It’s always bothered me when people say their romantic partner is their best friend.
To me, your S.O. should be the person who you are romantic with, someone who recalls interlocking fingers, steamy bedroom romps and cute dates. They are the person you should share many of the intimate details of your life with, someone you can trust and someone to be your partner in everything from movie-watching to living your best life.
BUT your friends are people you shoot the shit with at work, drink wine with on girl’s weekends and act as your support system when you want to bitch. They feature in your wedding, your selfies and many of your memorable moments, but ultimately, are totally different than your spouse.
And then we were suddenly immersed in a pandemic. And in a pandemic, your thoughts on a lot of things change. For many, it has clarified priorities but also relationships.
For me, for a year in lockdown with my husband, our cat, dog, and very recently, an infant, there was a bit of a shift.
Sure, at times it has been difficult. I miss seeing people like everyone else, and particularly during pregnancy, quarantine hit hard and loneliness was often a constant companion. Overall, though, in a lot of ways I think it has helped my husband and I to know each other a lot better.
I find we bicker more with all the time spent together and nowhere else to blow off steam – but because of this, we’re also more honest than we’ve ever been. We let our guard down. We don’t care so much about what we look like (being sexy is more like yelling down the stairs “the baby’s sleeping, wanna have sex?” now). We’re open when we are struggling with our mental health in ways that we weren’t before. We try to demonstrate caring gestures more often.
The new us looks a lot different.
Through it all, I’ve noticed that we laugh a lot more. We cry a lot less (that part is mostly me). When one of us is flagging, the other one seems to be right there to pick up the slack. We support each other in a way that I’m not sure we totally did before.
It took a pandemic to realize that my husband is a great friend. I love his companionship and most of all, I like the new us.