Another important tip for fighting well, according to Ms. Tewari, is to choose your words carefully, avoiding contemptuous language and practice using “I statements,” to avoid insulting the other person. For example, you can say “I feel frustrated when you leave dishes in the sink after I am working all day and would appreciate if you could wash them after you use them,” rather than, “You never wash the dishes!”
Regardless how long a couple has been together, the pandemic has added strains to even the most airtight unions. Cristy Clavijo-Kish, 49, who works in talent and sponsorship management and publishing in Miami Shores, Fla., has been married for 26 years to her husband, Chris Kish, 51, an environmental and wastewater engineer in Miami. With the additional strain of the pandemic, she said, “there’s a long tolerance and then stress kicks in causing a blow up.”
Ms. Clavijo-Kish is navigating pandemic home life with two teenagers and a husband, and everyone’s respective school and work. “With the pandemic, suddenly I had a full house working with me with no opportunity to leave for coffee and in-person meetings, happy hours or events! It was stressful,” Ms. Clavijo-Kish.
For the Kish’s, the pandemic actually helped them manage flare-ups better and more consistently, but they also had to learn new ways to connect more deeply, as being around each other constantly extinguished that spark. “Such a weird marital phase in all honesty,” Ms. Clavijo-Kish, said.
Areefa Mohamed, 35, a massage therapist based in Queens, N.Y., who found herself underemployed during the pandemic, says Covid laid bare just how different she and her boyfriend of six and a half years are, which led to many disagreements. “His normal is far from my normal,” Ms. Mohamed said. The pandemic enabled Ms. Mohamed to spend a lot more time with her boyfriend, who lives in Clifton, N.J., and works in finance in New York, but it wasn’t all blissful. They found themselves for the first time fighting about everything from dinner and bedtime routines to TV habits.
“It has been a learning experience,” Ms. Mohamed said.
For these sorts of blowups, the key, once again, is to “respond rather than react,” Dr. Cook said. “When we get activated, the limbic system, or emotional center, of our brain can take over and our logical reasoning can get lost in the mix,” she said. “That’s why it’s so helpful to slow yourself down, listen to your partner, and say to yourself how you want to respond before you speak it out loud.”
