Speaker 1: It's Friday, July t I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Some marriages are starting to buckle under quarantine and strict
Speaker 1: lockdowns in some households, months of monotony and spending too
Speaker 1: much time together is exposing bad behavior and exacerbating underlying problems,
Speaker 1: most likely there before the pandemic began. Marissa Kashino, senior
Speaker 1: editor at Washington I in joins us for more. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Marissa, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about one of the by products
Speaker 1: I guess of being on lockdown and quarantine for so long.
Speaker 1: People get frustrated with each other. They get frustrated with
Speaker 1: their partners being in such close quarters for such long
Speaker 1: periods of times, and some marriages are buckling under these quarantines. Mersa,
Speaker 1: you wrote a story. You spoke to a few people
Speaker 1: about how it's been a difficult go during the quarantine
Speaker 1: and their marriages have kind of ended during it, but
Speaker 1: they've had to stay in the same house because of lockdowns.
Speaker 1: It's been a lot of crazy different situations. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about it that's correct and I think
Speaker 1: even for the happiest, healthiest marriages, quarantine is very trying.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of a sudden, you're not just sharing
Speaker 1: a home with your spouse or your partner, you're sharing
Speaker 1: a workspace, or you're trying to balance homeschool and your
Speaker 1: children with keeping you on top of your full time job.
Speaker 1: So I think that's important. Distress is that this has
Speaker 1: been a tough time for even the healthiest, best marriages.
Speaker 1: So the partnerships that were already on the rocks, or
Speaker 1: maybe already had problems that were bubbling just beneath the surface,
Speaker 1: have been particularly challenged during this time. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of these marriages may have ended at some point
Speaker 1: regardless of quarantine. It's just that all of this time
Speaker 1: stuck together in the same house has made problems that
Speaker 1: might have been somewhat tolerable really really impossible to ignore.
Speaker 1: These are just the times that we're living in right now,
Speaker 1: And as you said, the pandemic being on these lockdowns
Speaker 1: kind of exacerbates some of these underlying problems. And then
Speaker 1: you're stuck with a person. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people just can't pick up and go in the same
Speaker 1: way during normal time. So this is kind of reflectives
Speaker 1: in some of the stories that you shared in your article.
Speaker 1: Share some of those stories that you had with some
Speaker 1: of the with some people. The most extreme cases are
Speaker 1: the marriages where at least one partner thought everything was
Speaker 1: fine before quarantine and some sort of earth shattering discovery
Speaker 1: has been made as a result of being stuck together.
Speaker 1: So there's one woman in my story. I talked to
Speaker 1: her lawyer. I didn't speak with her directly, but her lawyer,
Speaker 1: her divorce lawyer, heard from this woman who taught that
Speaker 1: everything in her marriage, for the most part, was fine.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people you know in Washington or
Speaker 1: in big cities, she has a very demanding career, as
Speaker 1: does her husband. So when times were normal, they were
Speaker 1: often out of the house a lot, and they were
Speaker 1: traveling for work, and even when they were in town,
Speaker 1: they were working long hours and just not seeing that
Speaker 1: much of each other. So now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they're locked down during the pandemic, spending seven together, and
Speaker 1: it turns out it's a lot harder to keep a
Speaker 1: secret when you're stuck in quarantine with your spouse. So
Speaker 1: this poor woman happened upon some direct messages in one
Speaker 1: of her husband's social media accounts from a longtime girlfriend
Speaker 1: that he'd had in another city, and in fact, he
Speaker 1: had practically a double life. So that's a very extreme scenario,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's also the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: this weird sort of situation that we've been in with
Speaker 1: quarantine gives people the opportunity to discover and maybe otherwise
Speaker 1: this woman never would have discovered it, or it would
Speaker 1: have been you know, years before she figured out that
Speaker 1: something was really wrong in her marriage. And then if
Speaker 1: the suspicion arises, you know, what do you do to
Speaker 1: kind of figure it out? You have to do some sleuthing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people are paying private eyes to investigate their spouse,
Speaker 1: and they're paying a lot of money for that. You
Speaker 1: spoke to a few private eyes who are also kind
Speaker 1: of getting caught up in the mix of trying to
Speaker 1: figure these things out, and these guys have been in
Speaker 1: the private investigative business for decades and they were telling
Speaker 1: me that they've never seen anything like this. A lot
Speaker 1: of the cases that they're investigating now started before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: so that's an important clarification. I think that these spouses
Speaker 1: already had some suspicion before quarantine. But perhaps you would
Speaker 1: assume that because we were in the middle of a
Speaker 1: public health crisis, people would at least put their philandering
Speaker 1: and they're cheating aside until the public health risk the
Speaker 1: sides a bit. But it turns out that's not true.
Speaker 1: And that is what these private eyes found so shocking
Speaker 1: that even though we're all supposed to be social distancing,
Speaker 1: their catching husbands, meeting up with girlfriends or just random
Speaker 1: people they've met on Tinder or on other hookup sites
Speaker 1: at hotel rooms. This one p I told me that
Speaker 1: he followed a mom to park where she was meeting
Speaker 1: up with her boyfriends or her you know, on the side,
Speaker 1: and she brought along her kids. So some of these
Speaker 1: stories are pretty sad, and and then in turn, you know,
Speaker 1: of course these people are out cheating on their spouses
Speaker 1: and then coming home, and not only are they coming
Speaker 1: home and having been unfaithful, but they're also now potentially
Speaker 1: exposing their partners and their families to coronavirus because they
Speaker 1: haven't been careful. So it's like the sort of double
Speaker 1: threats like cheating and taking to a different level, and
Speaker 1: even the ultimate solution, the divorce and finalizing divorce is
Speaker 1: kind of elusive in all of this because the divorce
Speaker 1: cases have been delayed. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other things that have been put in the queue right
Speaker 1: now that need to be handled before that, and some
Speaker 1: people are saying that they can be delayed to as
Speaker 1: late as next year. So even that part of it
Speaker 1: is a difficult thing to navigate. That's another stress or
Speaker 1: on top of all of this, because you know, in
Speaker 1: normal times, if I discovered that my partner was cheating
Speaker 1: on me and I decided to get a divorce, that
Speaker 1: would be traumatic enough. But compound that with the courts
Speaker 1: are closed for a lot of run of the mill
Speaker 1: business like that. So my options are very limited right now,
Speaker 1: which means that my stress level is going to be
Speaker 1: going through the room even more than it would in
Speaker 1: normal times. And I think that that will be a
Speaker 1: reason that we see, you know, a sort of divorce boom,
Speaker 1: hopefully when things are turned to normal sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: It might not be that a ton of couples decided
Speaker 1: to get divorced during quarantine who wouldn't otherwise have made
Speaker 1: that decision at some point, But it's like, there's this
Speaker 1: going to be this backlog, this log jam of people
Speaker 1: who would have been gradually going through the motions, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, once the courts open up, they're
Speaker 1: all going to be pounding on the doors, you know,
Speaker 1: asking to hurry up the process because they've been stuck
Speaker 1: together for so long. It'll be like a damn has broken.
Speaker 1: Marissa Casino, Senior editor at Washington I and thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. Thank you so much. I'm
Speaker 1: Oscar Ramirez, and this has been reopening America. Don't forget
Speaker 1: effort today's big news stories. You can check me out
Speaker 1: on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So
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