i found out during lockdown that my
husband has a girlfriend
covert 19 to me is defined by
my partner of nine years leaving me
during melbourne's stage for lockdown
restrictions
[Music]
she lit up a room she was just magical i
think that's the best way i can print it
i
explain it yeah we married a few years
ago
it was always very sweet and caring
and everything was okay until 2020. your
chavez
[Music]
lots of therapists are reporting a real
demand for couples therapy and
relationship therapy at the moment
our work lives are under pressure our
family lives are under pressure
and we're just trying to hold it all
together one of the biggest things that
couples are describing is just kind of
not getting on our higher levels of
conflict there's also on the intimacy
side of things a real
impact on desire and couples finding
space
and time to be together intimately
because we were in lockdown
and it was limiting in what we could do
and couldn't do we entered
this like routine funk it just led to
the pain points in our relationship just
intensifying
food
trouble started after the lockdown began
i went through his phone
when i found out he has a girlfriend
i confronted him and all he kept saying
was how did you get into my phone
i think he had told his girlfriend that
he wanted to divorce
because his girlfriend said if you want
to divorce your wife
don't sleep in the same room or eat your
wife's food
because you can't trust her she could
poison you
my husband doesn't know i'm talking
about this now
that's why i can't show my real face it
just went down
really quickly you know she was gone and
i just felt
so alone being in the same space
parenting working
coupling has meant that there is nowhere
to hide so the habits that we find
kind of normally irritate us a bit but
don't drive us that crazy
are really obvious trying to move away
from criticizing or blaming our partners
is really important and we can get
really stuck in a cycle
so using i statements so my feelings are
i'm feeling rather than you do this you
make me feel
i think lockdown fast track the expiry
date because we went from
you know talking about buying a house
together and
um we were never big on marriage but at
the start of the year i was even i'd be
honored to marry you
so to go from that as as quickly to
was just like
a process
i will call my parents and cry
but my parents are christians they don't
believe in divorce or separation
they told me stay there no matter what
your husband does
important
while this hurts like hell
i think we outgrew one another but i
think that
it just went down in a really
traumatizing way
because of because of lockdown because
of covert 19.
it's a really difficult time to go
through a breakup so for people who've
gone through breakups and locked down
it's really important that
you reach out to the people that you're
close to reach out to the people that
you love
it's also really important that you do
the things that make you feel good about
yourself
just for you so practicing a lot of
self-care
when the breakup happened melbourne was
opening back up again
and then we got the word that we're
going back into stage three
i got to a point where i got really down
and then
i just cried my eyes out
it's not common to divorce in nigeria i
don't know
anyone divorced or even separated you
just have to keep it to yourself
and not say anything to be really honest
it's going to take a long while for love
to come back
each day is getting better but then you
still have those days that
are awful um and you know what it's very
similar to this whole
cover 19 situation you've got to
maintain the hope that
you know this will be okay
[Music]
m
[Music]