Alone Together
By Esther Robards-Forbes. Illustrations by Jenna Luecke.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the winter of 2020, locking down entire countries and leaving people isolated in their homes without outside contact for weeks at a time, many relationship experts pondered what would come next. More divorces, more marriages or both? How would older people who were already isolated manage, versus younger people just learning the social ropes? How would parents and children fare?
University of Texas at Austin researchers in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences set out to answer some of these questions. What they found may surprise you – as well as provide insightful tips for navigating these unprecedented times.
Recognize the Seniors Faring Well
According to a new study from Karen Fingerman, a professor in the department who also directs UT’s Texas Aging and Longevity Center, older people are dealing with this pandemic better than younger people and experiencing less stress.
“Older adults typically cope with big natural disasters and crises better than young adults because they have more experience with these types of events,” Fingerman said. “In this situation, many older adults were already retired and used to managing daily life without the external structure of work or children’s school. Many older adults already lived alone and spent time at home, so the change may not have been as dramatic.”
Fingerman warns against a tendency with the pandemic to lump older people together as a monolithic group of the medically frail. Seniors lead rich, varied lives, she explains, including as essential workers, professionals, volunteers, caregivers and more.
“Ageism might be the biggest challenge,” Fingerman said. “Much of the media and political coverage has been dismissive of the value of older adults’ lives—and even for those who are healthy and doing well, this attitude can have harmful effects. I am concerned that this ageism will not dissipate once the crisis is over, and we will continue to devalue older adults’ lives.”
Expect Relationships to Hold Steady
“Some people come together and they say, ‘This is a stressful situation and we’re going to tackle this together and we’re not going to blame each other for things that are hard.’”
Before the pandemic sent people into lockdown, Hannah Williamson, an assistant professor, was already studying a group of couples, seeking to understand how stress affected and changed their romantic relationships. When the pandemic sent the world into lockdown, she followed up with her study participants to see how they were faring.
“Relationship satisfaction did not suddenly change with the pandemic. If people were happy in December 2019, they are still happy. If they were unhappy, they are unfortunately still unhappy,” Williamson said.
Blame the Pandemic
Two separate, concurrent studies, one by Williamson and another by associate professors Lisa Neff and Marci Gleason found that when people blamed the pandemic for their own stress and their partner’s negative behavior, they had higher levels of satisfaction with those around them and healthier relationships overall. The studies found that when one person snapped, was rude or lost their patience, if the person close to them attributed the behavior to stress brought on by the pandemic, they tended not to think the behavior came about from a desire to do harm or because the friend or family member is a bad person.
“Some people come together and they say, ‘This is a stressful situation and we’re going to tackle this together and we’re not going to blame each other for things that are hard or difficult,’” said Gleason.
Unfortunately, keeping this powerful mindset front and center over time can be difficult. Gleason and Neff’s study ran from mid-March to mid-April in 2020, during the early weeks of the lockdown in many parts of the U.S., and by the end of the study, they were seeing hints that positive effects were wearing off. It may be possible to recapture the positive effects, the researchers noted, by consciously choosing to blame incredibly stressful situations for bad behavior in others around us and in ourselves.
Balance the Support Scales
Previous research has found that partners can receive the greatest benefit from support when they are giving and receiving it.
“Support is most effective at alleviating anxiety and negative mood, when it’s flowing both ways,” said Neff, “that is, when one is both giving support to a partner and receiving it from that partner.”
Neff found that when men are stressed out, it can be more difficult for them to perceive that their partners are stressed out, too, and they are less likely to offer support. For women experiencing higher stress levels, there was no change in their ability to perceive stress or offer support.
“If couples can effectively support each other during stressful times, that’s hugely important for weathering those storms. They’re much more likely to emerge from that stressor unscathed,” Neff said. “Stress seems to interfere with perspective and the ability to be empathetic to a partner’s emotional state and offer effective support when needed.”
The way to avoid this pitfall? Ask for the support you need in a clear way. A pandemic is not the time for subtlety.
Build Emotional Capital
Neff has done previous research on the concept of emotional capital: those small, intimate moments that accumulate between family members or partners and protect them from conflict when it does occur. The more of these moments people in a household together have “banked,” the more protected the relationship.
“The pandemic offers the opportunity for more of those emotional capital-building moments,” Neff said. “It can be something as simple as playing a board game together or some fun activity.”
Bonus points if you’re in a romantic relationship and the activity is something new. New experiences, like cooking a dish together that you’ve never tried, may help you recapture a little of that exciting feeling when you first got together, when everything was new.
Turn to Your Friends
In earlier research, Neff found that when members of a couple had supportive friends and family members and they were able to discuss problems in their relationship, they were less likely to suffer the negative effects of stress when they argued with their partner.
“External connections are more important than ever right now,” Neff said. “It may not be possible or healthy to unload your stress on only your partner. Finding ways to connect with people outside the four walls of your home is going to be especially helpful for helping to navigate those times when the stress does overwhelm you in the home and conflict between you and your partner arises.”
If There’s Trouble, Seek Intervention Early
Thanks to the pandemic, many marriage counselors and therapists are offering sessions through video calling, making them more accessible than ever. The key is seeking intervention early, said Williamson.
“In my research and clinical experience, a lot of people wait a really long time to get help for their relationship,” Williamson said. “If you’re working with couples who have been extremely unhappy and distressed for a long time, that’s a lot harder to come back from than people who are starting to recognize that conflict is becoming an issue.”
Social Isolation is Stressing Parents
In surveys conducted in April of 2020 among mothers of children under 2, Deborah Jacobvitz, Phyllis L. Richards Endowed Professor in Child Development, found that social isolation is one of the largest stressors for parents during the pandemic.
“One of the biggest predictors for depression and anxiety was the stress of being isolated, even more than fear of getting sick,” Jacobvitz said. “I think this isolation is really creating mental health problems that are having a very negative impact on people’s ability to parent.”
It is important for parents to reach out and ask for the support that they need and for friends and family to check in on parents, particularly those with young children at home.
“We know from previous research that children take their cues from their parents. If mom and dad are stressed out, it can impact the children. Support for parents, especially mothers, is incredibly important right now. Parents can take steps to take care of themselves and reach out for what they need,” Jacobvitz said.
Find more tips for resilient relationships, resources for parents of young children and for elders, and other ideas from UT’s School of Human Ecology about weathering and recovering from quarantine in “7 Ideas from the School of Human Ecology for Responding to COVID-19.”