This week on The Check In, we reflect on the words of comedian and coronavirus-pandemic-prophet Chris Rock, who said, “you're either married and bored, or single and lonely."
Last week, we looked at the impact this pandemic has had on your dating lives. This week, we explored how couples are coping with kids, working from home, or staring into the eyes of one single person every hour of the day.
If you have a story to share, send a quick voice memo to tori_bedford@wgbh.org and put “the check in” in the subject line.
Boston Globe ‘Love Letters’ relationship columnist Meredith Goldstein says the divide between single people and couples is bigger than ever. “My friends are either managing small spaces with too many people for too many hours a day, or they are completely alone and trying to figure that out,” she said. “There's just not a whole lot in the middle.”
Goldstein tells us she’s hearing from couples who are figuring out new ways to navigate space (my kitchen is the office now, don’t put your dirty dishes in my office) and highlighting the labor involved in raising children. “I think for too long, people, especially women, have felt this pressure to pretend that their personal lives aren’t a part of their lives,” she said. “Meanwhile, they're doing twice as much work as anybody else.”
In hot spots for the pandemic, relationships seem to be doing worse, according to Kaben Clauson, the CEO of the research engine TruePublic, which surveyed thousands of people across the country about how their relationships are doing during the coronavirus pandemic.
“In Massachusetts, in New York, everywhere in the country, the numbers are getting worse, not better,” Clauson said. “We were hoping that as this virus starts to die down, that relationships will start to get stronger and not have as much bickering and all the different things we're seeing, but as of now they're getting worse and they're getting worse as isolations happen.”
Clauson described a “relationships crisis” happening across the country — but comparatively, Massachusetts is doing pretty well. On average, 18 percent of Americans are saying that their relationships are actually improving during the pandemic, and in Massachusetts that number is 28 percent, according to Clauson’s survey. New York's improvement is at three percent, which Clauson says might be because people tend to live in smaller apartments in New York, or because the state got hit so hard.
In terms of what’s driving people apart, it’s little things that are being exacerbated under special circumstances, according to both Goldstein and Clauson. For Danielle Brizel, who lives with her partner of eight years in a small New York apartment, that means discovering his interesting habit of screaming at his laptop while working from home.
For Rhode Island couple Kristen Aber and Eric Mancini, the pandemic has pushed Aber into more of a stay-at-home mom role, which was really not the original plan, she says. “The rules that we agreed upon in this marriage and decided upon, as far as domestic responsibility, have been totally upended,” she said.
In a voice memo, Aber says she’s been anxious about their relationship against the backdrop of a worldwide crisis. “I have this sense all day, like I shouldn't be too much of a bitch to this person, because what if they, like, get sick and die?” Aber said. “So in case that happens to me, you're being nice to me artificially?” Mancini responded. "That, and you're like the only other adult around me, so I don't want to piss you off too much," she said. “The best adult out of a sample size of one.”
We also heard from couples who wish they could be cooped up together. Sami Martasian lives in Boston and doesn’t know when they will be able to see their partner, who lives in Austin, Texas. “I think part of what is hard is not being able to be with your partner at a time when the news is really scary, and we’re all worried about our loved ones and worried about our jobs, or lack thereof,” they said. “And so not being able to be with the person who brings you comfort and joy at that time is really painful and hard.”
And finally, we hear about a Cambridge wedding on the Charles River with an officiant (standing six feet away) and a photographer in a face mask. The wedding was in anticipation of a bigger celebration months down the road, with a lot of uncertainty about what the future will hold.
NEXT WEEK: We want to hear about efforts to wrangle your elders into being safe. Are you finding yourself yelling at your parents to stay home, stay safe, and wear a mask? Do you catch your loved ones sneaking out to drink wine with the neighbors? If you’re having a tough time getting people around you to take things seriously, send a quick voice memo to tori_bedford@wgbh.org and put “the check in” in the subject line.
