‘Are we still Covid-ing?’

Abundant research suggests that supportive relationships can help relieve harmful stress, with physical and mental benefits that include resistance to viruses. However, the pandemic has caused stress and strain to every relationship.

Some public health experts have expressed concern that the lockdowns and stay-at-home rules have aggravated a “loneliness epidemic” that was worrisome enough before the pandemic began. Yet the restrictions may also provide a chance – and even the perfect excuse – to weed out relationships that were troublesome before all this began.

Good health depends not only on the closeness of our ties but also on their nature, recent studies suggest that uncertain or erratic  relationships, those combining affection and hostility (alas, like so many family ties), create chronic stress that can ultimately damage health. “This sometimes gets lost when we talk about social isolation. It’s not as if we just need to make people more engaged with others. We also have to pay more attention to the negativity in some relationships."

The pandemic’s toll on friendships goes deeper than mere squabbling of how the government has, or hasn’t handled this pandemic, or whether we should, or shouldn’t wear a mask, or agree to be vaccinated. It’s more about discovering personality differences between you and your relatives and friends, including different levels of risk-tolerance and what might seem like irrational optimism on one side vs hysterical alarmism on the other. These differences are painfully relevant.

Making the necessary conversations so much harder, however, is the scarcity of scientific information. This has made risk assessment a moving target. With moving goal posts from the government and subsequent mixed messages being announced, almost on a daily basis, opinions may substitute for facts, making you likelier to argue with a friend who has just told you that you can’t use they're bathroom.

In this case, however, disputes involve other primal drives, including the fear of being left out in the cold by others because of your view point or personal actions. Where you may feel friends and family might not appreciate your ongoing grounds for fear. And this can break out into full blown conflict over the dinner table and on Zoom calls and social media.

However, there may be an upside in this strife, if friends and family eventually learn to speak more directly to one another about things that matter, we can strengthen relationships with new levels of understanding. And although, “Fighting the good fight is exhausting.” Such an evolution may well be worth the hard work put in to achieve such a positive outcome. 

Extracts taken from Katherine Ellison from https://www.independent.co.uk