‘Quarantine Was Great for My Relationship’

Q:

I know so many couples who went through rough patches and even breakups during quarantine and the early parts of the pandemic. But for me and my girlfriend, it was one of the best stretches our relationship has had. We’d been together since 2018 and moved in together in the first half of 2019 so our relationship was still relatively new but serious and committed by the time spring 2020 hit. Of course there was a ton of anxiety, fear, and grief associated with the beginning of covid, but there were also a bunch of upsides when it came to our love lives. I feel like a bad person for being like “quarantine was great!” but for us it really was, especially for me. We had more sex than ever and really connected on an intimate level that started to dwindle the second the world started opening up again and I don’t know how we get back to that place, especially since I’m obviously not rooting for lockdown to happen again!!

The thing is I’m super introverted, and my girlfriend is super extroverted, and it sometimes makes it difficult for us to connect meaningfully. My girlfriend has a really active and busy social life. She invites me along to everything, but I usually only have capacity for a couple events a week. And at those events, my girlfriend is usually spread pretty thin with who she can give her attention to. I can tell she wishes I’d come with her to more events and hangs, but I’m just not that interested, especially if we’re not going to be talking to each other for the majority of the time. I don’t mind spending time alone at the house, but she often comes home late and then wants to go to sleep.

During quarantine, she still talked to her friends a lot and did Zoom happy hours with them, but it was so different. All her in-person energy went to me and to our relationship. I know it’s selfish but I liked having my girlfriend all to myself. I don’t feel possessive or jealous and I understand it might not ever feel exactly like it did for that period of time, but I can’t figure out how we can recreate a similar feeling like that or at least part of it.

I’ve talked about this with my girlfriend a little bit, and she agrees that things felt easy and good back then when it comes to our relationship, but she also says she was suffering from not being able to see her friends and not being able to go out. I want her to have a life outside of me, of course. but I also can’t help but wish I had more of her, more time with her, more ways to meaningfully connect at home that don’t feel like a chore for her (we’ve tried scheduling at-home date nights, but it’s clear it’s just for me). How do we get back to where we were without literally going back to where we were during lockdown?

A:

So while there are some parts of your letter that might be a bit concerning, like you writing that you want your girlfriend all to yourself, I do sense a level of self-awareness here. You already acknowledged it’s a selfish desire, and I also get the sense you might be exaggerating anyway. I think the overarching question at the root of your letter is: How do I meaningfully connect with my girlfriend given our different attitudes toward and capacity for socialization and connection?

It’s possible you’ve over-inflated the role of quarantine in all this. Sure, it makes sense that if your main desire is to spend one-on-one in-person time with your girlfriend, then lockdown provided exactly that, all the time. It’s possible some of the social and connection energy your girlfriend would normally spend on others was all going to you. But I’m also interested in the exact timeline of all this. Lockdown happened two years into your relationship and a year-ish after moving in together. In many ways, you were still in the early stages of a relationship when people do tend to spend more time together and when you’re still learning new things about people. It’s possible this would have been an intense time of connection regardless of lockdown, though of course lockdown probably heightened it, making the shift after it feel more abrupt.

You say it yourself though: Your girlfriend wasn’t happy during this time. She may have been happy in the relationship, but she was unhappy in other aspects of her life, and that will eventually seep into the relationship. I hear you wanting to make compromises in your letter, but I’m not sure I get a sense that you’re actually trying to understand your girlfriend’s side of this and understand her needs, too. When you write that you’ve tried scheduling at-home date nights but “it’s clear” it’s just for you, what do you mean by that? Is that a discussion you’ve had outright? Does your girlfriend seem checked out during these dates or like she’d rather be elsewhere?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with scheduling dates and being very intentional about spending time together. I think most relationships need that! It sounds like if you’re both willing to compromise then you can come up with a plan to spend a couple nights at home during the week and then maybe you can also commit to one social outing away from home with your girlfriend, if that’s important to her, too. You don’t have to do them all, just like she doesn’t have to spend every single night at home with you. It should feel like a balance, and it should feel like a balance rooted in mutual understanding about each of your needs.

I do wish I knew a bit more about how you connect with others outside of your relationship and whether that’s a priority for you. How do you spend time with friends? Do you reserve all of your social energy for your romantic relationship? I definitely encourage you to seek strong relationships outside of your romantic partnership so that you’re not relying solely on your girlfriend to fulfill your needs.

I want to read your letter in good faith, and I do think your overall goal here of wanting to more meaningfully connect with your girlfriend again is positive. But I also do worry about your romanticization of lockdown, because ultimately, I do think a lot of couples will overly romanticize the past or past stages of the relationship in ways that are ultimately unfair to themselves and to their partners. If you feel like the only version of your relationship or of your girlfriend that you now long for or like is that past version, then I think you need to do some serious self-work and figure out if it’s just a shift in circumstances or if the relationship is ultimately not a great fit. The pandemic is far from over, and lockdowns aren’t out of the question, but is that really something you want to hope or wish for?

Relationships have to withstand extreme change all the time. People lose jobs, people move through grief, people change or evolve or their financial situations shift. It’s not abnormal or bad that your relationship felt different during lockdown than it does now — I think that’s true for a lot of people! But your question should be less about recreating the circumstances of lockdown and more about how to make compromises in your introvert/extrovert relationship that ultimately meet both of your needs. It might take some time to figure out, and you will have to communicate clearly with your girlfriend. Just keep in mind that what you get from one-on-one time with her is just as important as what she gets from time spent with friends or while out. It’s reasonable to want in-person time with your girlfriend; it’s not reasonable to want ALL of her in-person energy. If you two can talk more openly about what an ideal relationship structure and schedule looks like to you — without invoking “quarantine” or the past at all — I think you might be able to arrive at some solutions. Just make sure it comes from a place of wanting to make sure her needs are met, too, and an understanding that you can’t have her all to yourself all the time, nor would that be a solid foundation for a lasting and healthy relationship.