- The coronavirus pandemic, and the resultant social isolation, has disrupted life around the world. Working parents are under a lot of stress as they try to balance childcare and their jobs.
- The relationships that will survive the social isolation era are characterized by flexibility. Each partner is able to adapt to new roles and tasks within the family. By contrast, more rigid relationships may buckle under the pressure.
- One strategy to help families navigate the crisis situation is to openly discuss their priorities for the next day and week. It's a way to make sure everyone's voice is heard, and everyone's needs are attended to.
- A relationship expert provided Business Insider with a worksheet that couples can use to talk about their individual priorities, and where they might converge or conflict.
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A client recently recounted for Rachel Sussman an argument she'd had with her husband.
The husband mentioned offhandedly that he scheduled a full day of work calls, and would — sorry, babe!— be unavailable to help take care of their young kids. The kids were home, since the coronavirus outbreak had forced schools to shutter and shift to online learning.
The woman was enraged. "I have conference calls, too!" she told her husband. "You can't do that without checking with me."
Sussman, a couples therapist in New York City, said these types of arguments are common — to be expected, actually — in the global pandemic we're facing now. The health crisis has prompted another crisis within many dual-earner homes, in which couples are scrambling to figure out how to get their work done remotely while making sure their kids don't go unfed or unbathed, and don't scream too loudly while they're on a videoconference.
A couple's ability to navigate this crisis, and maybe even come out the other side stronger, hinges on their flexibility.
Especially for working parents, the social isolation era is a make-or-break moment. The pandemic has turned everyone's lives upside down, and the couples who stay standing are able to adapt to changing circumstances. They might even use the crisis as an opportunity to explore new roles and responsibilities for themselves within the family. By contrast, couples who are rigid in their thinking about who should do what around the house may not be able to withstand the pressure.
The partnership that buckles entirely under stress and chaos is the exception, not the rule, Sussman said. "Most couples can do this."
The ideal outcome of social isolation is that relationships get stronger
The fairy-tale ending of social isolation is that partners grow closer. They learn about themselves, and about each other. They figure out different ways of getting things done as a team.
Some of the friends and coworkers I spoke to seem to be on this trajectory. One person's spouse has stopped traveling for work because of the outbreak and she's delighted in seeing him teach their daughter. Someone with a young son said he and his wife were exhausted and that, at the end of the day, he sometimes wonders what he's accomplished. But the last few weeks have reminded him that he has a great partner and a relationship that's strong enough to be flexible when things don't go according to plan.
"It is an extraordinarily powerful time for reshuffling and reconsidering roles," said Eli Finkel, a psychologist and a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and the author of "The All-or-Nothing Marriage." Finkel and his wife have been trying to homeschool their two kids while everyone's stuck in the house.
When both partners are working from home and daily routines are disrupted, it's an opportunity to think about who does which tasks and why. Maybe the person who typically rinses the dishes after dinner because he's better at it now has a greater workload, and has to pass that chore to his partner.
That's the ideal outcome. The nightmare ending of social isolation, in a relationship context at least, is that couples grow farther apart, sometimes irreversibly so. Simmering resentments boil over; minor conflicts blow up. "One possibility is that major stressors like this make bad relationships worse and make good relationships better," Finkel said. "If there are fissures or cracks in the relationship," and that relationship is thrown into crisis, "those cracks break all the way through."
A perfectly equitable relationship isn't always possible in a crisis situation
Life right now is uncomfortable. That's especially true among couples who've had to deviate from their typical roles within the family, picking up more childcare duties or delegating some to their partner. But discomfort isn't a threat to a relationship, per se. It's more about how couples handle it.
Part of dealing with discomfort is simply talking about it.
Couples that have never openly discussed things like whose career should take priority and why may be having a harder time right now. "What happens in a crisis is it forces couples to have those conversations that, quite frankly, should have been happening all along," said Jennifer Petriglieri, an associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD in France and the author of "Couples That Work." In particular, a crisis situation exposes our unspoken assumptions about our partners, their jobs, and the role they should play in the family.
Libby Leffler told me that the social isolation era has been an opportunity for her and her husband to rethink what really matters to them. Leffler is a technology executive who's worked at Google and Facebook; her husband is an emergency room physician. Their current situation is extreme: Leffler is pregnant and, even before the pandemic, she felt too sick to leave the house much.
While Leffler wasn't feeling well, her husband picked up most of the household responsibilities. Leffler has always been "someone who believes that there should be this very equitable split of work in the home." The past nine months have shown her that's not always possible. In fact, she said, "most things don't have to get done" as meticulously as they always do. If the laundry goes unfolded or the dirty dishes stay in the sink for a few hours, there will likely be few real consequences.
The best way to navigate this period is to ask your partner what they need right now — and listen
Couples who haven't ever taken the time to explore their expectations for the relationship are hardly doomed to divorce.
Petriglieri said many couples mistakenly assume that they'll need hours — and a couple bottles of wine — to have a successful conversation about the things that matter to them. But brief check-ins work just fine, she said. In fact, they can be a great way to "build that muscle" for the future, and get into the habit of checking in with your partner.
Petriglieri's family — she and her husband have two children, ages 10 and 11 — has been taking the first 10 minutes of dinner every night to share their priorities for the following day, whether those priorities involve work, school, or a personal pursuit. (You can find a worksheet that prompts those conversations on Petriglieri's website, where she's running a "Survival Series" for couples juggling work and home.)
Beyond the specific list that the family generates, there's value in giving everyone at the table a voice. What do they need from the rest of the family right now? Petriglieri's advice to couples struggling through this crisis is to let go of pre-pandemic habits. "To just recreate that routine" from two months ago, she said, "is sticking a framework on a completely different reality."
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