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)

Even without bringing it up to your partner, if you start to create a list of all the things that are bothering you, you will spend too much time focusing on the negatives and lose out on the positives you are having together. Imagine what it would be like if your partner brought up a list of all the things you were doing (or not doing) that was bothering them. Not only would it not feel good to have so many negatives pointed out to you, but at some point, a lot of the more minor things would make it seem like they were just being nit- picky with you. Many people start just to shut down when it gets to that point and end up not really hearing at all what they are doing that bothers their partner.

This is a situation where less is, in fact, more.

This is NOT a Second Honeymoon— Christopher L. Smith

So, this is a situation where less is, in fact, more. If you are able to work out what is bothering you the most and then focus on just those things with your partner, you are likely to get a better response from them. For you, it also allows you to work towards solutions to the things that are bothering you the most. This will allow you to have more time to then focus on things that are going well and to plan to have this be a better time between you and your partner.

Additionally, when the things that bother you the most are addressed, or you at least see that your partner is trying to address them, some of the other things that bother you can bother you a little less or maybe not even at all. If a prioritized thing was rooted in you not feeling respected by your partner (such as your partner just using the only computer in the home without seeing if you had something you need to do) then when you see they are trying to respect you by paying attention to it then the more minor things related to respect (such as putting the toilet seat down) no longer mean as much because you know there are elements of respect there. Here’s the Book.