Coronavirus Lockdown — Use this time to elevate your Relationship
With week 9 into the lockdown, the novelty of spending time at home is gradually wearing off as it is now becoming the ‘new-normal’ way of life. The world is struggling to find the right balance between bringing the economies back on their feet whilst circumventing the second wave of COVID-19. The number of people who have lost employment due to the pandemic is an astounding figure of nearly 200 million. For all those, who still have a job — count your blessings and continue to stay indoors.
Being home bound can be quite an isolating time and connecting with our near and dear ones is of the essence. Video calls have been on a rise with Zoom’s stock price jumping an incredible 11% since the pandemic struck. But virtual connection is just not the same. Having all our senses attuned to the other person’s is unparalleled i.e. looking at the same surrounding, smelling the environment, feeling the same atmosphere — this generates a completely different kind of energy and augments the connection with the other person.
But what about being physically holed up with someone in the same house during this climate — like your significant other?
If you are like me, you are trying to see the glass half full by using this time to re-organise your life rather than whinging about it. I have been using the past couple of weeks for a self-reflection. And as I started going down this rabbit hole, I realised three macro areas of my life that needed some repair or uplift. In my earlier , I went down to the brass tacks to define what confidence really meant for me and how I decided to build on it further to enhance my overall personality.
Additionally, along the way I also realised I needed to take better stock of my relationship with my husband. This realisation hit me as I increasingly began to spend more time with him in absence of any other human contact — just him and me. Frightful or romantic? You decide.
Before I get into the details of what I unravelled in the process, it’s worth shining some light on our relationship to give you some context. I’ll save you the nitty-gritty by providing you the long and short of it.
When we decided to relocated to Melbourne from India almost twenty months ago now, it was a unilateral decision. My decision. I was extended a job offer along with a sponsored work visa by one of the top consulting companies in the world. The offer wasn’t surprising — I had worked hard to earn it. In the lead up to the offer, I had had soft conversations with my husband about the relocation and he had resisted it every time; even rebuffed at the idea of the job opportunity actually materialising. When the opportunity did materialise, he was forced to play ball. Well, I don’t blame him. He was doing pretty well professionally and had little motivation to relocate. He had a good thing going on for him — a recent promotion, good salary, proximity to his family and what not. But relocate we did, upon my insistence. Relocating to Melbourne meant a leg up for me and a demotion for him. He was gutted. But eventually got around it as a job was better than no job. I had heard stories about a lot of people who had struggled to find employment in Melbourne. We were just glad to be better off than most people. I had been to the city on two occasions earlier and knew some people professionally so it started feeling like second home quite early on. Unfortunately, my husband kept feeling like a fish out of water (in fact, still does till date). He has still not been able to fully acclimatize to the new country.
I started putting paper over the cracks in order to ameliorate the situation while expecting him to come to terms with the new reality by bouncing back sooner rather than later. While, I wanted to finally take the edge off by enjoying my new life as I felt I had finally ‘ arrived’ in life,meanwhile my husband was left behind as he was still picking himself up. I became blinkered and couldn’t fathom why he wasn’t able to keep pace with me. In all fairness, he was trying his best to keep up but it wasn’t good enough for my liking. I wanted him to try harder. Before we realised, we were on different tangents and unbeknownst to us, this started to create a rift between us. This rift wasn’t palpable to anyone or even us most times. But sometimes, I could feel it creep into our relationship and grow stronger each day like an invisible demon. We were still in love but we had started to go down our separate paths.
And then it happened…
The impact of COVID-19 was now being felt with ripples starting to reach the white collared professions. Organisation resorted to slashing jobs along with massive pay cuts. Economies were slumping. Big consulting firms responded no differently. My husband’s organisation (one of the top consulting firms) announced 200 job cuts on a fateful Thursday morning. My husband was a diligent and hardworking consultant but the truth was that he was still trying to find his feet at office (and in the city in general). He had also been without a project for almost twelve weeks now. Being without a project in a consulting firm was utter blasphemy. A solid ground to extend someone the pink slip. This set both of us into a tailspin. We were frightened and it felt like someone swept the rug from underneath our feet.
It felt surreal… From being an overachiever and an outstanding performer, how did my husband get to a point where he was literally scared out of his wits about losing his employment?
