A Loss of Convenience: COVID-19 & Relationships
Whether we wanted to or not, many of us have had to transition to a virtual workplace. Some have been dreaming about this idea for years. Working from home means being free from the commute, and being able to work in your pajamas in the comfort of your home. Others have dreaded it. For them, it becomes harder to manage work-life balance because your office is in your home, and they miss a sense of community at the office. For those of us who depend on collaborative relationships with clients, connecting virtually presents a whole new set of challenges maintaining these relationships.
Many of us are scrambling to figure out what to do. After all, what are the best practices for customer service during a global pandemic? I know I never came across a rule book that spells this out. As we try to figure this out, it is important to recognize that this pandemic is an entirely new experience for our species. While there have been pandemics before, and some of us may have relatives who remember the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, our situation now is still unique. Never before in all of human history have we been so capable of maintaining distant relationships. Until the past century, relationships depended greatly on people being in close proximity to each other.
While technology provides enormous opportunity for us to stay connected while we shelter at home, it also provides some unique challenges. While virtual cocktail hours, family get-togethers over video conference, or even tele-health psychotherapy sessions can provide important feelings of connection in these times, they can feel somewhat lacking for some people. Moreover, while many shelter at home, they find that many of their relationships become strained. Friendships may feel too distant, while family members in our homes may now feel too close.
Convenience
One important factor in relationships that we have all lost in this pandemic is convenience. As a result of this crisis, everyone in the world experienced a loss of convenience in their relationships at virtually the same time. It can be surprising to notice just how many of our relationships depend on convenience. I don’t say this dismissively. For nearly all of human history, we have generally been unable to maintain long-distance or otherwise strained emotional connections. If they are easier, they are more likely to flourish. Think across your own life beginning in childhood, who were most of your friends? What kinds of things caused your relationships to deteriorate? Perhaps one of you moved away, or as you grew up there were personality differences, or one of you became more popular at school. Each of these situations means that we would have to try harder to maintain these connections. While some connections are maintained with effort, many die off.
You can probably see the loss of convenience in your relationships all over the place in this crisis. For those of us who sheltered with families, we had to deal with increased contact and proximity of our family members. As a result, what I like to call “functionally dysfunctional” problems in families that we usually just put up with are now in front of us all the time. Many are used to being able to escape them. For friends and family outside the home, the relationships became more challenging.
What can we do?
For relationships both in and out of the home, it can be helpful to think about being intentional in our relationships. We no longer have our relationship “default settings,” so it can be helpful to be mindful and engage in our relationship dynamics on-purpose. How have you observed the quality of your relationships during this time? It is a fact of these times that the relationships we maintain require more effort. We tend to find difficult tasks more meaningful. I myself am surprised at how I was impacted by my workplace friendships at our occasional virtual happy hours. We missed each other, and because we all recognized the value of the effort to maintain our connections, our connections have deepened.
Intentionality in relationships also requires that we pay attention to how they are for us. It requires effort, and no one has an endless supply of energy to dedicate to maintaining connections. Part of taking care of ourselves in this time is also prioritizing the critical elements of our lives. Like pruning a plant, we remove leaves and stems that do not nourish the plant but require energy to maintain. This pruning process allows the plant to flourish. We may need to do the same process in our own lives. What relationships won’t tolerate the distance? Do they need the effort you’ve been putting into them?
What does intentionality in relationships look like? I use this analogy often with my clients. Before taking off on a flight, all of us get a safety speech from flight attendants. They tell us that, if the cabin pressure suddenly drops and the yellow masks drop from the ceiling, we are to secure our own masks before trying to help other passengers with theirs. There are two reasons for this: 1) we have to preserve our own lives, and 2) if we try to help others before we are secure ourselves, we may actually make it harder for them to get their own masks on. In times like these, we have to make it a priority to take care of ourselves and our own needs. If we don’t we may actually make things worse for those we want to help.
Adjusting expectations
For many people, this means prioritizing pleasure over productivity. During this time, creature comforts and pleasant diversions are critically important. These comforts might be carving out time for friends, family, and co-workers for social connection. They might include binge-watching a show on Netflix, or taking deep dives into video games. They might include spending money on home entertainment and luxuries that they usually wouldn't do.
This can also mean setting limits and being realistic about expectations. COVID-19 has been a source of fatigue and grief for most people across the world, and we have all had to make painful sacrifices. This causes a drain on people’s ability to function. As with grades that we earn from primary school and beyond, many students and instructors strive to get as many A’s as they can get. At times like this, however, I don’t believe it’s fair to continue to expect A-level performance from yourself, your employees, or your clients. Consider what striving for B-level performance would look like, or what a bare minimum D-level (still technically passing) performance may be. This virus means that we all have to be graded on a curve. For yourself, this means accepting that your usual performances (e.g. exercise, diet, or quality of work) will all be less. For managers, it means shifting your focus from motivating employees to supporting them. It may mean carving out time and effort to emotionally check on them, expressing gratitude for the continued efforts they make, and finding ways of reducing their burdens.
What gives me hope
While these are frightening and uncertain times, I do see a silver lining. All across the world, we are all finding our relationships inconvenient at the same time! Therefore, everyone on the planet has to make efforts to preserve their relationships and set boundaries with themselves and each other. Imagine what can come of this. One day there will be a vaccine and the crisis will be over. On this day, we will have had everyone on earth taking time and making efforts to preserve relationships and showing grace for each others’ difficulties in doing so. The social scientist in me is fascinated to think about what good will become of all of this.