The Counselling House offers group workshops, executive coaching, individual, family and couple counselling to inspire, equip and mobilize you to live life to its fullest / Credit: The Counselling House
It’s been a long couple years of this pandemic and they’ve been particularly hard on relationships. This Feb. 14 will be the second year in a row Valentine’s Day will be spent with Covid-19 restrictions, though fewer than last year.
Dr. Laurie Ponsford-Hill is a registered Marriage and Family Therapist who has a doctorate in relationship and psychotherapy. She represents The Counselling House in Woodstock and London. When asked if the pandemic has brought couples closer or made it harder, she responded by saying she’s been much busier.
“I think the difficulty with the pandemic has really spilled over into relationships. I think that the reality of spending a huge amount of time together with an enormous amount of stress and pressure, has definitely taken a toll,” said Ponsford-Hill.
Some relationships have definitely gotten stronger though, and Ponsford-Hill explained what those couples all have in common.
“The relationships that have done well are the ones in which the two people have really great outlets, really great coping skills, and the ability to pull together, when the going gets tough.”
After all, not all couples are made equally. There are many differences between young relationships, newlyweds and longtime married couples. Ponsford-Hill describes the pandemic-related issues that can arise for young lovers.
“Young couples have different stressors, because they might have difficulty with where they’re living because of the huge situation that’s happened with housing prices and rental prices. On top of that, they have young children and with that comes specific stressors, especially since there’s been such an onus put on not only working from home, which has not exactly been predictable at times and consistent. So those stressors are specific to that age group,” said Ponsford-Hill.
Lastly, Ponsford-Hill has advice for young couples this Valentine’s Day:
“The bottom line of marital commitment is to do with agreements. It comes down to turning towards one another and making agreements with one another. That’s really the key in order to keep that marital relationship going. It’s really important to set those negativities aside, not that they don’t need to be discussed or figured out or any of those sorts of things, just to be able to set them aside, come together, have positive, encouraging conversations. Then when it is that you come to the table to discuss those difficult things, it’s really good to look at not about what’s happened in the past. People unfortunately, have a tendency to go over all the negatives and why things haven’t worked, but it’s not about that. It’s really about stating what it is that you would like to see going forward.”
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