Couples Coping Mechanism during lockdown is an essential requirement to define a healthy ecosystem at home and for the mental well-being.
The coronavirus lockdown has ushered dramatic changes to our daily lives. Our coping mechanisms — hanging out with friends, shopping at the mall, exercising at the gym — have been ripped away from us.
For some people, that means disturbances in sleep, while for others it might mean engaging in avoidance behaviors, difficulty concentrating, or depression. All of these things can lead to conflict in a relationship.
The lockdown has led to changes in relationship roles. Perhaps one partner has suddenly become the primary caregiver while the children are home from school and another has become the sole breadwinner with all the stress of work and an extra insecurity of losing a job plus the salary cuts.
Conflict can emerge or worsen when couples don’t have control over that definition.
Another thing is that a changed routine might impact a couple’s sex life. When the kids are constantly around and things are generally more stressful, it can have an impact on decision making and time spent together as a couple.
And when the couple is together, they might experience lots of pressure to have a satisfying experience, which naturally inhibits the satisfactory experience.
I think couples who live apart have perhaps been better equipped to manage social distancing because their relationship, in terms of the roles and the amount of time they see each other, hasn’t substantially changed as much as the couples who see each other all the time.
The couples living apart already have some strategies in place and negotiation techniques built in to manage that.
In addition, those couples who are separated geographically have already had to identify ways to make the technology work for them and built skills about how to talk to each other at a distance.
Some strategies a couple could use to ease/navigate conflict during self-isolation
Couples best thrive when there is a healthy space between them.
But due to lockdown, couples are thrown into close quarters with enhanced social distancing and stay at home enforcement.
Most couples aren’t used to being knitted together, in the same space, 24×7. That can be stressful for some people, more than others. This situation has created a higher rate of conflict. There is a lot of toxic buildup due to no place to vent out and thus leading to anxiety.
You have to work on reducing anxiety. This is about your individual anxiety. You need to identify your feelings, understand what is creating tensions and then need to work on that to bring that anxiety down so that you can have productive interactions.
Ways to Naturally Reduce Anxiety
- Regular exercise for your physical and emotional health.
- Get some restful sleep.
- Meditate.
- Eat a healthy nourishing diet.
- Practice deep breathing.
- Find reasons to keep yourself involved and to make you happy at the end of the day.
- In these times of shared living learn to respect each other’s time and space.
Related Article: How to treat anxiety naturally
Learn the Art of Mindfulness
- In these tough times, care a little more to make the other feel loved.
- Take efforts to improve communication with each other. Partner-in-life, should talk a lot and be involved with each other.
While not necessary you would always understand everything of your partner’s work, but being involved with their challenges, how they feel about different milestones, and each one donning the hat of a coach, mentor and guide, for the other is a best way to forge healthy and happy relationship . - Be supportive partners, sharing your professional and personal challenges and achievements.
- Don’t do things in isolation; you can do things together as a couple to develop more intimacy with each other.
- Avoid conflicts. Engage yourself in things that keeps you happy and busy with your time.
- It’s also about acknowledging that your partner is doing the best they can with what they have at the time and operating from a place of good intent.
- You can do video streaming and exercise as common couple-friendly WFH activities.
- Help your partners reconnect to hobbies, video-calling friends and family, gradually easing the discomfort of the stay at home enforcement.
- In terms of improving sexual connection, instead of putting expectation on super huge moments, take that interaction down to something subtle throughout the whole day. Maybe you’re just rubbing backs or holding hands or sitting next to each other the whole day. It’s a continued physical connection instead of putting a lot of emphasis on bigger moments.
- For couples who are living apart, find time to call, text and emote to keep things healthy and to maintain intimacy for a healthy mind and body.
Appreciating that no one size fits all, being patient, realizing that this is not something that everybody handles in the same manner or feels the same way about, is the wisdom that you need to gain while understanding your partner.
Related Article: Getting Started with Mindfulness
WFH, A Novelty is a Bygone
WFH, up until the start of the pandemic, was a novelty. The very reasons why it was appreciated is now a cause for anxiety.
For some couples, this present format of WFH is not sustainable, losing its shine, already. For others the opposite is true.
I believe that the quarantine can have a very positive, in fact a wonderful outcome for some couples who look at the lockdown as an opportunity to share more, do more, catching up on the lost moments of life, those that easily get swept away by the pressures of work, time with kids and demands of, well, simply living.
And for those its really a tough life, I don’t think the pandemic will lead to more divorces because mass unemployment means no one can afford to leave.
I think we’ll see more arrangements where couples naturally physically separate themselves in their space and emotionally surrender themselves to unleash their stress and to make a situation win win for both.
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