This is NOT a Second Honeymoon: Realize Solutions Are Not Always Between Just You and Your Partner

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).

In working out how to balance things so that each of your lives remains as full and balanced as possible (and especially that you are able to protect your employment), it can be tempting to believe that these are things that you need to do just on your own and with your partner. You and your partner are undoubtedly vital in optimizing how all of this can work, but the best solutions may not be available if you limit yourselves to what you can do.

Just as we talked about converting a support (or Twelve Step) group into an online group, others can sometimes shift the external influences on what you are trying to make work. For example, let’s say you have only one computer that can access remote meetings for your work and your partner’s work. You both need to be on the computer at 11:00 am for meetings. Working just with your own resources, one of you will not get what you need. Your partner’s meeting is with twenty people, but your meeting is only with your boss and one colleague. It is possible that if you bring your boss in on trying to get a solution that your boss would be willing to move your meeting to earlier when there would not be a conflict. This is an example where you might already be able to predict how the conflict could be resolved. Still, there are also situations where you would not have an idea of what the solution is, but by involving others, a creative solution might be found. In both cases, a solution would not have been possible by just you and your partner. Here's the Book.