Covid lockdown is tough on couples

Would the pandemic prove a boom time for the birth rate or divorce lawyers? That was one of the questions about this vast social experiment when the world went into quarantine a year ago.

Early signs were not promising. A report from north-west China last March described a record number of applications for divorce as the registration offices reopened. Last year, the UN called the rise in domestic abuse cases the “shadow pandemic”. More recently, the Financial Times reported falling birth rates across Europe. 

Yet, Eric Klinenberg, professor of social science at NYU, says it is too early to judge the impact of Covid-19 on relationships. “I don’t think anyone who got married in the past 50 years expected they were making a vow to spend 24/7 in the same small living space with a spouse, while educating their children at home, working at home, and having no real outlet. It’s a very stressful time. We’re experiencing a lot of economic insecurity. You might not want to leave your spouse and lead a new life.”

Emma Gill, director at the UK law firm Vardags, says: “People often delay life-changing decisions during times of significant upheaval. Lockdown has also made it much harder for couples to divorce — when you are cooped up together, it can be much harder to find the solitude to discuss your case with a lawyer.”

While unemployment creates huge stress for couples, sociologist Aliya Rao says it is “less stigmatising” at a time of mass unemployment and therefore less likely a spouse will blame their partner for losing their job, though it can take “longer to bounce back”.

Just as the pandemic has led many to re-evaluate their working lives and lifestyles, so too with relationships. As Peter Saddington, a counsellor at Relate, says: “If your relationship was troubled to start with that is likely exacerbated.” But some couples have found benefits. “They’ve had more time together, family time together, they haven’t had the stress of travel.” 

For most couples, the impact of the pandemic on their relationship probably lies somewhere between affection and affliction.

One woman told me she felt almost blessed a year ago. If she had to be cooped up in a small flat, she reasoned then, it was just as well it was with her husband and child. Yet, as the weeks progressed, the stress of juggling work and home-schooling brought to the surface an irritation with her husband. Without the distractions of separate workplaces and nights out with friends, she wondered what they had in common. At the same time, the rising death toll made her acutely aware of the fragility of life. Lockdown sparked an existential line of self-reflection that she is no closer to solving all these months later, describing herself as “divorce curious”.

When it comes to useful historical precedents for the pandemic’s impact on couples, Pat Thane, professor of contemporary history at King’s College London, says “there really aren’t any”. Comparing the Spanish flu and the Black Death with Covid-19 is not just difficult due to the scale and demographic effects of those. There’s also a vast amount data collected on our lives now, and people reveal far more than in the past. “Domestic violence wasn’t talked about,” Thane says. “Many marriages broke up even if they didn’t get divorced [because of the expense]. People are more open about things that they were secretive and ashamed of in the past.”

It is impossible to generalise about societal responses to disease and pandemics, says historian John Sabapathy. “Diseases are meaningless — we’re the ones who give meaning to them.”

One aspect that differs from past pandemics is the lack of collective resources, such as religion, putting more focus on family units and couples. “The arts are plainly also under pressure as another way we have for making sense of life,” Sabapathy says. “Beyond families and the arm’s length proximity of social media, we have been markedly uncreative at generating collective resources to reflect on our predicament. Thursday clapping [for healthcare workers in the UK] was our temporary high point in that regard. If we can’t make shared meaning elsewhere, it seems likely we’ll put even greater pressure on our immediate families to mean more.”

emma.jacobs@ft.com