4 Questions To Ask Yourself About Your Pandemic Relationship, To Know if It’ll Last
Well, in the same way you would check whether any type of romantic connection—pandemic or not—has run its course. By evaluating how compatible you two genuinely are—in a global crisis and otherwise. If you’re not sure your turbo relationship can stand the test of time, or you want to feel confident that you partnered up well, we have a little check list for you: Below, relationship expert Susan Winter shares four questions to ask yourself, to see if your pandemic relationship is true blue, or not so much.
- Susan Winter, relationship expert and author of Allowing Magnificence, Older Women/Younger Men, and Breakup Triage
4 questions to ask yourself to decipher whether your pandemic relationship is the real deal
1. "Do I see a future with this person?"
For those looking to settle down or at least get serious, it's time to reevaluate if this feels like a sustainable bond. You may be noticing certain character qualities or lifestyle choice may not have aged well on the other side of this pandemic.
Ask yourself: If we were out in the real world today and able to have a wider selection, would we still choose to be with each other? "This is how to discern if your partner was 'of the moment,' or 'someone for your future,'" Winter says.
2. "Was I choosing out of lack and desperation?"
It's never good to operate in a scarcity mindset, which is the survival state a lot of us have been in as of late during the pandemic. In the before times, you might've held yourself to higher standards, but when stay-at-home orders hit, anybody with antibodies felt like a winner to a lot of folks. "The lockdown limited our romantic prospects and put everyone in a panic," says Winter. "Between food shortages and jobs lost, we were all making crucial decisions with limited information."
So, consider whether you made a romantic choice from that same fear-based place that might have caused you to stockpile toilet paper. Potentially, that date that felt like unearthing a diamond-in-the-rough is maybe someone you wouldn't normally swipe right on. Time to figure out which deck of cards you picked your pandemic paramour from.
3. "Did we get along well during the lockdown?"
"An important factor in determining long-term happiness is day-to-day functionality," says Winter. "How well do the two of you get along with each other?"
To decipher this, look at your overall communication patterns. Can you speak your mind without fear? Are issues resolved? Is there a foundation of honesty? Also, take a look at how you two relate to each other. See if there's patience and graciousness between you two, if you have a grounded respect for one another. Being able to feel at peace in your relationship is a good sign that it's headed in the right direction.
4. "Do we have complimentary dispositions?"
TBH, pretty much everything about this period of time has been skyscraper-level stressful. Every day felt like a year...for a year straight. "If you survived your daily challenges with understanding and kindness, you definitely have a keeper," Winter says. "Fear and uncertainty trigger our deepest degrees of reactivity. The pandemic should have clarified if your dispositions are a match. If you and your partner were able to maintain a healthy relationship during the worst of times, you've proven to yourselves that you can go the distance."
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