People In Long-Term Relationships Explain How Quarantine Has Affected Their Relationship

So Much Closer

It's brought my wife and I a lot closer. I work 2.5 hours from home, 10 hour days (plus 6-8 hours overtime twice a week), 4 days a week. So I usually leave on Monday night and get home Friday night.

I've been home every night since November 18th, so getting to put my 1 year old daughter to bed every night, get up with her every morning, and spending all day with her and my pregnant wife (which allows my wife a nap every single day) has made this the best month of my life, even with me doing almost all of the household chores. According to my wife, it's made the last month as close to Heaven as a pregnant woman can get.

- SirFister13F

Rock Bottom

We hit rock bottom not long ago. We talked and we're working on things now. It's been tough. We live together and it's almost impossible to have some alone time. This has been one of my main problems.

I miss missing my boyfriend, you know? Spending every minute together is great, but up to a certain point

For me it's important to have my own life. You know, leave the house for work, meet up with other people. Without that I get depressed and the more time we spend together, the less excited I get about being a couple basically.

I don't like this routine. We've been together for 5 years and lived together for 4.

It's always been fine, but being forced to stay at home is a completely different story

- iaskmyselfisitasin

I Hope It's The Apocalypse

Me and my girlfriend were living together for a year before lockdown, so we ended up being with each other during lockdown. It has been brilliant, we've just grown closer together and now believe we can get through anything! Next test is the apocalypse I guess.

At least I hope it's the apocalypse and not kids lol.

- Hupthecuck

Call It A Day

We decided to call it a day and I moved out.

We had been seeing each other off and on, 8 years. Had been going strong for about 3 years though. We didn't realize how little we had in common until quarantine.

- pilatesse

A Snapshot Of Retirement

Closest my wife and I have ever been. We've been married for 2 years and together for 6 total.

We've always got along great, which sounds stupid but some married couples enjoy having it out from time to time lol.

Fortunately we had planned for emergency and had enough back up to last us 6 months of no income. Wife was only out about a month and I was off for 4.

I qualified for unemployment so we were in no real danger. Plus we don't have kids or a house yet. We basically sat around lol. But hey, we worked hard for the emergency fund so that things like this hurt as little as possible.

We watched a lot of clone wars, went for walks, cooked together, slept in together and enjoyed silence together. It was nice. Now we are both working again and it's a hustle to get everything done so we can chill.

The speed of life can really slow down a relationship. It was much better when we could just be filthy casuals. I love her more than ever. It was a snapshot of retirement almost. I think I chose the right gal.

- Pinheadlarry5

"Find Himself"

21 years of marriage down the drain because he suddenly decided he needed to "find himself."

"Himself" apparently lives on a boat and pays ridiculous amounts of money to 19 year old girls for nudes. Meanwhile I'm figuring out who I am now that my life isn't consumed with taking care of him and my now grown children.

I got a job, a car and now we get to fight over the junk we own.

- witty-recipe-7652

Pretty Much The Same

Hasn't changed all that much.

Husband and I are homebodies by nature. We are simple people, though we did have plans to travel within the state this year.

The only other thing that sucks for us is the obvious pandemic and how we can't go to the movie theaters or restaurants.

Our date nights are trips to get food.

- KarmaticFox

Oh hello me. It seems there are couples who have been brought closer, couples or have found their moment for exit, and couple who didn't really feel impacted. It seems the less impacted is less common but I'm very glad to fall into this category!

- SlightTennis

Come Closer; That's Too Close

We didn't see each other for a few months, which led to us appreciating each other more.

Then when restrictions lifted, I moved in with him. We certainly learned a lot more about each other - one of those lessons being that we both need time away from each other sometimes.

Being stuck in quarantine together was tough and led to arguments

- nervous-_-wreck

A Weird One

I have a weird one.

My husband and I divorced in 2019. It was a ridiculous overreaction to a single fight. (We married young, and are still pretty dumb). Since our relationship was otherwise pretty solid, we kinda naturally fell back into a friendship with each other after the divorce and kept in touch. We had cats together that I got custody of and we'd regularly chat about them, for example.

