Longing for longing

Couples who are permanently together when working from home hardly have a chance to miss or look forward to each other. Our blogger Valerie Wendenburg believes it's worth consciously creating a new everyday life together with feel-good moments.

My marriage began with a long-distance relationship. If someone had predicted to me back then that we would be spending day and night together without interruption almost ten years later, I would have thought it was a somewhat sinister vision. Today it's a reality. Compulsory home office, lockdown: my husband and I are almost always at home, as are most of our friends. Sometimes I dream of beaming myself back into the past.

I long for the longing in our relationship, think of the sad goodbyes at airports and the unanswered phone calls that made me nervous. The growing excitement before the long-awaited reunion. We consciously savoured the limited and precious time we had. We called it «quality time» back then. If you were to define the term in terms of time spent together, we would have been experiencing «pure quality time» for a good year now. But it feels different.

«Now you feel like I did when my husband retired.»

We hardly have the chance to miss each other or look forward to each other anymore. My neighbour, who is just over 70, said to me the other day with a smile: «Now you're like me when my husband retired.» Even though the comparison is obviously a bit of a stretch, as we both work, her statement made me think. It's true in the sense that we are suddenly omnipresent and omnipresent for each other. In contrast to being retired, we no longer even have the opportunity to visit cinemas, theatres, museums or even just shops in the city to distract ourselves and come home with new inspiration and thoughts.

Couple life in the pandemic

Couples in times of corona are condemned to get along day after day without really being able to escape the situation. To avoid total navel-gazing, I've been going for walks or to the basement for weeks when I'm on the phone with my girlfriend. For our daughter, the state of emergency is already normal. When she comes home from primary school, we are both there for her. My husband flew out the other day. When he wasn't back home after two hours, our daughter asked quite uncertainly: «But when is daddy coming back?». I asked her if she could remember that her father used to be at the office every day until the evening. She looked at me incredulously and a little anxiously and shook her head.

A picture from our old days, when long-distance relationships took centre stage. (Picture: private / zVg)
A picture from our old days, when long-distance relationships took centre stage. (Picture: private / zVg)

For them, the permanent presence of both parents is obviously a benefit. But for us as a couple? We are getting through this time quite well, because after a few months we decided to consciously treat ourselves to quality time during the pandemic. As a first step, I travelled to the mountains alone for two days. In the evenings, I wrote messages to my husband and waited for him to reply. I missed him and got an inkling of what it used to feel like. In order to be aware of each other again and not just communicate about everyday occurrences, we create time together as a couple.

Planning romance at home, is that possible?

We consciously cook a nice meal for two or watch a film that we love - or one that we've always wanted to see. Of course, we do this in the living room on our green sofa and not in red plush armchairs with popcorn in our hands. We put our phones to one side and create moments of well-being and longing together. To feel a touch of what it was like before corona. Good films help and with them we escape from everyday life together. It works and feels even better than the long-distance relationship we've been sorely missing.

Valerie Wendenburg ist Journalistin und lebt in Bottmingen BL. Neben dem alltäglichen Spagat zwischen Familienleben, Arbeit und selbstbestimmter Zeit ist es ihr wichtig, die Beziehung zu jedem ihrer vier Kinder und zu ihrem Mann in den unterschiedlichen Lebensphasen zu pflegen.
Valerie Wendenburg is a journalist and lives in Bottmingen BL. In addition to the daily balancing act between family life, work and self-determined time, it is important to her to nurture her relationship with each of her four children and her husband in the different phases of their lives.

Read more about corona and family life:

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