Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome to a special set of episodes of The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. The now global spread of coronavirus is affecting
Speaker 1: all of us. This disease has brought a host of medical, economic,
Speaker 1: and political problems, but it's also given us a ton
Speaker 1: of uncertainty and anxiety, which are beginning to have an
Speaker 1: enormous negative impact on our collective while being but whenever
Speaker 1: I'm confused or fearful, I remember that looking for answers
Speaker 1: in evidence based science is always the best way to go,
Speaker 1: and that's where I'm hoping this podcast can help. One
Speaker 1: of the most common questions I've gotten from listeners about
Speaker 1: how to handle this awful COVID nineteen crisis is how
Speaker 1: we can all protect our relationships during this crazy time.
Speaker 1: Lots of us are facing the completely novel situation of
Speaker 1: being forced to shelter in place with our partners, and
Speaker 1: while it's really good to be with the people we
Speaker 1: love during a scary period, it can also be really,
Speaker 1: really tough and way more aggravating than I expected, which
Speaker 1: is kind of ironic. I mean, I've dreamed about having
Speaker 1: some work related stuff get canceled just so I could
Speaker 1: stay home and have some quality time with my husband.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking fuzzy socks and a nice glass
Speaker 1: of wine some weekend. Being forced to shelter in place
Speaker 1: for months was not part of the fantasy. It's much
Speaker 1: harder to prioritize our marriages while also running a babysitting service,
Speaker 1: or a middle school or an elderly care facility. What
Speaker 1: does science say we can do to make sure we
Speaker 1: get out of this mess with our marriages? Intact to
Speaker 1: help me figure out best practices for love in the
Speaker 1: time of COVID, I put a call out to one
Speaker 1: of my favorite relationship experts. I am Eli Finkel, a
Speaker 1: professor at Northwestern University. I'm in the psychology department and
Speaker 1: the Kellogg School of Management, and I am the author
Speaker 1: of The All or Nothing Marriage. So Eli, today, I
Speaker 1: wanted to start with the following question. If absence makes
Speaker 1: the heart grow fonder, what does force togetherness in a
Speaker 1: horrible pandemic due to relationships? Well, I suspect an average
Speaker 1: it makes them worse. What's sort of good about it
Speaker 1: is that it affords new opportunities to try to make
Speaker 1: things even better. And so let's talk through what's really happening.
Speaker 1: What are the particular stressors we're all facing in our
Speaker 1: relationships right now. Yeah, I mean relative to what life
Speaker 1: felt like a month ago, I would say almost all
Speaker 1: of us have a higher level of stress, at least
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like worrying about the health
Speaker 1: of ourselves and our loved one, worrying about the state
Speaker 1: of the economy in general, and our own personal livelihood
Speaker 1: in particular. Again, maybe it's not true for one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of us, but almost all of us are facing
Speaker 1: additional amounts of rather significant stress. And I'm guessing when
Speaker 1: you put two individual people who are really stressed out together,
Speaker 1: that can't be good for a romantic relationship. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it can be the case that I'm going through a
Speaker 1: stressor and you're not going through a stressor. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think this commonly happens in relationships. It's indeed, one
Speaker 1: of the nice things about relationships is if you have
Speaker 1: a significant other that you're going through life with, you
Speaker 1: guys can serve as sort of buffers for each other.
Speaker 1: And you have a major deadline at work, I can
Speaker 1: step up the amount of responsibility I'm taking for the children.
Speaker 1: But yes, this particular blend of stress or this love
Speaker 1: in the time of the coronavirus thing is hitting almost
Speaker 1: everybody at exactly the same time, and that has the
Speaker 1: downside of adding a whole lot of stress at the
Speaker 1: exact same time when our partner might not have as
Speaker 1: much bandwidth as we wish he or she had. It
Speaker 1: has the upside of we often have a pretty good
Speaker 1: sense of what our partner's going through, which isn't the
Speaker 1: case with all stress, and so we have psychologists must
Speaker 1: have seen this before, right, What actually happens to romantic
Speaker 1: relationships during these stressful times. One of my favorite studies
Speaker 1: is the very famous study of Hurricane Hugo. This is
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty nine hurricane, and what the researchers did
Speaker 1: is they compared the counties that were harder hit and
Speaker 1: the counties that weren't harder hit, and they found that
Speaker 1: there was a surge in the divorce rate, which may
Speaker 1: not be all that surprising. People were dealing with a
Speaker 1: huge amount of additional stress, often not only the hurricane
Speaker 1: itself but the financial issues associated with it. But what
Speaker 1: I found especially enlightening is yes, a lot of the
Speaker 1: relationships that had to endure something like that ended in divorce.
