Be thoughtful about home-bound anxiety

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/04/2020 (2350 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My husband is so afraid of catching COVID-19 from anyone that he is social isolating — not just social distancing the suggested six feet — and from me, his beloved wife of six years! We’re both at home and he won’t even sleep with me or go for a car ride with me. Then he phones me to talk to me in the house, which I find most insulting!

My feeling about this virus situation is different from his. I say this to him: “I love you, my sweet, beloved husband, and I’ll take whatever you might get, but I don’t want to stop sleeping together or stop doing things together for months on end!” We are only in our late 20s, for heaven’s sake.

We have a pretty safe house situation, too. We don’t even have to go out to work. We have our groceries delivered and we are living a totally insular life inside our two-storey house. His fear is bigger than the scary virus itself, and it’s coming between us. What should I do?

— Feeling Rejected and Alone, Transcona

Dear Rejected: Hang in there! Quite a few couples are in a state of high anxiety right now and it’ll take them a few weeks to calm down a bit. Yes, there’s something to be worried and careful about, but maybe not to the extent your husband is feeling it.

We all feel some anxiety inside our minds and bodies when a calamity happens. So go with the flow. If your husband doesn’t want to exchange body fluids with you right now, let him be! You pushing him will not help.

Has your guy ever exhibited anxiety like this before? Pre-existing anxiety can ramp up new ones that come along. I do sympathize with you when you say it feels insulting he phones you when you’re both inside the same house. (Does anyone in Reader Land have suggestions on how to fix this upsetting problem?)

For now, call him lots in the house — since he feels safe this way. Yes, by phone, and without being nasty and resentful about it. Could you even binge-watch the same program in different rooms and share opinions about it?

Finally, do you have a pet who could sleep on the bed with you for comfort? 

 

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I’m discovering the upside of quarantine so I thought I’d write to your readers. Since I’ve been at home, I’ve rediscovered a lot of old friendships I had let slip. We weren’t really “finished” as friends, but we weren’t caught up on each other’s lives anymore either. In many cases, we hadn’t had a real conversation other than social media responses, online communication or via memes.

I made a phone list of 10 people and called them last week. It was great fun. So many people were at home with nothing to do but talk to little old me. From those calls, I got a new phone list for this week!

Most people were tickled to be in touch again. Some were relatives, some were friends from old workplaces and some from my present job where we are too busy to chat much.

The best calls were with old pals I had been close with once from sports teams and former jobs. I look forward to good times with them again in the future.

Once this COVID-19 thing is over I have pledged to see people in person and go out and do things together — because we CAN! Or I think it’d just be fun to have them over for games, barbecues or to meet them for meals face-to-face when we have that privilege again.

After 10 years of basically living on my computer, I realize I had very few close friends left.

— Just Wanted to Share This! Elmwood

Dear Share: This COVID-19 situation is a dark cloud indeed, but this reconnection between old friends and relatives is part of the silver lining of it all. People are talking much more on the phone to hear real voices.

It’d be natural to cement these renewed friendships with personal get-togethers, but we can’t do that just yet. Oh well! How long did we leave these friends sitting on the shelf before this? This is a real start. Anybody can make a list of people to phone from a set of childhood and school friends and from old jobs. That will create a list of people to invite over for dinners or out for group fun — a few months from now.

Let’s just hope we all do that and don’t go back to our computer-isolated lives. When we can touch people again, and hug them when we say hello, will we actually do it? Will we value them and play cards and games with them when we are welcome to be close together again? I sure hope so!

 

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My quarrelsome husband is in his mid-30s and at home because he’s laid off — and suddenly he’s turned back into the sweet guy I married. Don’t ask me why.

Then I got it! It seems to me he must not like his job. This desire to fight about every little thing seemed to have started when he got this new job a year after we married.

When this twigged and I asked him about it, he said in that same defensive attitude: “Surely you can’t complain about the $100,000 I make so you don’t have to work and can stay home with the babies!”

I said, “You’re so much nicer when you don’t have to go to work,” and I started crying. He was angry again and said, “I’m sacrificing so you can be together with the children, and this is the crap I get?” Now I don’t know what to say.

— Speechless and Tearing Up, West Kildonan

Dear Speechless: It seems you hit a sore spot and at least some of his angst is caused by that job. He may feel trapped because of the family — and what can he do about it? 

Could you start working part-time when work becomes available, and release him from 100 per cent of the responsibility for bringing in the money? It’s time to talk, even if he’s crabby about it. Did he always hate the job? Has something changed? Does he feel trapped in a career that isn’t turning out for him? You can’t begin to fix things if you don’t know exactly what the trouble is!

 

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.