“Can your marriage survive the coronavirus?” asks CNN.
“How to avoid a lockdown divorce,” advises the Spectator.
“This is the secret to successful self-isolation with a partner; Spoiler: It’s not going to be easy,” warns Stylist.
“Coronavirus: Divorce rates in US could see spike if couples are forced to stay indoors for long, warn experts,” MEAWW predicts.
“Does the pandemic have you questioning your marriage?” asks my co-author, Susan Pease Gadoua on Psychology Today.
“Will coronavirus intimacy lead to a baby boom? Or a divorce tsunami?” wonders the Washington Post.
While the coupled and married among us are wondering if their relationship will make it, singles looking for love are wondering, “Is this the end of my love life?” as they contemplate weeks or months having to share hummus recipes and Skyping tarot readings with a potential love interest before they can meet IRL
Clearly, the coronavirus pandemic is creating a certain amount of hell for people no matter if they are single or coupled.
But, it also may offer people a reset on their romantic decisions, and if there’s such a thing as a silver lining to a pandemic, this may be it.
We’ve already seen huge shifts in the ways people live, love, parent and marry. Here’s how I predict the coronavirus pandemic will impact our romantic relationships.
Moving toward ‘slow love’
As if dating apps haven’t already frustrated people looking for love, and as if our love affair with our cellphones hasn’t already kept us from engaging IRL with others, the social distancing and sheltering-in-place most of us are experiencing has forced us to be creative to stay in touch with friends, families, partners and would-be lovers. Many online partner-seekers have started video-dating to get to know each other better.
It’s not quite a return to the old ways of a long courtship; it’s more an expansion of the idea, what biological anthropologist Helen Fisher calls “slow love,” which millennials seem to have already embraced.
Since coupledom is so prized, many people easily slide into relationships that aren’t good fits, which is what Jennifer Gauvain discovered while researching her 2010 book, How Not to Marry the Wrong Guy — 30 percent of the divorced women she surveyed knew they were marrying the wrong man but tied the knot anyway.
Slow love may change that, and could lead to people finding better matches, offers Dawoon Kang, CEO of the dating site Coffee Meets Bagel:
“In this swipe-based world, we’ve become so used to writing someone off within the first few seconds. Maybe take the time to go deeper with one person at a time — give them a proper chance. Slow dating can be a faster way to get to the type of genuine connections you might be looking for.”
It also can help you realize, nope, he’s just not my guy.
As Fisher says, “We can all learn from people who don’t want to waste a lot of time doing things that are going nowhere.”
Rethinking the need for a romantic partner
Just as many singles have been forced to slow down their search for love, some, after weeks of self-quarantining with time to self-care and Zoom happy hours with friends, may come to a different realization — maybe I don’t need a romantic partner after all.
Similarly, married or cohabiting couples, forced to spend so much time with each other, are seeing not-so-wonderful side of their partners that may be causing tensions.
“A quarantine experience, particularly where there are underlying issues of resentment and poor communication, could be devastating to a marital relationship” notes Los Angeles divorce attorney Laura Wasser.
There’s a long history of couples breaking up in the aftermath of disasters. But we haven’t experienced a disaster quite like this, that has kept us holed up for weeks on end.
“[F]or me, the unsettling discomfort comes in the discoveries I’m making about a man I’ve been married to for more than two decades,” writes columnist Petula Dvorak.
My prediction is that a lot of people will start to question the idealization of marriage, the pressure to be romantically coupled and the stigmatizing of being single. They’ll also question the idea of a soul mate or “the one,” especially if they moved in with or married someone who they thought checked all the boxes. And the ones who still long for that just may be much more conscious about their choices.
Rethinking what romantic relationships look like
While some may begin to reassess their romantic relationships, or the need to have one — or not — others may look at their challenging shelter-in-place togetherness and think, I can’t wait for things to get back to normal. Meaning they or their partner or both go back to their workplaces, and enjoy some time together but not 24/7.
But what if “back to normal” doesn’t happen for a long time — if ever? Many workplaces may decide to keep people working remotely. Then what?
As so many articles predict (see above), a good number of couples may be heading toward splitsville.
But, there’s another way. Rather than break up or divorce, why not transform your relationship into something else, like a live apart together relationship where they have their place, you have yours, and you have your time together and apart —pandemic or not.
Before the coronavirus crisis arrive, many people questioned live apart together relationships — why even get married if you’re not going to live together? Lots of reasons, as I addressed before.
Perhaps a few weeks of 24/7 togetherness has changed some of their minds.
Becoming a LAT or apartner, as my friend, Montreal filmmaker Sharon Hyman, calls them, is especially attractive to older women who want love, sex and companionship, but are just not willing to give up their freedom for that.
The coronavirus pandemic is testing us as nothing ever has before. We have a chance to rethink our priorities, how we live and love, and seek out ways to create our most authentic life.
May you find yours.
Want to learn how to individualize your marriage? (Of course you do!) Read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). You can support your local indie bookstore (please do) or order it on Amazon. And we’re now on Audible.
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