How COVID-19 Raised Divorce Rates
When people are faced with copious amounts of stress and seemingly have no outlets for their emotions, relationships are going to get affected. When we have no “escape” for ourselves and time to think away from situations that already seem stressful, we may react more intensely or feel a compounding happening with what’s around us.
People want to feel freedom, relief and happiness, but going through the COVID-19 mandatory lockdowns (at least here in Michigan) felt like entrapment and like our freedom was taken away for months at a time. Because it was mandatory that we were to stay in our homes, we had to face the people and situations going on inside.
According to the New York Post website’s article called “US divorce rates skyrocket amid COVID-19 pandemic” that was published on September 1st, the number of people looking for divorces was 34 percent higher from March through June compared to 2019. Data also showed that 31 percent of couples admitted lockdown has caused irreparable damage to their relationships.
Sometimes when we do not see a ray of hope or when things feel out of control, we can internalize it or lash out trying to find something to blame. If we are personally dealing with several unresolved issues and have new societal uncertainties and issues stacked onto that, the feeling of isolation can intensify. The abnormal rules in place to wear masks and create social distance intensifies a need for a lack of disconnection, which is unnatural for humans as a whole.
If a relationship is truly solid, it should survive whatever external factors there are. You should look to receive support from your partner and provide support for your partner in times of distress. It is important to handle your responsibilities when they come up to make it easier for your partner to handle theirs. Whatever we can do to lessen the burden on the other is paramount to reducing stress and making life easier to deal with. Communication and conversation is also important to handling emotions and life. Being authentic and real about what we are facing mentally instead of using denial will free ourselves from the chains of isolation and connect ourselves in with the human experience. Schedule in quality time and special moments with your partner to deepen your connection.
In my lifetime, I have never experienced anything like the COVID-19 pandemic. I am sure there are countless others out there that would agree with me. In dealing with the unknown, we have to navigate the unknown. It may all be foreign or new to us. It can be scary to be faced with so many uncertainties. We are still moving forward now with many uncertainties in the United States.
We will have to face uncertainties in love, dating and our relationship at times. We are the ones that navigate our lives and because our lives are not over, we will still face uncertainties. Perhaps the divorce rates skyrocketed because the feeling of isolation was just too magnified. Businesses shut down. Opportunities to get out and do things became limited. We couldn’t escape ourselves. We had to face ourselves with little to no distractions.
Fear has been intensified to epic proportions over 2020. News stories show more COVID-19 cases and more deaths as well as rioters and shootings in various cities. Sometimes people shut down when they are in fear and face too many unknowns. Sometimes fear drives others to do better for themselves and take action. If we feel that we are left with limited options, we may do things that don’t seem “like us” in our natural state of being. Marriage can be hard already, but adding a pandemic to it is the real test of answering the question, “How Deep Is Your Love?”
