One-of-a-kind solutions for a one-of-a kind situation. Our in-house guide for surviving relationships during Coronavirus! It covers all relationships from significant partners to also family, friends, children, and even something to use with your work colleagues.
Accepting current realities!
The first and foremost step we all can take is recognise and accept the likelihood that we'll probably be spending all our time at our homes with very restricted and only essential movement in the outside world. This comes not as a choice, but as a necessity for all of us to delay the spread of the virus. While most of us are coming to terms with this, we also need to understand that there is no set time till when this will go on and there's still no way to know for sure. We have predictive models to keep us company but the reality is, our coming two months are going to be quite uncertain.
Making a plan or Taking one day at a time?
Keeping these realities in mind, it can go a long way to make a plan of our daily routines and roles with members of our family, our partners, our roommates and even colleagues, anyone who we are interacting with on a daily basis. This plan can involve devising a house routine, redistributing responsibilities, cooperating with each other's schedules and essential work that is still ongoing from home. For roommates, it could help to work together and be mindful of each other's space. If you're someone who would rather take this one day at a time, communicate this to your significant others, everyone copes differently and that's okay.
For a lot of Indian families, getting everyone on board with this plan might not be easy, so it can help to discuss this at the dinner table, share what help you need from your family members, ask them where you can be accommodating. Extraordinary times like this, requires some extraordinary conversations.
Practice flexibility!
At this time, one of the most important tool we have is being flexible. For all this time, we've carefully figured out how we want to live life but times like this, only way to survive is to cooperate and be flexible. Our plans will not fall into place all at once, it will take some time. This is like any big change we face in our lives and requires our flexibility. So practice, practice, practice being flexible with your plans, how you and your loved ones should deal with this, even your loved one's emotional reactions, your child's outbursts, your parents' orders, your partner's expectations. Some days things will go the planned way, some days they might not. And that's okay.
Being better together()
One of the ways you can take the pressure off with your loved ones is to organise or get together for a fun activity. This could be a board game, a card game, some antakshari or charades or even a movie everyone can sit and enjoy. If it's just you and your roommate or partner, have a dinner date, maybe a dance party or a girl's night in, work out online or maybe just connect over the video call. Men may want to bond over some shows or even some virtual video games, poker or just plain old card games. See what works for you, the more you can interact with each other the better. Be mindful of still practicing social distancing.
Redefining 'me' time ^-^
Finding time and space just for ourselves might be difficult for us right now. For those of us living away from our families or with our partners or roommates, this might still be slightly possible. So take out even 10 minutes off your day and see if you can get away from the hustle in the house. Get little creative with your me time, take a nice warm shower, make yourself some hot tea/coffee, put on some music, take a nap and just relax. We're calling this our new pandemic pastimes.
Finding even 10 minutes for yourself away from everyone could really do wonders for your mood. This might not be your usual way but even if it gets you some time alone with yourself, try it.
Being mindful of a one-of-a kind situation!
None of us have done this before, we're all new to this. Yes. we've been alone at home, we've had to restrict our work before due to diseases, yes we've seen national emergencies before but this is also a time of great uncertainty and panic surrounding this keeps increasing. To add to this, we're all connected via social media, all the time and have access to all that's going wrong. And that is a situation, we're all experiencing for the first time. So realise that you and your loved ones both are new to this. We have no previous experience to fall back on. There's not many right or wrong ways to deal with this. So be mindful of that and try not taking each other's negative reactions to heart.
A small note for those who are managing now long distance relationships. We understand your conversations may have gotten limited to texts and occasional video/audio calls with no possibility of meeting. It might be tougher for those of you living with your parents. At a time like this, find a new pattern for how you spend your time together in this distance. Get creative and rethink ways of connecting with each other. Understand that for a while, you'll have to figure out a new kind of online relationship. Meeting each other, sending gifts might have to be replaced with sharing online subscriptions, book recommendations, online dates and more.
There's no playbook for this one, we're all figuring it out with each other as we go. So be patient, be flexible and keep exploring. We're all in this together so if you guys have any more suggestions, do share with others in the comment section below!
Note: We advise you to incorporate these suggestions keeping in mind the government recommendations for social distancing. In case you are experiencing considerable discomfort or have noticed a deterioration in your mental health, feel free to reach out to us.