During the first week of our self-isolation, before the whole world was on lockdown, I was in bed scrolling through the New York Times Opinion section on my iPhone.
I paused on a piece titled “Welcome to Marriage During the Coronavirus”, which drew me in with its byline: “Remember: Both of you are right.” Both of us? Impossible. But, I am new to the marriage thing and strange times call for strange behavioral reconfigurations. So I read on.
At the end of the article there was an invitation, asking readers to share their experiences: Do you share a home with your partner? How has the pandemic affected your daily life and your relationship?
I had already begun realizing that we both needed to ‘improvise and adapt’ in order to deal with the prospect of an indefinite period of home confinement. We would both have to suppress—or at least put on mute—our pet-peeves. We would have to lean into the fact that we would be each other’s sole company (and entertainment) for a long time.
Staying at home may be easier for people who enjoy the quiet stillness of home life. I’ve personally always found it hard to stay put, but I’ve grown accustomed to appreciating the benefits of that stillness.
I decided to try putting my thoughts into words at the bottom of that opinion piece: “We’ve only been married four months. Our friends half-joke that isolation is our “honeymoon.” Some days, I snap at him for not closing the kitchen cupboard or cutting cheese with the jelly knife, or I’m just angry that he’s in his tracksuit all day. But in the moments that I slip out of my vehement resistance to this coronavirus mode of living, I actually enjoy the time with him in our one-bedroom apartment. I worry I’ll get used to it.”
Yesterday, as we were eating dinner, a friend texted us a screenshot from the New York Times. My little note had been featured in another Opinion piece published by the paper, titled ‘It’s Starting to Feel Like a Pressure Cooker in This House’.
I hadn’t told M. about my submission—it didn’t seem like a big deal—and I hadn’t known that it was going to actually be published, so this was the first time he was reading the note. When he was done, he took a spoonful of the Trader Joe’s risotto dish in front of him and said: “We’ve actually been married five months.”