Shelter orders test strength of marriages
A few mornings a week, Kenny Siegel and Karen Chambers Siegel relive the first time they met.
Behind their threebedroom house in Oakland’s Montclair neighborhood is a small cottage that has become Karen’s office during the shelterinplace orders. It’s also become the neighborhood’s newest coffee joint. The couple met at Spinelli’s nowclosed Cole Valley location when Kenny was a barista there. One morning after the shelter order, Karen found a corner of the cottage transformed, complete with espresso machine, menu and familiar signage.
“He even went online and got the Spinelli’s logo and printed out signs he taped on the door,” Karen says. “It’s not open every day, but when it is we can order a latte or cappuccino
and he will make it for us.”
It’s one of the ways married couples, now spending significantly more time together than many are accustomed to, are trying to build something positive out of being stuck at home while the Bay Area’s shelterinplace order aims to limit the spread of the coronavirus. But while some marriages are trying to strengthen the bond between partners, others are facing big challenges arising out of the circumstance. For some, the issue is keeping boundaries in close quarters, for others it’s navigating working from home together. Then there’s the financial stress of a partner being out of work, or addressing these factors while also caring for children. It can be a lot for a marriage to withstand.
“In every crisis, couples either pull together or fall apart,” says attorney Debra R. Schoenberg, who specializes in family law. “Every reason one person decides a marriage is no longer sustainable are highlighted to significant magnitude when sheltered.”
Kenny Siegel says that the healthy dynamics of his and Karen’s marriage has helped the couple face sheltering with optimism.
An investor and stayathome dad when he’s not making coffee, Kenny is usually the one in the relationship who makes the romantic gestures, especially given his wife’s busy career as director of merchandising strategy and operations for Old Navy, she says. In their regular lives, Karen worked most days in San Francisco while Kenny managed their home. Now, after 23 years of marriage, Kenny and Karen are together every day along with their collegeage daughter and their younger daughter who is completing her senior year of high school online.
“One of the things that helped us was accepting the new reality as soon as possible,” Kenny says.
Acceptance is sometimes easier to swallow with a shot of espresso.
For Aimee Le Duc and Dana Younkin, sheltering brought two busy careers to a temporary halt. Le Duc is the foundation manager at the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society and Younkin the chef de cuisine at Boulevard restaurant, which often meant late nights for both women. The couple, who have been together for 15 years and married for five, were suddenly with each other constantly in their Mission District home with their 4yearold daughter, Colette. Le Duc says the couple have “developed a rhythm for how we support each other.”
“Early on, we were joking about all the adjustments and I said, ‘Just to be clear, there’s not going to be a bombshell,’ ” Le Duc says. “We’ve been like, ‘Today is your dark day in the forest.’ ”
Younkin jokes: “We take turns with who’s depressed. We volley it.”
Rena Ramirez and Brian Darst have learned that communication must be constant to keep their marriage balanced while managing two careers and their 3yearold daughter, Ruby, while sheltering in San Leandro.
Ramirez, the senior director of accounts and marketing for communications agency Double Forte, says that she and Darst, who works in business development at Sony PlayStation, map out their days by the hour to make sure Ruby is always seen to and that they can each get away for video meetings in the garage. They’re also starting their weekdays about two hours earlier for quiet time before Ruby wakes up.
“Right now, marriage is like being in a business with someone,” Ramirez says. “There cannot be any question about who is doing what with free time. Someone needs to prepare meals, grocery shop, landscape, the list is endless.”
Ramirez and Darst have been married for seven years and together for 12. If the shelter order had happened earlier in their marriage, it likely would have been more difficult for them to make some of these adjustments, Ramirez says.
“Because we’ve been together so long we know what pisses each other off,” Ramirez says. “We know boundaries.”
But can sheltering together help couples already faltering in their relationship? Schoenberg says that none of her firm’s 250plus open divorce filings have chosen to drop their cases because of shelter in place. In fact, she’s seen a slight uptick in people seeking divorce during the shelter order.
“I would say probably 50% of the new clients I’m talking to are coming because sheltering has put more pressure on their marriage than it can sustain,” Schoenberg says. “Many have come (and said) I had a sense our relationship had difficulties, this shelter in place has highlighted that this marriage needs to end.”
On the other hand, she has also seen an unexpected increase in couples seeking prenuptial agreements, indicating to her that people previously on the fence about marriage are now ready to take that step.
“It’s an interesting response to pandemic: If we’re going to die we’d rather hunker down together as a married couple.” Schoenberg says.
Some couples who are ready to commit have had their weddings delayed by the pandemic, like Christopher Henry Young and Cory Winter, but still want the legal protection of marriage given the uncertainty of the crisis. The couple has been engaged for two years and together almost five.
They planned to get married on July 8 in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on the anniversary of their first date. Although they have now postponed their family ceremony and reception until 2021, they still plan to file for their marriage license in San Francisco this year.
“This is a unique situation; I refused to have a postapocalyptic wedding,” Young says. Although the couple has had to be creative about how to share their studio apartment in SoMa during the workday, they say the pandemic has made them more certain they want to be married.
“Weddings are not only the culmination of our relationship, on the legal side we were ready to bind our lives together,” Young says. “I can think of no reason more pressing than the virus; we still want to get our license this year for that reason, we want to make sure legally we’re married so in case of worstcase scenarios of life we’re prepared for that.”