Lockdown and stress on relationships

Let me start with a warning. I am neither a psychologist, psychiatrist not anything else beginning psy. All I can say is how rhings have affected me and the relationship in our marriage. People are different, some parner up with people with a similar personality and similar interests. They tend to recommend that successful mattiages need to be between people of similar personality, outlook and interests. I do not understand these people, but if that is what works for them then I am happy.

Linda and I celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary, we have very different interests, like different music watch different TV, like different film genres and are over 7 years apart in age. 39 years is a long time for something that is not supposed to work. We have learned to work through things. Often after a row which could and should have been avoided, but we work through things. Not having secrets is a big help here. So does cuddling. Cuddling together is soothing.

We are in a fortunate position in this lockdown. I am on a pension and my wife has been working from home, the kitchen is now her office. But we are old enough not to have children at home. We miss our children and grandaughter, who at a little under four years does not understand social distancing. But it is harder for those who have to balance homeschooling their children and at the same time work from home, or try to work with a child in the background wondering why daddy will not play. We are very fortunate to have our income intact. There are many made out of work or waiting for their furlough money to come through.

Here we started on Thursday 19th of March. Monday and Tuesday evening she had brought aa work laptop home to check she could connect to the work systems, then on Wednesday evening the laptop came back again, working from home started the next day. Ww are very fortunate to have out income intact, a lot of others are far less fortunate through being made unemployed, self employed and unable to work or difficulty with the furlough scheme.

My lockdown began on the evening of Wednesday 18th March when Linda came home with a work laptop and began working from home the next day.  It is eleven weeks later and not much change. I have found difficulties, there have been days where I have been feeling fragile, close to an autistic meltdown*. In fact I have had two meltdowns in these eleven weeks, about an average amount, and pretty good for how stressed I have been feeling as bad numbers of deaths that I know are far higher, in mid April when the government admitted that 19 NHS workers had died due to coronavirus there had already been 20 tributes paid to deceased NHS workers and a list had already been made of NHS workers who had died of coronavirus and named in national or local press. 26 named ones, and who knows how many were not named. The numbers are being suppressed. I am not pleased about this.

My father spent 16 days in the Covid ward at Huddersfield General Infirmary with coronavirus and pneumonia and is still suffering from the aftereffects, I, like most people, have a personal reason for feeling discontent.

I am angered by reports by the government who say their tactic is working when according to the Financial Times the excess deaths per million people, those in excess of the number expected in similar months, in the UK were the second highest in the world,

I’m finding the lack of transparency and accountability of the government appauling.

But I find a way out, to meditate on what God has done and to put trust in the one who can be trusted. God had already spoken to me in the last service held in Holy Trinity Church though the lyric “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God,” as blogged here. May God keep us safe.

*My meltdowns preset as anger, usually looking like a tantrum or rage but are actually a reaction to over sensitivity to light and background noise (other autistic people present differently and have different sensory problems). They are nothing to do with anger, which I can cope with.