How to keep your love strong during hard times
Tips from a renowned sex and relationship expert
For couples in the time of COVID-19, toughing out several long months of home confinement together can’t help but reveal “the architecture” of their relationship, says Dr. Marty Klein, a nationally renowned sex and marriage and family therapist and author.
To take the metaphor a bit further, that includes the foundation as well as any structural defects in how a couple communicates, deals with anxiety, handles conflict and makes or keeps agreements about money, parenting, time and sex, according to Klein.
“You’ve now probably asked yourself at least once: Is this the person with whom I want to face the end of the world?” Klein said.
For couples for whom the answer is “yes,” Klein has these thoughts about how they can reinforce their relationship foundation and move forward.
Q: How exactly has being in tight quarters revealed relationship faults?
A: Before we sheltered in place, there were a wide range of ways of getting over the unpleasant moments of your partner being snippy or giving you the cold shoulder for three days: You’ve got work, where you get to accomplish something, or you can see friends for lunch. But those distractions are no longer available to us now. A day being confined with someone being snippy or giving you the cold shoulder now feels like a lifetime. A cold shoulder has never been a good coping strategy, but we really don’t have the luxury of those adolescent coping strategies now.
Q: Don’t some conflicts come from partners having different ways to cope?
A: Yes, sometimes. In some couples, for example, when one person feels uncomfortable, that person wants to pull close to the other and spend time together. But the other wants to be left alone and hope that the other person can go and take care of themselves. The problem isn’t that one is wrong and the other is right; it’s if a couple hasn’t developed a routine that both are comfortable with.
Q: Is that similar to how different people are feeling about sex?
A: Yes. For couples, there are dozens of domains in which they can be similar or different from one another: One person might be a neatnik, and the other doesn’t much care, or they have different ideas about how to raise the kids. Sexuality is one of those domains.
It’s like eating and depression. When some people get depressed, they eat everything in sight, while others who get depressed forget about eating. For some people right now, they want to clean the house multiple times a day, while others are too upset to do anything.
And for some people, the first thing they want when upset is to have sex. For others, the last thing they want when upset is sex. That second group thinks, “I only enjoy sex when I’m having a good day, and right now I don’t have a job, or after a day of homeschooling the kids, I can’t even think about sex.” For other people, sex is where they turn for connection, comfort, relief and hope. Again, neither way is wrong, it’s just a problem when the two styles clash.
Q: Relationship-wise, is there any silver lining to what couples have lived through the past few months?
A: None of us knows how this continued shutdown will affect us, or what life will be like a year from now. But we can build and practice relationship skills now that will help us through the shutdown and even support our relationship afterwards, no matter what our future world looks like.