If you have a chink in your relationship armor, there’s nothing like a pandemic with orders to shelter at home for 60+ days, to test whether or not it’s going to make your connection weak enough to break.

These last several months have been stressful, there’s no arguing that. Because of what I do, when given the choice to stay home, I almost always will choose to stay in. If we can get a meeting done just as effectively over an UBER Conference line, I vote for the conference call every time. Now, of course, we have no choice but to substitute conference and Zoom calls for anything that was originally meant to be face-to-face. It’s great, but if you had asked me 6 months ago whether or not I’d attend a video conference without make up; I’d have said, “HELL NO!”. Now I can’t remember the last time I actually applied mascara. It’s a bit bizarre.

The video conferences leave the opportunity for significant others to walk through the background, attempt to involve you in conversations that have nothing to do with you and are of little importance, and introduce small moments of PDA into the video. Some offenses are more egregious than others, of course, but mine always seems to find ways to end up in the background.

It’s also pretty difficult to find personal, alone time right now. I have locked myself in the bathroom, sat on the stairs, organized the crawl space in the attic and just laid low in the bedroom all day on Saturday or Sunday. I nap during the day, yet he finds reasons to bust in and try to engage me in something he finds exciting, such as how “awesome” the infused butter he is making really looks/smells. Sometimes he just wants to tell me that someone responded to something he posted. Other times it’s something so fucking stupid that I want to throat punch him, but I’m so groggy I know that my arms won’t move that swiftly.

I’ve tried to pull up everything funny, romantic, serious, or otherwise sexy to get the partner into the mood, but nothing works. He’s just focused upon why his company is getting away with not closing down even through it’s not considered “Essential” and making treats for people that have anxiety. I’m just about to lose my mind. I can’t even remember the last time we were intimate or how often he’s actually slept in our bed rather than on the living room sofa. If this doesn’t end soon, it may actually end for me in a very sad, sucky way.

I hope that you are all having a better relationship experience during this lockdown than me and most of my friends have been having.

Any tips for coping?

We’d all love to hear them.