Speaker 1: There was also a big boost in the marriage rate
Speaker 1: and in the fertility rate, that is the number of
Speaker 1: people who decided to have a baby. So it looks
Speaker 1: like these sorts of stressors have a major impact on
Speaker 1: people's lives and people's relationships. But the news isn't all bad,
Speaker 1: and so I guess the one thing we can do
Speaker 1: is to try to scientifically figure out what makes for
Speaker 1: good stress and bad stress and relationships and the kinds
Speaker 1: of things we can do to boost things right now
Speaker 1: when things are so stressful. So I want you to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what you work through in
Speaker 1: your book, which is the kinds of features that make
Speaker 1: for a happy and unhappy relationship. Because if my take
Speaker 1: on your book is a lot of what a good
Speaker 1: marriage boils down to is having the right kinds of expectations,
Speaker 1: that's right. And I'd like to contrast what I say
Speaker 1: in the book and what I believe is relevant here
Speaker 1: from the broader thing that we often hear, which is
Speaker 1: stopic aspecting so much your expectations are too high. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good advice, but not as a general principle, right,
Speaker 1: if that advice were find the ways that you and
Speaker 1: your partner are really struggling right now and try to
Speaker 1: tamp back a little bit on those expectations. Then that
Speaker 1: advice is terrific. But what the advice, when it's applied
Speaker 1: more generally, tends to forget is that in the absence
Speaker 1: of expectations, we usually aren't even trying. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things that I find exciting about how marriage
Speaker 1: exists today. We're here in twenty twenty, and we can
Speaker 1: contrast what marriage was like in nineteen fifty or even
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred or whatever, and what we can see is
Speaker 1: that there are opportunities for a different sort of connection
Speaker 1: today than existed in the past. And the only way
Speaker 1: you can really try to achieve those sorts of connections
Speaker 1: is by bringing these expectations, bringing certain understandings about what
Speaker 1: a marriage is supposed to be. And so, for example,
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, people really didn't even marry for love,
Speaker 1: and even by around nineteen fifty, when they married for love,
Speaker 1: they weren't really looking to the marriage for personal growth
Speaker 1: or self expression to the same degree as now. And
Speaker 1: so what we see in twenty twenty, this is independent
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus, that the best marriages today are particularly good,
Speaker 1: even while at the same time, the average marriage is
Speaker 1: worse than it was, say, fifty years ago. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is because we're trying to look to our
Speaker 1: marriage to do these much more difficult, much more emotionally
Speaker 1: complicated sorts of things. And for those of us who
Speaker 1: get it right, the satisfaction is very very strong, but
Speaker 1: the pressure can also be really high, which is maybe tough.
Speaker 1: The pressure is high, and a lot of us are
Speaker 1: unhappy today with the marriage that would have been totally
Speaker 1: adequate for our grandparents. And so I want to dig
Speaker 1: into this historical difference. It's one of the things I
Speaker 1: found most fascinating when I first read your book. So
Speaker 1: give me a sense in our last pandemic. So let's
Speaker 1: scroll back to the flu of nineteen eighteen. What was
Speaker 1: the typical marriage like back then and what were those
Speaker 1: How were those expectations different than what we expect now?
Speaker 1: The marriage was very, very different. So there existed by
Speaker 1: that time of how marriage could be, which was that
Speaker 1: the man would go off and do his breadwinning and
Speaker 1: the woman would stay and do her homemaking, and that
Speaker 1: that was the vision, and that they would love each other,
Speaker 1: and that was sort of the basis or foundation of marriage.
