How to Protect Your Marriage in COVID-19 Lock Downs

It starts with you doing the work.

This is a hotly requested topic for my Substack, with frequent headlines of rising divorce rates in COVID-19 lock downs appearing in my newsfeeds and chats. Couples who have walked towards the altar and lovingly recited “till death do us part” vows, are now biting each others’ heads off, wanting nothing more to do with one another as they head towards divorce. Stuck in a reactive dynamic, these unhappy spouses are triggering one other in a vicious negative feedback loop. In a violent household, a lock down environment that is intended to keep citizens safe from COVID-19 can unfortunately give rise to a bigger threat to someone’s life through domestic abuse.

Increased divorce rates and battery are real life situations that unfold when couples are overwhelmed by emotional reactivity, which is a topic I’ve written at length in my posts on managing emotional reactivity. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. These posts are intended to bring awareness into your interactions towards your partner and make you reflect on how you’re self-regulating your emotions.

Onto the global headlines.

On March 25th, CNBC’s headline reads, “As couples self-isolate due to coronavirus, lawyers expect a rise in divorces:

Hardeep Dhillon, consultant solicitor of family law at Richard Nelson, said that after Christmas the U.K. legal firm noted a 230% increase in the internet search, “I want a divorce.” She’s now expecting a similar trend in the U.K., especially following reports of a rise in couples looking to split in China, where the virus outbreak originated and people have been in lockdown for much longer. 

6 days later, Bloomberg followed suit with the headline, “China’s Divorce Spike Is a Warning to Rest of Locked-Down World”, citing increased incidents of domestic violence in addition to higher divorce rates:

[M]edia reports from various cities show uncouplings surged in March as husbands and wives began emerging from weeks of government-mandated lockdowns intended to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Incidents of domestic violence also multiplied. The trend may be an ominous warning for couples in the U.S. and elsewhere who are in the early stages of isolating at home.

Feng Yuan, co-founder of Equality, a nongovernmental organization in Beijing focused on gender-based violence, says there’s been a rise in requests to her organization for help. “Lockdown brings out latent tendencies for violence that were there before but not coming out,” she wrote in an email. “Lockdown also makes help seeking more difficult.”

Reactivity can take on many forms in addition to violence and aggression. It can lead to the manifestation of the 4 horsemen by John Gottman: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling by one or both partners. This inevitably strains a couples’ connection, leading to communication breakdown or escalation of violence, and eventually, breakdown of the marriage if the damage is too severe. Couples’ communication is a whole separate topic unto itself so I won’t go into too much detail here.

Are there solutions to conflict resolution in marriage? Yes, of course. In an interview on saving marriages with Tim Ferriss, Brené Brown talks about about the 80/20 rule:

Brené Brown: The other two hacks that I think have saved our marriage besides just showing up and using some of these things, like what’s working, what was hard is the 80/20. So everyone says marriage should be 50/50. It’s the biggest crock of bullshit I’ve ever heard. It’s never 50/50. Ever. And so what we do is we quantify where we are. So if Steve comes home and he’ll be like, “I got 20.”

Tim Ferriss: Just in terms of energy.

Brené Brown: Just energy, investment, kindness, patience, “I’m at 20.” And I’ll be like, “I’ll cover you. I got you, brother. I’ll pull the 80.” Sometimes we come home, which we have done a lot, and my mom has been sick, and I’ll say, “I’ve got 10,” and like, Steve two days ago said, “I’m riding a solid 25.” So we know that we have to sit down at the table any time we have less than a hundred combined and figure out a plan of kindness toward each other.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, I love that.

Brené Brown: Yeah, because the thing is, marriage is not something that’s 50/50. A partnership works when you can carry their 20 or they can carry your 20. And that when you both just have 20, you have a plan where you don’t hurt each other.

Caveat: this approach ONLY works if both spouses are highly self-aware, highly individuated and have done a shit ton of self-work on themselves, like Brené Brown and her paediatrician husband, Steve. Both of them came from divorced families so you can imagine the years (I repeat: years) of family first work and self-work they have to process and work out on their own and in therapy, before building their own successful marriage that you see today. By successful, I mean thriving, honest, open, loving, vulnerable, not just “not divorced”. The level of empathy, love and highly skilled communication they practice in their marriage despite their successful careers is practically God-like. To reality-set: you cannot not do the work and apply Brené’s method, expecting this to work miracles in your marriage or relationship. I myself am nowhere near Brené’s level of self-actualization, and I am still a work in progress. We all are. Let’s not beat ourselves up too much about it. I’m sharing this because it’s always good to know what to aspire to.

