Is spending too much time with your partner bad?
You’re still hanging out together, after all this time. All the time...
IF YOU WERE TO NAME
ONE MEMORABLE THING THAT BLESSED US WITH , besides a debilitating viral pandemic, of course, is the new meaning to the phrase “together forever”. It’s been months of alternating between ‘honey, I’m (always) home’, ‘by the way – I shrunk the kids because they were driving me fucking crazy’ and other forms of fear and loathing under seemingly endless restrictions.
When you’re in a relationship, it’s easy to lose track of how much time you spend with your partner. row in a lockdown like ours, and you’re spending all day, every day, with one person.
It can be emotionally taxing, even if you really love them – but that’s usually only under the best of circumstances.
Life under lockdown during a global pandemic certainly doesn’t
t that description, and in fact, it’s probably le even the most die-hard romantics reconsidering the single life.
I mean, Rapunzel did long for her one true love, but I guarantee that if you were to lock them up together for 90 days and he quickly dashed to the shops, his ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair’ upon his return would be met with a swi ‘not today, Satan.’
All over the world, spouses were forced into being at home all day, and many unmarried couples suddenly found themselves together 24/7, whether they liked it or not.
e result? A lot of side-eyeing, constantly asking yourself ‘why are they like this?’ and without a doubt, occasional thoughts about doing something – using glue in their food? – to keep your partner’s mouth shut while chewing. It’s been a painfully stark reminder that spending too much time together can be too much of a good thing. I’ll tell you why.
As humans, we’ve evolved with a drive to share our lives with a single partner – but that doesn’t mean the entire day, every single day. Our hunter-gatherer forefathers and mothers on the savannah formed pair-bonds, but they parted in the morning to go about their separate tasks. So did our ancestors on the farm. For hundreds of thousands of years, even the most committed couples have been uttering some version of this basic romantic principle: ‘I vow to be with you through your sickness and health, to have and to hold from this day forward, but also – to let go on occasion.’
And for those still not convinced, there are some pretty good reasons why spending too much time with your partner is a recipe for disaster.
Missing someone is a sign you love them. Plus, the reunion a er time apart is a great feeling. Spending every second together means you no longer know what it’s like when they aren’t around and that’ll make any impending separation a lot harder to deal with. So say those goodbyes and see-you-laters. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Even if you’re the closest couple on the earth, you’re both still individuals, and it’s important to remember to keep your sense of self. It’s great to have another half you can always count on, but at the same time, if you’ve lost your identity outside of your relationship, you could end up resenting each other, which we all know is never a good thing.
Codependence is problematic, because, over time, it can negatively a ect your social and your working life. You could begin to lose your interest in other activities and meeting other people. Don’t be that person that ditches all their friends when they nd a new signi cant other to date.
You’ll run out of things to talk about. If you go to the same restaurants, watch every movie and spend all your free time together, what are you going to talk about? You could chat about current events or your future plans, but sometimes time apart is necessary – even if it’s just for the excitement of lling your partner in on something funny that happened.
Every relationship gets to the point where nothing is really new anymore, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s only dangerous if you aren’t even comfortable anymore – you’re just bored. Spending too much time with someone can make them boring, especially when it seems that there’s nothing more to discover. Hold on to the mystery! And remember, when it comes to spending time with each other, quality over quantity should always win.