Speaker 1: That idea existed circa nineteen eighteen, but almost no couples
Speaker 1: in America could actually make that work. The only time
Speaker 1: really that most Americans would be able to do that was,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the thirty years following the Second World War,
Speaker 1: when a high school graduate boy could go out and
Speaker 1: get a union card and actually kind of support a
Speaker 1: family of five. But that wasn't true before, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't true now. And so the idea that your spouse
Speaker 1: was supposed to help on a voyage of self discovery
Speaker 1: like you would have been laughed at in nineteen eighteen America,
Speaker 1: but not so today. Whereas right now, some of the expectations,
Speaker 1: even in the midst of this crisis, are like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not completing me, or you're not making me a
Speaker 1: better person. Yeah, yeah, Look, in fairness, we don't have
Speaker 1: the full information yet about how people are responding. And
Speaker 1: it is difficult to be not only confronted with a
Speaker 1: major stressor, but to be confronted with a major stressor
Speaker 1: with somebody else who also is forced into close isolation
Speaker 1: with you. And so you're dealing with lots of things
Speaker 1: at once. And some marriages will actually really flourish under
Speaker 1: those circumstances that like some of us, that's like the
Speaker 1: thing we've always wanted. We're sick of having to do
Speaker 1: all this travel, or having to work so many hours,
Speaker 1: or having to work three jobs. All we've been wanting
Speaker 1: for the last three years is a little bit of
Speaker 1: quiet time together and lo and behold, through the worst
Speaker 1: of circumstances, we get it, and now look how happy
Speaker 1: we are. But on average, I don't think that's the
Speaker 1: story we're going to see. On average, I think the
Speaker 1: story is going to be about how incredibly disrupted our
Speaker 1: lives are and the amount of forced alone time together.
Speaker 1: But not under the best of circumstances. So it seems
Speaker 1: like one of the changing expectations is just what we're
Speaker 1: doing when we spend time together. You know, I know
Speaker 1: my husband and I are used to like going out
Speaker 1: to a nice restaurant to have a meal, and now
Speaker 1: we're spending time together where he's teaching in the next
Speaker 1: room and on podcast zooming in one room. But it
Speaker 1: just feels different. So talk about what these changes to
Speaker 1: our daily routines and our daily activities together might be
Speaker 1: doing and how it might be stressful. Most of us
Speaker 1: underappreciate the role that luck or circumstances play and how
Speaker 1: happy or unhappy we are in our relationship. It could
Speaker 1: be that the way that you have forced to change
Speaker 1: your life and he has been forced to change his
Speaker 1: life is a recipe for bliss, and that really all
Speaker 1: he's wanted is to have some nice, educational quality time
Speaker 1: with his children, and all you've wanted is to do
Speaker 1: some podcast recording and then walk outside into the familial
Speaker 1: bliss that is taking place in your living room. And
Speaker 1: those people lucky enough to have those sorts of preferences
Speaker 1: will obviously handle the stress and the quarantine better. Most
Speaker 1: of us have kind of built a life and gotten
Speaker 1: used to a life that has elements that we like
Speaker 1: in it. I mean, you talked about enjoying dinner dates.
Speaker 1: I think most of us, at least with the means,
Speaker 1: like to do that. We like to go to the theater,
Speaker 1: and we like to talk about those things. And we
Speaker 1: have an enormous restriction on the opportunities that we have
Speaker 1: on the range of different activities that we can do together.
Speaker 1: And so can we find a way to continue to
Speaker 1: connect at the same level, possibly even more, even though
Speaker 1: we're now confined to our homes. Yeah, and this raises
Speaker 1: a different question, which is I think that all of
Speaker 1: this is stressful for people who are incredibly privileged, but
Speaker 1: it's much worse for people who are facing like real
Speaker 1: economic challenges and real financial challenges during this time. The
Speaker 1: biggest concern by far is mass sickness and death. But
Speaker 1: second to that, I think we're going to see a
Speaker 1: pretty significant exacerbation of what was already significant inequality. People
Speaker 1: like me and other people that I know are weathering
Speaker 1: this thing, okay, and we have the internet access that
Speaker 1: our kids require to do school the way that the
Speaker 1: teachers are trying to get them to do school, and
Speaker 1: we have the money. It's particularly relevant in the context
Speaker 1: of relationships because it's true that divorce rates have been skyrocketing,
Speaker 1: but really only among people with less education. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about American data here. So in the sixties and the seventies,
Speaker 1: divorce rates skyrocketed for people with a college degree, without
Speaker 1: a college degree, without a high school degree. But starting
Speaker 1: around nineteen eighty you see this huge shift people who
Speaker 1: lack a high school degree. The divorce rates are still skyrocketing.
