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).

Whether or not external forces are making you try to lead different lives in the same space (perhaps one of you are working a traditional day, and the other is unemployed, for instance), you may still want to be doing different things at the same time. It is okay to have different things that you are pursuing, especially as time evolves. It can be challenging to do this while bumping into each other.

The good news is that this is entirely possible even in much smaller spaces that you might have. This possibility exists even without one of you killing the other. Every year, many people do this when they are rooming at college or when they are otherwise sharing a single room with a roommate.

So, take lessons from being college roommates (even if you are sharing a bed together and didn’t do this when in college). The key to making it work is to agree to give each other some of what you want and to have clear ways of letting each other know when pop-up situations arise. Compromise is key because battles just escalate out of control when you cannot get away from each other. Here’s the Book.