Partners will fight more than usual during the coronavirus crisis. That might not be such a bad thing, writes meaghano
Photo: Jena Ardell/Getty Images After my husband and I had a recent fight about nothing, I sent a check-mark emoji to the group chat. “We had our first corona fight,” I wrote. “It was about a frying pan. Unsolicited feedback re: my oil usage . I sobbed.” The pressure of close quarters and complete uncertainty have made these sorts of spousal exchanges a running theme with most people I know, including the friends who texted their apologies and LOLs and heart emojis in kind.
If you are me, or someone like me, you might think the answer is that what once seemed like a good idea was actually doomed from the start. You might consider yourself too sophisticated to believe in Finding the One, but a part of you probably fears its opposite: Inevitably Choosing the Wrong One. While Bowlby came up with attachment theory, developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, a colleague and former collaborator of his, put it into action. In the late 1960s, Ainsworth developed an observational experiment to test Bowlby’s theory empirically and take it even further.
She went on to reference a classic relationship dynamic that sounded very familiar to me: the pairing of an anxiously-attached person and an avoidantly-attached one. The key for “someone” in this situation is to have compassion for your partner’s tendency to withdraw, rather than feeling personally attacked, or like you’re just the unhinged one with all the out-of-control emotions.
Granted an element of the unknown comes with this mindset, and once I finished my call with Sloane, that was exactly what my doom-obsessed brain decided to focus on.
Caryl Rusbult, who died in 2010, was considered a pioneer of the scientific study of close relationships. She was also Eli Finkel’s mentor: Her research argues that we look for a spouse who will bring out “our best self” — someone who embodies the qualities we think of as ideal. She called this the Michelangelo Effect, recalling the way the artist considered the act of sculpting to be less about creating a new object as it was freeing an object from the rock it was trapped inside.
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