Speaker 1: And that's the case even though fewer and fewer of
Speaker 1: them are marrying in the first place. But if you
Speaker 1: look at people with a college degree and you compare
Speaker 1: us today versus the people like us in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: our divorce rates are way down. Like we seem to
Speaker 1: be building an average a pretty effective system that's working
Speaker 1: for us in terms of marriage. And one of the
Speaker 1: major reasons why it's working for us and not working
Speaker 1: for people who don't have the same amount of resources
Speaker 1: is how easy is it to build a marriage, especially
Speaker 1: a sort of self expressive marriage, when you are working
Speaker 1: three different job at three different Starbucks and you're trying
Speaker 1: to wake up at four in the morning to do
Speaker 1: some tutoring for your kid before you go off to
Speaker 1: catch the buses. It's not a system that works well. Now,
Speaker 1: how's that going to change? As a result of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus and the job loss and the economic calamity. It's
Speaker 1: going to hit the worst off people the hardest, and
Speaker 1: so all of this is pretty bad. But when we
Speaker 1: get back from the break, I'm going to demand that
Speaker 1: Eli get us out of this mess. I'm going to
Speaker 1: have Eli walk us through some of the ways we
Speaker 1: can set the right expectations and make sure we're protecting
Speaker 1: our love interests in this time of coronavirus. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab will be right back. Sheltering in place during a
Speaker 1: deadly pandemic can put a huge strain on our romantic relationships,
Speaker 1: but there are active strategies that all of us can
Speaker 1: take right now to protect our partnerships. And that's what
Speaker 1: I wanted social psychologists and relationships expert Eli Finkel to
Speaker 1: share with us next. Even when we're stuck in an
Speaker 1: incredibly stressful time basically in something that loosely approximates a
Speaker 1: home prison, it's not quite the same, but we're enforced
Speaker 1: quarantine or forced isolation, there are things that if we
Speaker 1: assume that there's a general decency to our partner and
Speaker 1: a general decency some foundation somewhere in the relationship, there
Speaker 1: should be things that we're able to do to cultivate
Speaker 1: a sense of strength in the relationship, not just mitigating
Speaker 1: or battling away downsides, but really playing up to the upsides.
Speaker 1: And it may be the sorts of things like Boy,
Speaker 1: when we were dating, we used to play games, and
Speaker 1: we used to have split a bottle of wine, and
Speaker 1: then the kids came and we sort of just forgot
Speaker 1: that that was fun. Like go back through the repertoire
Speaker 1: and remember, what are the things that we've enjoyed together
Speaker 1: that because of the pace of regular life we forgot
Speaker 1: how to do. And it might be hard, given the
Speaker 1: amount of stress, to sort of kick back with wine
Speaker 1: and try to relax, but it is certainly worth an attempt.
Speaker 1: And so we can use this really incredibly unfortunate situation
Speaker 1: to find ways to connect or reconnect with our partner
Speaker 1: that at least make it possible that for some of us,
Speaker 1: we will end this Corona chaos with a deeper and
Speaker 1: stronger connection with our partner than when we started. Because
Speaker 1: that's I think really great news, right, which is if
Speaker 1: we can figure out the things in our relationship that
Speaker 1: are really good and reform those habits. Now, ideally those
Speaker 1: habits won't go away when we're through this mess. They'll
Speaker 1: stick around. Yes, ideally they won't go away, but at
Speaker 1: the very least, it'd be nice to sort of reboot
Speaker 1: everyday life. I presume will eventually reboot everyday life, and
Speaker 1: doing it from a place of strength with our spouse
Speaker 1: or a significant other is going to be a massive difference.
