Couples’ fights in lockdown are often about the unremitting intensity of togetherness. The sooner you de-escalate a fight, the sooner you can begin working on real solutions.
Covid-19 can break marriages. The numbers coming out of the epicenters of the disease, though early and tentative, are dramatic. In Wuhan, from pre-outbreak levels, overwhelming the bureaucracy. But even for marriages that are not collapsing, Covid-19 is increasing the pressure. We’ve never spent so much time face-to-face with each other, and it’s driving some of us crazy.
The good news and the bad news are the same: There’s a perfectly natural explanation for the unbearable intensity of life under Covid-19. Fighting is a physical response, not an intellectual process. Which is why you’ve never solved a marital problem with a screaming match, and nobody else has either.
To be sure, there is a place for disagreement and argument in a healthy relationship. And fighting is, even for successful couples, an inevitable part of living together. Conflict is not necessarily a sign of an unhealthy relationship, and while marriages that were already faltering may be cracking under the strain, fighting in lockdown is not necessarily about deep structural problems. It can also be about unremitting, unceasing togetherness and the unbearableness of that condition. Many couples fight not because they lack intimacy, but because they possess it.
Understanding that tension requires understanding the physical processes that underlie them. Stan Tatkin is the developer of a , applying neuroscience to relationships, and in that approach, he says, the content of any given fight doesn’t matter.
“Money, time, mess, sex, kids are the five most argued about,” Dr. Tatkin said. “But here’s the thing, it’s never really about those things. What causes a problem is the manner in which partners interact, especially in distress.”
Very little is known about the future social effects of Covid-19, but one thing is nearly certain, even as states reopen: There’s going to be a lot more distress for couples — less money, less time, more mess and, with no break from the kids for school or summer camp, probably a lot less sex.
“We have brains that are built more for war than for love. In order to survive, we have more threat centers in the brain than anything else. It’s part of the human condition, and it’s part of the problem in all relationships,” Dr. Tatkin said.
That is what isolation under Covid-19 can feel like: We are at war even when we are in love. That’s as much a biological reality as an emotional one.
When a couple is fighting, Dr. Tatkin said, “They’re producing more catecholamines. These are excitatory neurotransmitters and hormones. You’ve got noradrenaline, which makes you very focused, very attentive, but you can also be focusing and attentive on the things that are specifically threatening, and not see other things.” We’re wired to pick up threat, and do so with whatever we see, whoever we’re around, even our partners.
