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community people
Chelsea Wakefield
COVI D versus
Cupid WORDS Dwain Hebda images courtesy UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute
To all of the ways Covid-19 has changed our lives – economic, academic, work habits, health care – add relationships. For every family that suffered extra stress for not being able to see their relatives during the 2020 pandemic, an equal number suffered from being in too close of contact with their family, specifically their significant other. This, says one relationship expert, is likely to have far-reaching consequences as fallout from troubled marriages driven to the brink of fracture continues to play out, possibly for years to come. "When we went into sheltering in place, people came home, and children came home," says Chelsea Wakefield, associate professor at UAMS in the Psychiatric Research Institute in Little Rock. "So, what happened in the mix of that is roles got disrupted, and the balance and the rhythm of family life got disrupted. In couples that have difficulty in resolving things or were already in the midst of a high-conflict relationship, their conflict escalated their sense of unfairness, of resentment, both conflict and disconnection."
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