Speaker 1: And if it turns out that then a year. Hence
Speaker 1: things are chaotic and we forget that some of these
Speaker 1: things were important to us. We can at least look
Speaker 1: back and say, well, why do we need a global
Speaker 1: pandemic to figure out or to remember that sharing a
Speaker 1: glass of wine and playing cards together is a recipe
Speaker 1: for laughter and good sex. And so you mentioned the
Speaker 1: kind of wine and the cards and the good sex.
Speaker 1: But I mean other couples of my friends have said
Speaker 1: that this time of preschooling their kids together can also
Speaker 1: be a form of bonding right like they feel like
Speaker 1: in their relationship the thing that drives them together are
Speaker 1: the kids, and this is a time that they can
Speaker 1: focus on the kids in a way that we've never
Speaker 1: been able to before because we've all been at work
Speaker 1: and they've been at school. Yes, that's true. The challenge
Speaker 1: of parenting in the time of coronavirus is that play
Speaker 1: dates are gone. There are now virtual play dates, but
Speaker 1: in general, if you're being responsible, your playdates are probably
Speaker 1: done even with the nextoor, neighbors or good friends, and
Speaker 1: that leaves children and their parents feeling cooped up and
Speaker 1: wondering how to feel the time, and fighting over how
Speaker 1: much screen time people get, and so yes, it is
Speaker 1: immensely stressful and frustrating, and there will be times when
Speaker 1: we want to pull our hair out, and we can
Speaker 1: be excused for feeling that way. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: if we never take a moment to say, yes, I
Speaker 1: don't like these circumstances. I wish they were different. But
Speaker 1: how cool is it that it's the five of us
Speaker 1: here and that there's no distraction, and we're going to
Speaker 1: watch a movie together and we're going to work on
Speaker 1: arithmetic together. It really is an exciting opportunity, and when
Speaker 1: our lives get busy again, we might miss it. And
Speaker 1: so one piece of advice is to leverage the upsides
Speaker 1: both in our circumstances but also in our relationships. But
Speaker 1: you've also given the advice that we need to do
Speaker 1: the opposite too, which is to kind of make sure
Speaker 1: we're paying attention to the not so great parts of
Speaker 1: our relationships. Yes, help to identify for yourself and together
Speaker 1: with your partner, what is it that we're good at
Speaker 1: in these circumstances, Like, we didn't ask for these, we
Speaker 1: didn't want these, but here we are. What are we
Speaker 1: good at? How can we make the most of those?
Speaker 1: And then you're absolutely right, What are we bad at?
Speaker 1: And how can we hold it together? Because we're going
Speaker 1: to be locked in like this at least for weeks
Speaker 1: and possibly for months, and if we don't figure out
Speaker 1: a way to mitigate or reduce the amount of frustration
Speaker 1: is going to get bad here and here I don't
Speaker 1: mean to be cavalier when I say it could get
Speaker 1: physically bad, Like I'm actually concerned that alongside various other
Speaker 1: consequences of the virus and the quarantine, that one of
Speaker 1: them will be a spike in domestic violence. There is
Speaker 1: a huge amount of stress and a huge amount of
Speaker 1: conflict and very few routes to escape. And I am
Speaker 1: concerned that not fifty percent of couples or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but that we'll see some type of problem like that.
Speaker 1: And so we need to attend not only to the
Speaker 1: places where we can really connect with our partner maybe
Speaker 1: it's the wine and the game of cards, but also
Speaker 1: to those specific handful of things that are real danger spots.
Speaker 1: So how do we handle those dangerous spots? Because I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are lots of folks and couples listening who
Speaker 1: are like yeah, communications not really great, or like yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of you know, doubling down on my husband when
Speaker 1: I know I'm kind of nagging him not so great, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you actually address those? Well, there's three options.
Speaker 1: One is we can have the sort of conversation that
Speaker 1: solves the problem. Oh, I didn't realize that was frustrating
Speaker 1: to you. Then for sharing with me. Now it's better,
Speaker 1: and that does happen. I'm not claiming that that's going
Speaker 1: to be the solution to everything. There's another possibility. A
Speaker 1: second option is to expect less, to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: there's a virus spreading the world and killing people, and
Speaker 1: we are stuck here in close proximity with some recalcitrant
Speaker 1: little people. Of course we're going to feel frustrated. It's
Speaker 1: normal to feel frustrated. I'm not going to catastrophize these
Speaker 1: experiences to say, how did we ever end up together?