Here’s also another reality-setting fact: some of us were raised by conscious parents, and so have somewhat unconsciously picked up good communication skills and tools that help us thrive in our relationships. For these people who inherit this kind of upbringing, you are incredibly blessed. This then begets altruistic living and more loving relationships that becomes a generational legacy. Think the Obamas - I highly encourage you to read Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, where she does a deep dive into how her family upbringing was instrumental in shaping her self-identity and personal growth skills outside of work, as a wife and mother.

Call it what you want: personal growth work, personal growth skills, personal development, inner work, self-work, etc. It is the same. The ability to express your own voice in alignment with your values that brings out the best of humanity is more crucial than ever. Unfortunately, they don't teach you this in school, universities, offices, startups, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or wherever you find your shiny banker boy / tech bro types. These are the types I run into the most, and give me the most grief in my romantic relationships, unfortunately. This is why I’m constantly dating, constantly sad, and constantly in therapy. Hard truth: grief isn’t linear, and personal growth work isn’t either.

Typically with personal growth skills, you either gain it through your family upbringing or you end up with a handicap, and have to find it on your own. I’d say the ability to build these personal growth life skills to cultivate fulfilling relationships, find meaning in our work purpose for humanity, and live a happier life is akin to gaining access to education. Some parents can afford overseas education for their children, like mine. Some can’t, and their children become handicapped with a lack of access to education in life, and have to face more setbacks to achieve success.

If your parents didn’t pass you these skills, it is likely a generational issue, where they were brought up in emotional poverty, and don’t know how else to parent other than through outdated, rigid family structures. Alternatively, your parents may have experienced Michelle Obama’s upbringing, where they were brought up in loving, progressive households that embraced creativity, individuality and societal responsibility despite harsh economic circumstances.

In their book Deep Human, the Langes explain that the five human super skills that are “timeless, useful and transferable” in the fourth industrial revolution that can’t be replicated by AI are: focus, self-awareness, empathy, complex communication, and adaptive resilience — underscoring the importance of personal growth work.

Comparing modern dating and modern relationships to how things were in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations is a fallacy. Times are different now — else things would have been status quo and there wouldn't be as many divorces.

We need to take on a more adaptive, expansive, and sustainable approach to modern relationships, which are more nuanced and incredibly complex with changing social norms around gender equality (with women earning as much if not more than their male partners), blended family dynamics, inclusive sexual orientation with LGBTQ+ communities, technological disruptions and advancements in defining the quality and quantity of our relationships, the epidemic of urban loneliness in our capitalist, consumerist culture, and more. Esther Perel provides great thought leadership as to how relationship models have evolved over time — from codified rules of conduct in traditional societies, where a woman is expected to stay home, and the man is the sole breadwinner and provider for the household — to increased optionality around who we should date, divorce, be dangerously co-dependent with, and pin all hopes of happiness on, since we were the hopelessly romantic generation raised on Disney princess movies of happily ever afters with our one true love.

Thankfully, the millenial generation saw an influx of feminist scriptwriters, so you have Disney heroines like Elsa empowered with magical abilities, embarking on a self-discovery journey, only to prioritize sisterly love over getting hitched, and saves her entire kingdom in the process. The more informed and empowered women are, the more we are able to choose from a position of power from the very beginning. To those who are finally awakening in your power and going through divorces in your 30s and 40s, I’m sorry for your loss. Better late than never.

So here’s the takeaway for everyone stuck in loveless marriages in COVID-19: we can choose who we want to be in relationship with, and it can be a number of people, not just one soul mate. But we must be able to develop skill sets to sustain that relationship from a loving and compassionate place, else you risk your relationship being immunocomprised. Really self-introspect and ask yourself, am I offloading pain onto my partner because of my own stuff? Are we arguing over a habitual friction point in a way that isn’t helpful? And for goodness’ sake, if you have marriage problems, don’t ask your friends or family for relationship advice. Do you ask for medical advice from friends or family when you’re going through cancer? No - you go for chemotherapy. Marriage problems require professional intervention. Get a good therapist, go into therapy, and work out your stuff.

If you like battle-hardened NYC-based therapists that are great with neurotic overachievers such as yours truly, use my Talkspace referral code to get a $200 credit: https://www.talkspace.com/invite/1374452

If you’re worried about the stigma, it’s ok. The Sopranos made therapy cool again.

Good luck out there, and stay well.

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