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).

Early in most relationships, partners are learning all sorts of things about each other. You learn about things that are in their present such as what they like and dislike, what helps them to be calm, and heir pet peeves. You tell stories of things that have been important about your past. You discuss your dreams and your concrete plans. As time goes on, much of this type of conversation slows down or even disappears completely. It does this because you get established in new relational patters and not because there is nothing more to talk about. You may not know what your partner’s first pet was or which countries they have traveled to or what type of cuisine they have never tried that they would like to. You have settled in to not knowing these new things about each other.

There is no reason that you cannot continue learning about each other. In fact, this is a good opportunity to get back into this as you probably have more time together that would allow it. There are different ways to do this, and you can do whatever works best for both of you. You could play games where you come up with the questions to ask the other person, such as Twenty Questions (focusing on things about yourself rather than objects) or Truth or Dare (focusing more on the other person). There are also ways to incorporate questions into regular games (such as having to say something new about yourself every time you move in checkers, asking a question about the other person’s past every time you take one of their pieces and expressing a dream situation when you get crowned) or phone apps that provide questions for couples to explore. Whatever you do, enjoy the fresh newness this can provide. Here’s the Book.