We found ourselves in different states, both living with our respective parents and both going to grad school (mostly) virtually this past year. I lost my job and his job has been WFH almost all year. Quarantine was very, very lonely for us. Neither of us are very social, so no longer having work or school in person eliminated our social outlets.

We used to have each other to stay at home with and be antisocial. Going through a forced period of isolation like quarantine made us realize what we had lost by splitting up. We slowly found each other again, from hundreds of miles apart.

I never stopped loving my husband, he is one of the greatest people I know. I was happy to still get to be in his life, even just barely. But this past year we got to grow back together as slightly wiser people with straighter priorities. I don't know if we could have done that if we'd been able to keep distracted with heavy school and work schedules. If we didn't both feel the need to protect each other and be with one another when a terrifying once-in-a-lifetime event like a pandemic began, I don't think either of our dumb asses would have realized what we had given up.

- deladude

It's Not A Hoax

In the beginning good, more recently more strained.

I'm a nurse and in the beginning when their was a lot of fear I felt like we were on the same page working together to help your children and family get through these stressful times. His family are a bunch of Covid hoax believers who all contracted Covid so now my husband leans more that way- not thinking things are a big deal.

I'll come home from work and be like:
"Yeah ... we had 3 deaths before 0730 today, you acting like this isn't a big deal is a big slap in the face."

I should also point out we have VERY different political affiliations which has made things even more tense.

- bsn2fnp1

Water cooler love

We've actually gotten closer I think, been remote working for the last 9 months and before that we almost never saw each other. I'd come home too tired to do anything useful and just sit at my PC all evening mentally drained. Now during my breaks I can help her around the house giving us both more free time on my days off and spend a bit more time with her.

eight47pm

Devolved

Not necessarily long-term but just over a year with gf, dont live together she works and i don't have job atm

Firstly we communicate by text and haven't spoke more than a couple of sentences since mid-October. The conversations now have devolved to one message at 10pm when she's back from work and that's it.

Also, our anniversary was in November and despite going on about how it's important, she completely forgot despite me trying to hint at it.

Usually the only times we'd get to see each other would be once a week meeting in town and I usually let her let me know when she's available because of her work.

But we haven't met up since at least the beginning of October and she hasn't made an effort to since, even considering my birthday was this month

Like its not just the coronavirus she was happy to go shopping on the other side of the country

I_CAPE_RATSs

Scratch the itch 

We feel stagnant. Like we don't do anything. Because, well, we don't. We haven't been going out to eat. We haven't been traveling. All our usual date ideas are no good anymore.

We've been trying a new recipe every week which has been helping scratch the itch for new experiences, but it's still just a slog.

But I love her and we're still going strong.

thedankbank1021

No exit

I am genuinely tired of spending all that time with my husband. I would love to have the house to myself for a month. We both work from home and live in a cold city. There's not much escape! I love him to death but I wish he would leave the house for only a month!!!

craftybeaver27777779

Hug-o-war

He moved in with me a month ago. We've mostly settled but still figuring some minor dynamics of living together. We've been together nearly nine years, but only just moved in together recently due to attending grad school in different cities.

When he moved in, I was mainly relieved that I had someone I could actually hug.

Shiny_Salamander

Years behind

Not much has changed. We don't meet up to grab a beer after work together anymore, I just wait for him to come home and then greet him at the door like one of our dogs lol. We play more board games and he gets more home-cooked breakfasts in the morning now that I don't have to commute to the office. It's kinda great, but we were great before quarantine too.

It just occurred to me that it's probably going perfectly because for the first 5 years of our relationship, we barely saw each other. He worked weekends and nights and I worked a normal 9 to 5 so even living together, I'd wake up for work while he slept and I'd get home from work when he'd already left to his. When he'd get home, I'd be asleep and we only saw each other conscious on weekends. So I'm still years behind on getting my fill of this guy!

PassportSloth

Bored together

ladyledylidy