Suddenly, it struck me. I self distanced myself from the situation and started seeing things very objectively. It was me. I realised how unjustified everything was for my husband, how much he had suffered in the last eighteen months and how I had lent him a cold shoulder all along. The job cut would be the last straw that would completely break him. This epiphany shook me. My knees started feeling weak and I couldn’t contain my emotions. I was guilty as charged. I was acutely aware what my husband would be going through so I had to be the stronger one. I had to watch out for him. Instead of talking him out of his fear, I decided to play along and face it head on with him.
I urged him to play out the situation if he did indeed lose his job — hoping it wouldn’t come to it. Suddenly, we were on the same team. I assured him that with my job still safe, he could completely rely on me both financially and emotionally and I would always be there for him. He leveled with me that he would really like to go back to India if he lost his job to start all over again with his parents’ support. I told him that he could trust me to support him. With the lockdown situation, we weren’t sure if he could leave the country anytime soon but that was problem for another day. He was anticipating being notified about his termination by the HR team. I hugged him more that single day than I ever did for the time we had now lived in Melbourne. My heart was heavy and burdened. I realised how much I had missed him.
The wait was excruciating and we both wanted it out of the way now.
He was later informed that he people who were being laid off were contacted and he wasn’t one of them. His job was safe and so was our relationship. We heaved a sigh of relief — me primarily for the latter. We both rejoiced. We came so close but somehow managed to dodge the bullet. Having turned agnostic a couple of years ago, I thanked the unknown superpower watching over our shoulder.
This experience really sensitised me towards the needs of my husband and made me appreciate his sacrifices towards our relationship and my happiness specifically. I realised how crippled I would be without him being around and how grateful I was to have him in my life.
It was clear to me that I needed to bring about a great degree of change in order to sustain and keep this relationship alive.
I have come to realise that there are three key foundations required to survive any relationship let alone marriage. I have since then tried to embody and consciously practice these.
Empathy :- While living our busy lives, we sometimes forget to remind ourselves of the other person’s backstory. We take the situation at its face value and start acting out. We must learn to cultivate empathy as without it any relationship is doomed. I have learnt to do this by practicing the 5Ws approach:-
Why..Why…Why…Why…Why
If someone acts the way they do, I ask myself Why did they do it. Once I have the answer, I again try to think Why did that happen. This repeated over a maximum of five times, can ladder up to the real reason why someone really acted the way they did. It starts to reflect the deep rooted insecurities in the other person. Once you uncover this, you will really soften towards them. You will begin to see where they are coming from — you will develop empathy towards them. You will develop kindness and compassion. Both essential to nurture any relationship.
Do overs :- What is life without do overs. What are you if you don’t provide people with a second chance — a cyborg? Everything around us is in a state of flux including people. You are not what you were yesterday and you are not what you will become tomorrow. We learn, adapt and change ourselves continually. I am not proud to say that I didn’t flinch from writing people off in my life. I didn’t believe in second chances — one had to get it right the first time or I’d let my guard up. This plagued my relationships as I didn’t trust people close to me to do the right thing the next time. I was naive. I have now come to realise that forgiving people is really difficult as it requires to get a closure with the desire to start all over again- it requires a lot of courage. You need to elevate yourself and be the bigger person to do so. If you want to live a truly fulfilled life, give people close to you multiple chances and never give up on them.
Evolve together :- I am really grateful that I have been able to grow with my husband over these years else our marriage would have fallen apart quite early on. We were able to build a multidimensional relationship that really shaped our individual identities. A marriage should be a partnership in the true sense where both people are able to transcend to another state with each others’ support. A state where they are better versions of themselves. It needs to be a symbiotic in nature where both can scratch each others’ back. An important byproduct of this is respect. When there is mutual respect in a relationship, it always stands the test of time. Love alone is not suffice. Take a moment to deliberate on what you are bringing to the table before expecting your partner to bring something that you desire to the table.
I am actually relieved that I could pen down these thoughts so vital for the existence of my relationship. Doing this has provided me with the ability to structure my thoughts, that I can reference back to when I start to relegate into my former self which is devoid of care and kindness towards people close to me.
Forging relationship of any kind is quite easy but nurturing even one can be full of challenges. If you are reading this, please find a moment to show appreciation to the most important person in your life and make sure to make them smile.
Originally published at https://neeti21bisht.wixsite.com on May 17, 2020.
