of one of my favorite activities; playing hookie. So now that we are all at home full time, we don’t have much space to truly reset, hence the need for an occasional “sick day”. In my home, we have allotted each other 4 sick days per year, which I firmly believe has been the best relationship choice we have made thus far.
A sick day is a day (of 1/2 day) where you get to fully tap out of any and all responsibilities, with no prerequisite of actually needing to be sick in order to do so. This means no dishes, no children, and most importantly, no guilt. A sick day is an opportunity to metaphorically and physically refill your cup, so you can be more fully present with your family, your partner and your job, during a time when they might need you the most.
Please discuss this concept in depth with your partner before actually faking illness to avoid the laundry, however.
3. Change the location of your fights
We tend to have informally designated spaces in our home where conflict naturally seems to take place. This might be your kitchen table or your bedroom, or maybe even the same two seats on your living room couch. I like to refer to these spaces as our danger zones.
If you notice you keep coming back to the same spaces to try and move through conflict, simply change up your environment. It sounds almost too simple to have any impact, but when we pick a more neutral space to revisit hard conversations, we often shift our thinking patterns as well, making the charged topic a little less powerful. Try your patio or garden, or maybe even your bathroom, as I firmly believe its much harder to argue while in your bathtub.
4. Commute time
Although I bitched and moaned about the Bay Area traffic for years, the one thing it allowed me to do was wind down before entering my home after a long day of work. Podcasts and loud rap music was often my saving grace between the chaos of work and the chaos of home. With COVID, this sacred space that we used to get to gear up for the day or wind down before the evening has virtually vanished, meaning we lost a very important aspect of our lives; transition time.
If time and space allows it, try creating a pseudo “commute” into your day. Create ritual for your morning that you do before you jump into your day that doesn’t include your partner or family. Make some time when ending your workday to really release and let go before “re-entering” your home life for the evening.
Transitioning allows for code switching, which is the process of shifting your mind and presence to appropriately adapt to different environments. This is so vital when our work lives and personal lives have become so completely blended, creating a smoother transition into the other roles you hold in your life, like partner, parent or boss.
5. Compliment board
We spend an awful lot of time telling our partners what they need to improve on, and tend to assume they already know all the good stuff, but this pattern can cause resentment and ambivalence.
Research on couples time and time again tells us that the more positive feedback we hear within relationships, the more likely we are to try harder at being better partners.
So whip out that ol’ corkboard you probably have stashed somewhere in your garage, find some post it notes, and start writing down some thoughtful compliments to pin up for the whole family to see.
Note the small things, the ones that so often go unspoken about. Share the gratitude you feel but somehow never find a moment to express. Focus on the ways you are being supported, loved and cared for.
This way you have something to look back on throughout your day, reminding you that even when it all feels so hard, you are still doing something right.