Strategies To Protect Your Relationship

Partners, even those in long-term relationships, can have very different coping styles when it comes to dealing with the painful uncertainties of Covid 19.  

One may be more purposeful and proactive in moments of crisis, while the other is more passive and fatalistic.

However, if you and your partner don’t take the same preventative health measures during the pandemic, one of you can easily feel like your safety is by being compromised.

Does the following exchange sound familiar?

You are underreacting. We should limit contact with others and stay home as much as possible.
No, I’m not.  You are overreacting. The chances of catching the virus are slim.

While you may be more immune to panic than your partner, neither of you is immune to the Coronavirus.

Wherever you fall on the continuum of attitudes and behaviors about the pandemic, everyone would agree that the world has been turned upside down. Each of us is left to choose for ourselves our degree of caution, while understanding our responsibility and the consequences of our actions.

How do you handle coronavirus anxiety when you and your partner have different survival styles and you are at odds?

Strategies

1. Couples must pull together and mobilize their personal strengths, even when they’re at odds.  Connect, don’t polarize.
2. Whether you’re the more anxious partner or the less anxious one, it’s important to discuss why you’re taking the precautions you see fit. Mutual understanding can help prevent arguments.
3. Make sure to deliver your ideas in a nonjudgmental and loving way.  Communicate with concern and facts.
4. Always get to the heart of the matter, which is that you care about your partner’s safety and health.
5. Be direct about your feelings.
6. Remember that it is important to make sacrifices for the greater good.
7. If you can’t decide what the best approach is for both of you, consider following the measures your state health department recommends.

Conclusions

There is not only one way to do things.  

If you and your partner clash over coping styles, it’s important to remember that both of you (within reason) are right, or potentially right.  Each person deserves to be heard.

Remember that you’re in this together.  Use this time to find new and creative ways to connect rather than blame each other.

Deb
Stay safe and healthy

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Here’s the place to make a list of the things you want to learn, work on, understand better and what’s worrying you.  Let me know what’s in your head.  I am listening.