Marriage takes work, because it’s a lot to merge two people together. So if you felt like you were struggling in your marriage, would you be open to trying interesting tactics in order to fix it?
This 30-year-old woman has been married to her 31-year-old husband for three years, and they both have remote jobs. They live in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, so she and her husband are basically always on top of one another.
“I love him to death, he is my favorite person, but about a year ago, we hit this invisible wall where we were just constantly snapping at each other over nothing,” she explained.
“Literal nonsense like how the dishwasher was loaded or who left a coffee mug on the counter. We realized the issue was not our relationship; it was the fact that we had zero [boundaries] between the work day and the relationship day.”
“The commute used to be the buffer, but now the commute is just walking three steps from the desk to the couch. So we implemented the quiet hour rule. Every single day at 5 PM, when we shut our laptops, we do forty-five minutes of absolute silence.”
She and her husband do not speak to one another for those 45 minutes. They don’t talk about what they should have for dinner, they don’t discuss how their days went; they literally are silent.
Her husband normally reads or scrolls on his phone in their bedroom while she sits in the living room on her Kindle, or goes out on their little balcony for some fresh air.
During their first week, it felt strange and unnatural not to say a word for nearly an hour. It was almost like she and her husband were giving one another the silent treatment after getting into a blowout fight.
“But once the initial awkwardness faded, it became the best part of the day. It lets your brain actually decompress from the spreadsheet [mess] and the Zoom calls without dumping all that residual stress onto your partner the second you close the laptop,” she added.
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“By 5:45 PM, we are actually excited to see each other and talk like normal humans. I mentioned this to a couple of my married friends during a dinner last weekend, and they looked at me like we were on the verge of filing for divorce.”
“One of them said if she could not talk to her husband after a hard day, she would feel totally rejected. It made me wonder if this is actually a weird coping mechanism or if other remote couples do something similar to keep from losing their minds.”
She does credit the silence with saving her marriage, and she’s curious how you would deal with transitioning into spouse mode after a grueling day at work spent in a roughly 500-square-foot apartment with your partner.
I think this is a brilliant strategy for improving her connection with her husband. It’s irritating to be around someone 24/7, even if you do love them!
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
