While for some the confinement was a detonator for the couple to explode, for others it was the opposite. According to an Ifop study, 30% of couples feel that confinement brought them closer together. Could Covid-19 have been a good thing after all?
Confinement was not an insurmountable ordeal for everyone. Quite the contrary, in fact. Some couples took the opportunity to reunite and start afresh. For many couples, this ordeal of fire enabled them to resolve underlying problems, communicate and “reset”.
Separation or reconciliation: half and half
According to Ifop research, 27% of couples considered breaking up during the confinements – 25% of women versus 28% of men. The situation is similar in the UK, where leading law firm Stewarts recorded a 122% increase in divorce filings between July and October 2020 compared with the previous year.
However, according to another Ifop study, 30% of couples have had the opposite effect and have moved closer together. So it’s a mixed picture we’ve seen over the past 2 years. How is this explained? According to Dr Robert Neuburger: “Many couples live their daily lives under pressure, in a frantic rhythm, with children to drop off at school, work, shopping… In the evening, exhausted, we slump down in front of the TV and fall asleep. On weekends, you catch up on your social life. The result? Co-presence time at home is drastically reduced. Suddenly, confinement has freed up invaluable time… What duos miss most,” stresses the psychiatrist. “Promiscuity may have been frightening at first… But it allowed them to find each other again. What ruins a couple is neglect. A couple doesn’t wear out spontaneously, it neglects itself
The study also reveals that age has a strong impact on the desire to make a relationship last. 50% of people under 30 have felt like ending their relationship, compared to 14% of people over 60. Habit? True love? Easier to communicate? It’s undeniable that the fact of having already overcome hardship helps a lot in this kind of situation.
The benefits of confinement
Not being able to leave and separate meant that the couples had to work on their problems to get along. This helped them to overcome the ordeal and realize that love was still present. It gave them a second chance with a fresh start.
Differences in professional situations sometimes created strong tensions within a couple. With the children gone, those who were still at a distance found themselves confined together 24 hours a day. Sometimes one worked and the other was on short-time working… These are all points that are difficult to manage when, from one day to the next, you find yourself in this configuration. This put many couples to the test and sometimes changed domestic roles within couples. Confinement has kept couples under the same roof, and they have willy-nilly had to learn how to deal with problems if they couldn’t leave.
In fact, according to some psychologists, the greatest danger for couples is what they don’t say. Communicating is essential, but sometimes, caught up in the rhythm of daily life, we forget and overlook things. According to Cécile Guéret: “We think our partner understands, but it’s all still in limbo. For example, when it comes to household chores, as with more serious dramas, you have to move from the implicit to the explicit and talk about it.” The psychotherapist insists: “In the Middle Ages, we were a ‘link couple’, linked by a common interest and the association of two lineages – there was no need to maintain dialogue. Today, however, the couple is the object of permanent reconquest, day after day. To last, the duo must regularly confront its own crisis, putting itself in danger of death and resurrection, periodically re-choosing and re-founding itself on new foundations.”
A more common example than you might think.
A chance to get off on the right foot
For those who survived the confinement, it was a chance to reinvent themselves, and a tremendous opportunity for change and growth. It allowed them to rediscover a certain complicity and to feel stronger for having overcome the ordeal. Marital communication isn’t just about words, it’s also about sharing powerful or amusing experiences. And this is what confinement has enabled. Let’s not forget that the word crisis, in Chinese, is made up of two ideograms: danger and opportunity.
Thanks to the confinement, the couples saw themselves paying more attention to each other with little gestures, little words. But also by really spending time together and for each other. Others have turned their lives around and started again. In any case, better or new habits have been formed to bring them closer together.
