Coping with unlovable loved ones during lockdown
Family relationships are complex. The always-happy, always-smiling family exists in social media posts and in our adolescent imaginations. Real-life families have good moments and bad ones, easy relationships and hard ones. We usually manage family life despite the complexities partly because we’re not together all the time. Except now we are.
“My husband and I get along fine ⸺ as long as we don’t see each other too much. Whenever we’re together we manage to get into some sort of dispute. We love each other, but don’t get along that well. So now that we’re spending all this time together, I have to admit that it’s hard. This isn’t a person I want to be with all day.”
When spouses go about their normal lives, leaving the house each day to go somewhere and do something, they can experience acceptance and positive regard from the world at large. This gives them a nice break from the tensions they might experience with loved ones ⸺ people who see them up close and regularly enough to detect their quirks and flaws. Husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings, and any who live with each other often get on each other’s nerves. They don’t always speak so nicely to each other.
This is true of people who actually get along. Sometimes one is living with one or more truly difficult personalities. The normal daily leaves of absence are necessary to make life tolerable. So what happens when we can’t escape?
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