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)

When things are bothering you, it can seem that you will never get away from what is bothering you. This fatalist way of thinking can make the annoyance even stronger. In your past, there may even have been things that bothered you that someone said they were going to fix, but it still did not get resolved. Do you remember what it was like to have the initial annoyance have the added annoyance that it seemed like the other person was never going to fix it – you were now annoyed about the original problem as well as the fact that it was not getting fixed.

The good news is that some of these things will not bother you that much when things go back to normal. They could return to the way they were – lesser annoyances or even something that did not bother you before – or even no longer really bother you. Some of this can happen because they are no longer as important as they are now and maybe even don’t seem something to stress about. After all, they are better than they were right now.

The good news is that some of these things will not bother you that much when things go back to normal.

This is NOT a Second Honeymoon— Christopher L. Smith

However, when you make a big deal of these things now, the resentment could well carry over to when things are back to normal. So, when you are feeling yourself being bothered, you could tell yourself that you are going to let it be for now, just during this time of being confined together, because it may well pass when things go back to being normal. Tell yourself that if it does not pass, then you can address it with your partner when things are back to normal. Here’s the Book.