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If you and your partner went into the pandemic feeling like fresh love birds and are coming out of it feeling like an old married couple, there’s something to that. One mathematician created a formula to determine how much all of this extra time couples are spending together is “aging relationships.” They call it the “dog years” of relationships. The scientist found that the average relationship was aged four years by the pandemic. Quarantining with someone certainly provides a fast track for getting to know one another on a deeper level that might have been eye-opening for couples who were relatively new when this all started. In many ways, it’s been a good thing! If you could get through this and still love each other, then you can probably get through anything. By “this” we mean around-the-clock time together, isolation from friends and family, fear for your lives, fear for your finances, and fear for your country during tumultuous times. We definitely all learned just how much our partners are our rocks during this. Others realized their boyfriends or girlfriends weren’t the right fit after all.
Many couples are closer, that’s for sure, but getting close and getting comfortable can often go hand in hand. Comfort is, of course, a part of a healthy relationship. But when you get too comfortable, it’s easy to feel like you’ve become siblings or college roommates instead of the young lovers who once couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Is that you? Here are signs you’ve become too comfortable in your relationship during quarantine.
You’re doing “Is this gross?” checks
You used to hide your little gross habits from each other, and now you not only share them but you even consult one another on them. You bring your dirty bra over to your partner, have him sniff it, and ask, “Do you think I can wear this again without washing it?” The razor you’ve had in the shower forever? You show that to your partner and ask, “Is this too rusty to keep using? Also, I used it on my vagina, can I use it on my armpits now?” You’re eating weird food combinations and old leftovers in front of him, dumping a taco salad on a pizza and having him sniff that (you ask each other to sniff a lot of things) to check if he still thinks it’s good.
Makeup is for Zooms
You will let your partner see you in a way you would have never let him see you before. Your hair hasn’t been washed for as regularly as before so it’s not uncommon for flakes of dandruff to be found all over the back of your couch. You’re walking around with your zit cream on and retainer in. You basically live in a fluffy robe covered in clouds, and your favorite slippers. The only time you attempt to transform yourself from this granny creature you’ve become is when you have a Zoom meeting or a virtual hangout with other people. Only people who aren’t your romantic partner, who you’ll only see over a screen, get the version of you with your hair brushed and your makeup on.
He’s involved in your beauty routine
Your partner has become your hairdresser/aesthetician/waxist/facialist. He now helps you dye your hair and trim it and take down braids. He helps you pluck hairs from your upper lip. He’s shaved your legs for you when you were in the tub and couldn’t get your hands wet because you were drying your nails. He’s removed your blackhead-removing strips because, again, your nails were drying. He’s become deeply involved in your beauty routine, and he’s probably seen things he’ll never forget. But so have you, since you’ve now shaved his back and removed blackheads he didn’t know were there. Maybe you’ve done at-home colonics together at this point. You’re beautifying yourselves for when the world reopens, but you’re showing each other the hideous process in the meantime.
Movie night happens in separate rooms
In pre-pandemic times, you would spend an hour picking out a movie. You would argue about it. You would get upset over whose turn it was to pick one. You’d ultimately land on something and apologize for the nasty things you said while picking out the movie. You’d bond over this. But now, you don’t even attempt to land on something together. “Date night” has fallen from ordering delivery and watching a movie together to picking up separate fast food items and watching different movies, on your respective laptops or on TVs in different rooms. That is your movie night “together.”
Your quarantine 15 (or 30?) is all a joke
You’ve both put on the quarantine 15….or 30…whatever it might be, and you’re not even trying to lie to yourselves about it anymore. You think it’s hilarious to hold up your jeans, pretend you’re going to put them on, and then grab your sweatpants because you all know none of you fit into your favorite pieces right now. You like to play drums on the little belly your partner has developed. You put donuts and cookies in a bowl and call it a salad. You’re completely unconcerned with getting back in the shape you were in when you first fell in love with each other.
Bathroom time is together time
You consider bathroom time as the best time to catch up with one another. To be clear: you see toilet time as the best time to catch up. When you’re on the toilet, your partner comes in to floss or shave. You would never close the bathroom door anymore – how are you supposed to continue gossiping with your partner about your high school nemesis’ divorce if the bathroom door isn’t ajar? The moment your partner hears that toilet seat go down, it’s like a dinner bell beckoning him in there. You get your best conversing done while one of you is wiping.
You plan sex like it’s a chore
Sex is no longer as spontaneous and sensual as it used to be. You end up trying to schedule it around other priorities. “Do you want to fool around before the food arrives or after?” you end up asking. “Call the delivery place and see when the food is arriving so we know how much time we have.” These are the seductive conversations that lead up to sex now. And when you’re done, you say things like, “Okay that’s out of the way. Now we can get back to watching Love It or List It.”
“Can you get that for me?”
You groom and clean each other like a mother and child animal duo. If your partner has something in his teeth, he asks you to get it. If you tell him he has something coming out of his nose, he asks you to get a tissue for him and help him out. You cover him in napkins before he eats because you know he’ll get sauce all over his clothes. You pick things out of his hair when he gets back from walks. All decorum has gone out the window. Any attempt at appearing kempt or having it together, you no longer have time for.
Oversharing your crushes
It’s only natural that sometimes you’ll be attracted to someone who isn’t your partner, and he’ll be attracted to someone besides you. And, perhaps by being pent up, you haven’t had the chance to chat with your friends about how hot a neighbor is, or some TV crush. But that doesn’t mean it’s time for you and your partner to start sharing with each other who you would or wouldn’t do from Bridgerton. That doesn’t mean it’s time to put on a push-up bra because you see the hot neighbor by the mailboxes, nor is it time to tell your partner that’s exactly why you’re putting on a push-up bra.
Watching Real Housewives together…and loving it
You’ve both gotten really into some of that really good guilty pleasure reality TV. Maybe it isn’t one of the Housewives series for you. Maybe it’s something else. But you love shows where the claws come out. And you’ve become as catty as the people on the shows, saying the pettiest, most judgmental things about them. You and your partner binge these shows with the intensity usually reserved for watching serious world news events. You’ve stopped having a conversation over dinner or even pretending you’re going to try. You sit down with your dinner trays and turn on that reality show.
