We are living in strange times. Words like quarantine and social isolation have take over our shared world lexicon and little by little, countries are enacting measures to keep everyone safe from the global pandemic known as COVID-19.
A lot of my client work for the past three weeks has centered around navigating this new ‘normal’ and I’d like to offer some tips I’ve shared with the people I work with on how to create community, fight boredom, and keep your romantic partnership healthy in the time of Corona.
Creating Community and Fighting Boredom:
Ask how you can be of service: Ask the people in your life if they can use a hand and if so, how you can help. Do they have children that need entertaining and could use an hour of your time to keep them busy? You can use that time for activities such as story time, or teaching them a skill remotely. Are they feeling the financial consequences of being quarantined? Have groceries delivered to their house as a gesture of solidarity.
Make public art: Living in a building in a densely populated city? Make window art so your neighbors can see something beautiful when they look out the window. It’ll give your brain a productive break from anxiety-ridden headlines and could brighten someone’s day!
Jam online: Play an instrument or sing? Connect with friends virtually to jam or write some music using the technology that’s already available to you! Apps and software like Jammr and Jamulus can help you make music in real time with your friends regardless of where they are in the world.
Have a Laugh with Improv story writing: Following the rules of improv, write a story with 5 of your friends. Person #1 starts with writing a page and then e-mails it to person #2 and so on. The result could be hilarious and shared over a group Google hangout session.
Deepen Your Bonds Through Show and Tell: Being stuck at home also means being stuck with some of the objects we love most. Why not take a page from our primary school playbook and create an opportunity where we get to share those very things and the stories that make them special with our loved ones who aren’t cooped up with us via facetime? This is a great activity for families to do together.
Get Creative with OPP (other people’s pantry) Cooking: The kitchen is a place that has always brought people together. Why not spice things up by making your time there creative and collaborative using technology as an ally? Share with your loved ones a list of what you have in your quarantine pantry and allow them to design your meal for you and vice versa. Who knows, you may even come out of it with a new delicious recipe or two!
Love in the Time of Corona
Limit Your Talk about the Virus: Anxiety is running high and while being informed is important, we must not let COVID-19 be the sole focus of our attention. For the sake of your sanity and relationship, see if you can limit virus talk to a couple of times per day so that your efforts remain productive and your sex drive alive.
Create Physical Distance During Work Time: If possible, try not to work in the same room if both of you are working from home. Why? It can be distracting and eliminate any sort of romantic polarity within the relationship. Relationships are like fire, they need air to survive…even in times like this. To be fair, see if you can switch places every other day.
Make Room for Four Inner Children to Hang Out: It’s been said that our inner children represent our deepest sensitivity. In our modern times and especially under circumstances like these, it’s easy to forget them as we focus on the very ‘adult’ responsibilities we have on our shoulders. That said though, in this particular scenario we don’t have a lot of control over what’s happening and that can be both predictably scary or unpredictably freeing. Why/how? As we’re forced to relinquish our sense of control, our sense of play has an opportunity to come back online. Just because we’re stuck at home and can’t 'fix' the situation, that doesn’t mean we have to be exclusively worried or bored. Why not play instead?
Get Intimate About Intimacy… During Intimacy: When was the last time you sat down to talk about your sex life? Better yet, when was the last time you talked about sex while being intimate? It’s easy for lovemaking with our partners to become predictable (and dare we say it, boring) once we’ve been together for some time and we think we know what to do to please them in bed. The thing is, truly great sex requires radical presence and is both an art and a science. What if we treated it as such and took turns directing our partners on how to please us not just with step by step instructions on what to do (the science) but guidance and inspiration as to how we want to feel (the art) during the act of making love?
Woo Each Other in the Kitchen: In the 1992 Oscar winning film, ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ Tita, the main character pours her emotions into her food as she wrestles with her love for Pedro, a love that seems impossible because he is to marry her sister. Everyone who eats her dishes has quite the experience as they feel Tita's emotions in every dish. What if, rather than just looking at the food you will be inevitably be cooking as mere quarantine sustenance, you think of it as an opportunity to express your love? Courtship doesn’t have to end if you don’t want it to!
Drop the Reality TV and Watch Things that Move You or Inspire You: Whether it be love story for the ages like Legends of the Fall or a documentary that you’re both dying to see, try watching things that help you both connect with your passion and sense of wonder. Doing so will bring you back to a place similar to what it was like when you first started dating and you were discovering each other for the first time.
Put.The.Phone.Down: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Don’t forego the chance for intimate human connection by shifting your awareness and energy to a device. This is a strange time we are living in but this can also be a time we use to remember or see for the first time what life and connection are like when we don’t lose our soul to the scroll.
Prioritize Physical Touch as Part of your Love Language Mix: Part of what is making a lot of folks feel isolated is the fact that they aren’t receiving as much physical touch as they usually do. There aren’t hugs with friends, hi fives with coworkers or pats on the shoulder at the gym. Individually, these things don’t seem to matter much at first glance but they add up and definitely contribute to our sense of wellbeing. That being the case, it is not just wise but recommended for us to very literally hold each through this.
Hope these are helpful to you on your journey and remember, you are not alone. We are all in this together and if you need a little extra support, I’m just a phone call away and you can schedule that here.