Speaker 1: And maybe we can't be together any longer. There is
Speaker 1: a third possibility, which is sort of related to the
Speaker 1: second one, and it builds on this observation that I
Speaker 1: love from Marcel Proust who says that mystery is not
Speaker 1: about traveling to new places, but about looking with new eyes. Well,
Speaker 1: right now the planes are grounded, the trains aren't running,
Speaker 1: we're not traveling anywhere, so we can test his idea
Speaker 1: like can we look with new eyes when we think
Speaker 1: about our partner? And the research in psychology is really
Speaker 1: promising here. That is, yes, your partners said that thing,
Speaker 1: and yes maybe it was a little snippy, but we
Speaker 1: have a lot of power and how we interpret what
Speaker 1: she said or he said, we get to determine did
Speaker 1: he or she do that because he's disrespectful and doesn't
Speaker 1: appreciate me, Well, that's going to have consequences for your
Speaker 1: relationship if you draw that conclusion. Or is it that
Speaker 1: he's really overwhelmed and trying to do the best he
Speaker 1: can in difficult situations, That too, will have consequences for
Speaker 1: the relationship and much better ones. I love this idea
Speaker 1: of kind of looking with new eyes. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's part and parcel of something else you've argued for
Speaker 1: that this is the time for love hacks in our relationship.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about what these love hacks look like.
Speaker 1: So love hacks have two properties. They are things that
Speaker 1: you can do by yourself, so they don't have to
Speaker 1: be date nights or conversations or trying to have more
Speaker 1: sex or anything like that. The things that you can
Speaker 1: just do to reorient how you think about things, and
Speaker 1: they don't take much work. So the question is can
Speaker 1: we look with new eyes at these things? And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think is if we
Speaker 1: can do it, a very very effective thing to do
Speaker 1: is try to develop more generous explanations for why our
Speaker 1: partner was snippy with us. But there's a range of
Speaker 1: these things. And in fact, one of the studies from
Speaker 1: our lab looked at this idea of trying to think
Speaker 1: about conflict from the perspective of a neutral third party
Speaker 1: who wants the best for everybody. And what we did
Speaker 1: is we recruited one hundred and twenty couples from the
Speaker 1: Chicago area and we every four months for two years,
Speaker 1: asked them to report on the biggest fight they'd have
Speaker 1: over the previous four months, and in the second year,
Speaker 1: we randomly assigned half the couples to do an additional task.
Speaker 1: They wrote for seven minutes about that conflict, but from
Speaker 1: this neutral third party perspective, and then we tracked their
Speaker 1: relationship quality over time. And what we saw is that
Speaker 1: relative to people who were just in the control condition,
Speaker 1: people who were trying to think not only about the
Speaker 1: conflicts that they were having, but also trying to think
Speaker 1: about them from this generous third party perspective. Their relationships
Speaker 1: actually were better off afterward, not just in terms of satisfaction,
Speaker 1: but also in terms of things like trust, intimacy, and
Speaker 1: even passion. So if you use the strategy of going
Speaker 1: all in your own relationship, yes, for sure, there's no
Speaker 1: specific way that you have to do it. The idea
Speaker 1: is there something that we could do together? Is there
Speaker 1: something that would be nice. Has it been kind of
Speaker 1: longer than it probably should be since we last had sex.
Speaker 1: Has it been kind of longer than it probably should
Speaker 1: be since we talked about anything other than the kids.
Speaker 1: Has it been kind of longer than it probably should
Speaker 1: be since we last played a game or played anything together.
Speaker 1: For most of us, the answer to at least one
Speaker 1: of those questions is yes, And so going all in says, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't have the bandwidth for this all the time,
Speaker 1: I don't have the time for this all the time,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to make sure it's a priority at
Speaker 1: least some of the time, because I don't want a
Speaker 1: marriage that always fits in to the little leftover time
Speaker 1: slots that I give it. And that's a particularly useful
Speaker 1: strategy right now, in part because you know, we need
Speaker 1: to work on our relationships now during COVID more than ever,
Speaker 1: but also a lot of us are experiencing time windfalls
Speaker 1: that we've never had before. You know, those of us
Speaker 1: who aren't working have lots of time. Those of us
Speaker 1: who are working still don't aren't spending time on canute,
Speaker 1: and often the work is like less than it was before.
