This article is extracted from “This is NOT a Second Honeymoon: Helping Couples Survive Spending A Lot of Time Together”, a book that was written by Christopher L. Smith to help couples during the COVID-19 pandemic. In his clinical work, he realized that couples being quarantined together have particular challenges. The book goes into a lot of these challenges along with strategies to survive these types of times and even to have their relationship thrive. We will be sharing a series of these extracts over several weeks to help you. If you would like to look at all of them together and get the book right away, it can be found on Amazon (Book).

During these times, and perhaps just temporarily for these times, you may need to re-imagine your space. The space that you have probably worked better when it was the space for your normal everyday life compared to now when you are having to use the space for more than you used to as well as being confined in the space for much more time.

Use your imagination.

This is NOT a Second Honeymoon— Christopher L. Smith

Just because something worked well regularly does not mean that you should not think about changing it for now. You can always allow it to return afterward. Feel free to move the furniture around to make it more functional for how you are currently using your home. Perhaps the chair that looked out the window needs to be moved elsewhere in order to accommodate a small table and chair that can be sat in for hours to be a makeshift office. Even more than moving furniture, you may choose to re-imagine whole spaces for different ideas. Do you really need a spare bedroom? If you really are having problems with your partner, separate sleeping quarters might be needed, but what if that space could be redone to be an office or a space where the two of you could engage in a shared hobby? Use your imagination to allow your home’s space to serve you best rather than you serving the previous ideas of the space. Here’s the Book.