5 tips to survive quarantine with your partner
Self-isolating is hard. Quarantining with someone else can cause unique stress. Here are give tips on surviving it with your partner.
Surviving quarantine with your partner
Brut spoke to Amy Morin, a psychotherapist, about how to improve your time in quarantine with your partner. Here is her advice.
Help each other deal with emotions
“If you're quarantined with your partner, it's normal that a whole bunch of emotions are gonna come up.”, Morin tells Brut. She continues, “And so you want to help each other deal with that emotional roller coaster. One thing you can do is just validate your partner's feelings. So rather than say, "Oh, don't worry about it, it's not a big deal," when your partner is anxious. Listen. And then say, yeah, I completely understand where you're coming from.” This way partners will be able to influence how they are feeling simply by listening and validating how they are feeling. It is also important to set boundaries with one another.
Be kind and respectful
“If you and your partner are stuck together in a small room for a long period of time, it's gonna be easy to start getting irritated with each other, to start being mean, maybe you're unkind and sets you up for a spiral of, a downward spiral, where you're going to argue, you're going to bicker, get on each other's nerves. So what you really want to do is just focus on being kind and respectful. And there may be times where you think my partner is rude to me, so I'm going to be rude back, you don't want to do that, instead focus on what can you do?”, she says. You should ask yourself questions such as: How can I be kinder? How can I be more respectful? How can I focus on what my partner needs?
“It's important to figure out how are you going to cope with this stress and to develop new coping strategies.”, she states. Partners should be proactive in making a strategy to help them destress.
Spend quality time together
This time is about being proactive and focusing on getting to know one another better. Rathering than fighting against each other, you and your partner can bond.
See the big picture
Make sure you always keep things in perspective. Think about how things will be twenty years from now. “Even though this is a stressful time in your life, it won’t last forever.”, she concludes.
Brut.
Surviving quarantine with your partner
Brut spoke to Amy Morin, a psychotherapist, about how to improve your time in quarantine with your partner. Here is her advice.
Help each other deal with emotions
“If you're quarantined with your partner, it's normal that a whole bunch of emotions are gonna come up.”, Morin tells Brut. She continues, “And so you want to help each other deal with that emotional roller coaster. One thing you can do is just validate your partner's feelings. So rather than say, "Oh, don't worry about it, it's not a big deal," when your partner is anxious. Listen. And then say, yeah, I completely understand where you're coming from.” This way partners will be able to influence how they are feeling simply by listening and validating how they are feeling. It is also important to set boundaries with one another.
Be kind and respectful
“If you and your partner are stuck together in a small room for a long period of time, it's gonna be easy to start getting irritated with each other, to start being mean, maybe you're unkind and sets you up for a spiral of, a downward spiral, where you're going to argue, you're going to bicker, get on each other's nerves. So what you really want to do is just focus on being kind and respectful. And there may be times where you think my partner is rude to me, so I'm going to be rude back, you don't want to do that, instead focus on what can you do?”, she says. You should ask yourself questions such as: How can I be kinder? How can I be more respectful? How can I focus on what my partner needs?
“It's important to figure out how are you going to cope with this stress and to develop new coping strategies.”, she states. Partners should be proactive in making a strategy to help them destress.
Spend quality time together
This time is about being proactive and focusing on getting to know one another better. Rathering than fighting against each other, you and your partner can bond.
See the big picture
Make sure you always keep things in perspective. Think about how things will be twenty years from now. “Even though this is a stressful time in your life, it won’t last forever.”, she concludes.
Brut.