LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Are you and your partner at odds this Valentine's Day? Dr. Chelsea Wakefield, director of the UAMS Couples Center, said you're hardly alone – the pandemic has taken a toll.
“There is a lot of struggle going on in relationships right now,” Wakefield said. “There's a general malaise going on. It's like, ‘aren't we out of this yet? When will it end?’ People feel like they can't make plans. They haven't gone on vacation. They've been spending a little too much togetherness time.”
According to Wakefield, those factors can lead to negativity.
“When we get grouchy and negative, it's almost like Velcro,” she said. “We tend to attract more and more examples of why things are going wrong, and why you're not meeting my needs.”
So how can you work through that? This Valentine's Day, Dr. Wakefield said there is a gift more important than chocolate and flowers – the gift of presence.
“Presence is one of the most difficult things that we have to really settle in and listen to someone deeply and really try to understand what they're trying to get across to us and why it matters to us,” Wakefield said. “Even if there's some criticism involved, to listen underneath into the needs and the feelings and to reflect those back, so the person actually really feels gotten.”
Wakefield said couples are often good at that at the beginning of a relationship, but it needs to continue beyond the honeymoon phase.
“If we think about each person is being a house, there are rooms in that house that we either haven't visited for a long time, or we've never even been in,” she said. “And people are constantly, they're growing and they're changing. We've got to catch up on who you are now.”
The UAMS Couples Center is hosting “SOS for Cabin Fever Couples” – a 30-day program for people looking to strengthen their relationship with their significant other.