Speaker 1: Like this is a way to use our time windfall
Speaker 1: in a super positive way for our relationships for many
Speaker 1: of us, not the people who are shopping for eleven
Speaker 1: dollars an hour for everybody else, but for many of us,
Speaker 1: this is an incredible opportunity. And I think you're right.
Speaker 1: It's a windfall that if you'd said to us a
Speaker 1: couple months ago, you're going to have a few weeks.
Speaker 1: It's going to be inconvenient, and it's going to be scary,
Speaker 1: but you are going to have a suite of hours
Speaker 1: open for you and your spouse, you and your spouse
Speaker 1: and your children or your significant other, and you can
Speaker 1: use that to do anything that kind of doesn't drive
Speaker 1: you crazy. And how do you want to spend that time.
Speaker 1: We would have been thrilled with that deal to get
Speaker 1: a month like that or whatever. So the circumstances are terrible,
Speaker 1: but some of the details are amazing, and boy, it
Speaker 1: would be regrettable to miss this opportunity. And I think
Speaker 1: it's a nice way to sum up one of the
Speaker 1: last things you said in your Twitter feed, which is
Speaker 1: that if you had to sum up your advice, it
Speaker 1: would just be to tell everyone to be kind to
Speaker 1: the people that are stuck with them in this crisis.
Speaker 1: So sympathy and kindness generally a good strategy in life. Again,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the one that will always protect you from exploitation,
Speaker 1: but the one that will generally make your life better.
Speaker 1: It's more important now than usual. It's a time when
Speaker 1: we're all going through something pretty intense. There's no rule book,
Speaker 1: and all of us will make some false steps, all
Speaker 1: of us will say something that didn't come out like
Speaker 1: we meant it, and all of us will feel frustration.
Speaker 1: And being kind to the other members of our family,
Speaker 1: and frankly, being kind to ourselves is a pretty good
Speaker 1: way of making sure that the difficult stuff doesn't spiral
Speaker 1: into something seriously bad. Are you hopeful that if people
Speaker 1: know these tips that come from science, then we'll do
Speaker 1: better than we've seen in past crises, like people can
Speaker 1: really apply them. Is that push you more towards the
Speaker 1: positive outcomes in this crisis and less towards the yucky ones?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think a huge amount of what happens
Speaker 1: to relationships, A huge amount of the destruction or the
Speaker 1: corrosion erosion maybe that happens to relationships is inattention, is
Speaker 1: like not necessarily in attention to each other, but in
Speaker 1: attention to slow erosion and failure to think I'm not
Speaker 1: okay with us being thrilled on our wedding night and
Speaker 1: like one or two percent less happy every year after that.
Speaker 1: That eventually adds up, even if we don't notice it
Speaker 1: in any given year, in the same way that most
Speaker 1: of us eventually gained weight, even though we didn't notice
Speaker 1: that we gained a given pound. And so I hope
Speaker 1: the people listening will take a few extra minutes, a
Speaker 1: few extra like neuronal firings, to say I do care
Speaker 1: about my relationship, I do care about my family, and
Speaker 1: there's something in there like I don't know which one
Speaker 1: strategy is no, like the and tricks to make every
Speaker 1: relationship great. But there are ways of thinking about these
Speaker 1: things that absolutely can help the vast majority of us
Speaker 1: have a better relationship. So there you have it, some
Speaker 1: best practices for love in the time of COVID. I,
Speaker 1: for one, plan to use some of Eli's strategies with
Speaker 1: my own husband Mark. I'm going to try to double
Speaker 1: down even more during this challenging time, and I hope
Speaker 1: you will too, And I also hope that you'll come
Speaker 1: back for the next special COVID nineteen episode of The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is a Pushkin podcast. It's co written and produced by
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley and mastered by Evan Theola. Our original music
Speaker 1: is written by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Ben Davis,
Speaker 1: Heather Fame, Carl mcgliori, Julia Barton, Neil La Belle, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the Pushkin crew.