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)

Every couple is made up of two people. They are different people, so, naturally, there are things that your partner does that bothers you. You love the person in spite of these things. In ordinary life, you are able to work past these bothers because you are not constantly exposed to them, and there is not a moment by moment reminder of how you are bothered. However, close proximity removes some of these barriers and intensifies how you feel. In fact, there are probably things that you normally don’t even pay much attention to that now can really bother you.

This chapter will focus on six different things that you can do to address these bothers. While the strategies were assembled to focus on things that your partner has always done, they can also be used in situations where new things arise that bother you. The idea is to get you some relief so that you and your partner can both survive through this. Here’s the Book.